Stamford Police Department. Photo: Google

A South Windsor man claiming his First Amendment rights were violated because Stamford Police arrested him and removed his profanity-laced sign has filed a lawsuit against that department's chief.

Experts who spoke to the Connecticut Law Tribune agreed that Michael Picard has a very good chance of prevailing and getting financial damages against Chief John Fontneau.

At issue was the April 2018 arraignment in Stamford Superior Court of defendant Michael Friend, who had been charged for warning motorists of a police speed trap.

Picard came to court that day to support Friend and came with a handwritten sign that read, "F--- Free Speech —Stamford PD." He was holding the sign at the courthouse but decided to move a block away on a public sidewalk in front of Stamford police headquarters. That is where, according to the federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut on Friday, Stamford police demanded he stop holding the sign.

At one point, the lawsuit says, Fontneau ordered other police officers to take the sign and arrest Picard. Picard was charged with one count of second-degree breach of peace, which was later dropped.

The matter is a classic First Amendment case, according to Picard's attorney, Bristol solo practitioner Joseph Sastre.

"The First Amendment allows for what my client did," Sastre said Monday. "The police need to wake up to the fact that they just can't arrest people for the messages they try to convey." Sastre is seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Fontneau did not respond to a request for comment Monday, and neither did Stamford's corporation counsel, the city's top attorney, Kathryn Emmett.

Quinnipiac University Law professor emeritus Martin Margulies said the U.S. Supreme Court decided a similar case in 1971. In Cohen v. California, the country's high court ruled 5-4 that Paul Robert Cohen was in his right when he wore a jacket in a courthouse corridor protesting the Vietnam War that read on the back: "F--- The Draft."

"Because of Cohen v. California, the law here is so clear that he should be able to recover damages," Margulies told the Connecticut Law Tribune on Monday. "Public officials are normally immune against damages liability, as long as they act reasonably under existing law. But they lose that immunity if they violate clear constitutional rules which they ought to have been aware of. The rule here is as clear as any rule can possibly be."

Margulies said the Picard case is even stronger than Cohen because Picard was standing on a sidewalk while the Cohen case protest was not in a public place.

"The guy Picard was holding his sign on a public sidewalk, which is a classic example of a public forum," Margulies said. "If the police or anyone else are offended by the sign, their remedy is to turn away from it."

Sastre said the fact the police chief got personally involved in the Picard incident is very telling.

"If even the chief does not know that you can't just arrest people because they publicly display the word f---, can you really expect that his patrol officers would respect the law?" Sastre asked.

This is not the first time the 30-year-old Picard has tested First Amendment issues. Two years ago, the Associated Press reported that a Connecticut state police internal affairs investigation cleared three state troopers of wrongdoing in connection with allegations they retaliated against Picard at a sobriety checkpoint and filed false criminal charges against him. Picard claimed the troopers violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights because they did not allow him to record checkpoint activities with his camera.

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