Can you flip off a cop? Here's what the law says in Oklahoma
But is lashing out, maybe just by flipping off the officer who pulled you over, a punishable offense in Oklahoma?
In recent years, the Oklahoma City Police Department has taken a firm stance against members of their agency using the gesture after a metro officer flipped a driver off in 2023. But what are citizens able to do without facing a fine or consequence?
Here's what to know about the legality of the action, how the Constitution may come into play, and what to know next time you're interacting with police in Oklahoma.
Can you flip off a police officer during a traffic stop?
In short, yes. Though it's impolite, it's not against the law according to a few legal precedents.
This decision came in 2019, after Debra Cruise-Gulyas was pulled over in 2017 during a routine traffic stop in Michigan. The officer, Matthew Minard, pulled her over for speeding and gave her a ticket for a non-moving violation, a lesser charge.
Cruise-Gulyas, in turn, gave him a two-word statement with her middle finger while driving away. Minard pulled her over again and raised the violation to a speeding ticket.
Cruise-Gulyas then sued Minard on the grounds there was no probable cause for seizure during the second stop, thus violating her Fourth Amendment right; upgrading her ticket to a higher offense due to the gesture, thus violating her First Amendment right of freedom of speech; and that it overall violated her right to due process as set by the 14th Amendment.
First Amendment protected speech
The district court presiding over the case sided with Minard, who stated that the second stop was a continuation of the first. But, when Cruise-Gulyas took the case to the Appellate Court, the Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled in Cruise-Gulyas' favor in 2019.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton stated that 'Fits of rudeness or lack of gratitude may violate the Golden Rule. But that doesn't make them illegal or, for that matter, punishable or, for that matter, grounds for a seizure.'
Sutton later noted "Any reasonable officer would know that a citizen who raises her middle finger engages in speech protected by the First Amendment."
What to do during a traffic stop
While different states have different rules for drivers' duties during a traffic stop, experts generally agree on a few steps drivers should take to ensure the traffic stop remains calm.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma recommends that if you're pulled over by police, you should take the following steps:
Stop the car in a safe place as quickly as possible.
Turn off the car's engine.
Turn on the internal light.
Open the window partway.
Place your hands on the wheel.
The ACLU also encourages people to stay calm during the traffic stop and not to run, resist or obstruct officers.
More: Do you have to roll your window down during a traffic stop? ACLU, police weigh in
The Oklahoma City Police Department recommends many of the same actions, including lowering your window to speak with the officer. If you're afraid during the stop, the police department's website also suggests you can lower your window a few inches, ask to speak with a supervisor or call 911.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Is it illegal to flip off a cop? Here's what Oklahoma law says
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Los Angeles Times
6 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
City officials want to fund immigration defense. The budget crisis makes it hard
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It's Noah Goldberg, with assists from Julia Wick, Seema Mehta and David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government. Days after the Trump administration's mass immigration raids came to Los Angeles, City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado started looking for money to help the city's undocumented residents. In a June 10 motion, she asked City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo to detail options for finding at least $1 million for RepresentLA, which provides legal services for undocumented Angelenos facing deportation. A week later, an official from Szabo's office said they were 'unable to identify eligible funding sources' for the $1 million, which would come on top of $1 million the city has already allocated to RepresentLA. This summer in L.A., an immigration crisis is colliding with a budget crisis, leaving some councilmembers frustrated that the city cannot do more, as federal agents whisk thousands of immigrants away to detention centers and potential deportation. The city has been active in court, joining an ACLU lawsuit that temporarily blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests. Mayor Karen Bass also announced a program to provide immigrants with gift cards, funded by private philanthropy, when many were afraid to go to work. But coming up with another $1 million for immigrant legal defense, after city officials closed a nearly $1-billion deficit through cuts and slated layoffs, has proved a slog. 'Why is it that we can't find the money for this?' asked Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez during a Civil Rights, Equity, Immigration, Aging and Disability Committee meeting on Aug. 1. 'It appears that level of urgency is not being transmitted through this report, because when we're in other situations, we find the money.' Jurado piggybacked off her colleague. 'This is an immigration legal crisis,' she said, adding that she felt 'disappointment, frustration and, frankly, anger with the outcome here that we can't find a single dollar to support immigrant communities and this legal defense fund.' 'I find it really hard to believe that the CAO couldn't find any money for it,' she said in an interview. RepresentLA, which is a public-private partnership with the county, the city, the California Community Foundation and the Weingart Foundation, has seen a surge in demand for legal services since the immigration raids began in June, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesperson for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, which manages RepresentLA. 'The need is higher than the needs being met,' Cabrera said. The city has contributed funding for RepresentLA since its inception in 2021 — initially $2 million each fiscal year before dropping to $1 million in 2024-2025 and $1 million this year out of a total budget of $6.5 million, with the other $5.5 million coming from L.A. County. RepresentLA, which has served nearly 10,000 people, provides free legal representation for undocumented immigrants facing removal proceedings, as well as other services such as help with asylum applications. Some attorneys are on staff, while others are outside counsel. In April, Bass said in her State of the City speech that the city would 'protect every Angeleno, no matter where you are from, no matter when you arrived in L.A ... because we know how much immigrants contribute to our city in so many ways. We will always stand strong with you.' But behind the scenes, the city's financial struggles put even the initial $1 million for RepresentLA in jeopardy, with the mayor proposing to slash it to zero for this fiscal year. 'Getting the initial $1 million back was quite a battle,' said Angelica Salas, CHIRLA's executive director. 'It had been zeroed out. We were able to get just the money enough to continue the program for those who are currently in the program.' The City Council managed to claw back the $1 million during budget negotiations by slowing down hiring at the LAPD, as well as 'ending duplicative spending,' said Naomi Villagomez-Roochnik, a spokesperson for Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who sits on the budget committee. (The mayor and Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson have since said they are looking for money to reverse the hiring slowdown.) 'It's a crumb when you compare it to the rest of the city budget,' Hernandez said. RepresentLA has 23 attorneys working on deportation hearings, and Salas said each represents about 35 clients at any given time. An additional $1 million 'would allow us to expand our capacity for the new people — the thousands of people who have now been picked up in this new sweep,' she said. At the committee hearing earlier this month, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said the City Council should find savings in other areas to help pay for important programs like RepresentLA. 'Next time the city attorney comes asking us for outside counsel money, you could say 'No' and redirect those resources. ... When the mayor comes for Inside Safe, for additional discretionary money that she is unaccountable for, you could say, 'No, we're taking $1 million and putting it for RepresentLA,'' she said. 'Let's effing go.' The committee called on the city administrative officer's staff to research options for funding RepresentLA, including grants or reallocating money from elsewhere. 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She was later arrested at the demonstration and ultimately charged with resisting arrest after allegedly assaulting a police officer. — BACK TO COURT: Prosecutors filed two new corruption charges against City Councilmember Curren Price this week. The charges were connected to two votes he cast on funding for the city housing authority and the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, both of which were paying Price's wife, Del Richardson. Price's attorney called the new charges 'nothing more than an attempt to pile on to a weak case.' Sources told The Times this week that prosecutors tried to get Richardson to testify in front of a grand jury as part of Price's case. She did not ultimately do so. — IT'S FUN TO STAY AT THE YMCA: Bass, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and City Councilmember Traci Park were all in the Palisades Thursday morning at a ceremony where Horvath pledged $10 million from her discretionary funds toward rebuilding the Palisades-Malibu YMCA. — GIFT ECONOMY: Our public records request for all the gifts Bass received in the last year and a half came back, with the list largely composed of ceremonial gift exchanges with her foreign counterparts (chopsticks and a teacup from the mayor of Sejong, South Korea, estimated cost $32; a scarf and a hat from Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, estimated cost $45). There were a few interesting tidbits: Bass received flowers (~$72) from race and gender scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality. 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That's it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@ Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Press groups accuse LAPD of violating judge's ban on targeting journalists covering protests
Press groups are accusing Los Angeles and its police department of violating a court order by striking journalists with batons and arresting them as they reported on an Aug. 8 protest. The Aug. 13 complaint, filed by the First Amendment Coalition and attorneys representing the Los Angeles Press Club and the independent media outlet Status Coup, said the department's actions on Aug. 8 showed a 'blatant disregard for the First Amendment' and a restraining order the court issued in July. USA TODAY reached out to the city and the police department for comment and had not yet received a response by publication. The groups are suing the city and the LAPD over the treatment of journalists covering protests surrounding federal immigration enforcement. The restraining order, which was initially set for two weeks but later extended, said the department couldn't use less-lethal munitions against journalists who aren't posing a threat, bar a journalist from entering or remaining in closed areas, assault or obstruct journalists, or arrest journalists in a closed area for violating curfew orders, obstructing law enforcement officers or not dispersing while 'gathering, receiving or processing information.' The contempt motion alleges LAPD officers violated that order during what they described as a 'peaceful' immigration protest on Aug. 8. The officers formed a line and started moving toward the protesters around 9 p.m., the complaint said. 'Then, with no warning and no dispersal order, the officers started shouting 'move back' as they quickly advanced, shoving the assembled group and striking them with batons,' it said. There was subsequently no place for journalists to work 'without being assaulted by the LAPD,' the groups argued in their new court filing. Those who insisted they had a right to be there were 'ignored' or 'told ... to wait,' the complaint said. Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, a freelance journalist who was also injured while covering an immigration protest in June, asked to talk to a department supervisor or spokesperson and was told to move back. Upon repeating his request, 'an LAPD officer shoved him and hit him in the ribs with a baton, causing bruising and pain,' according to the complaint. Beckner-Carmitchel continued to ask, in line with directions in the court's order, to speak to a supervisor. 'The response was blank stares except for one officer who responded: 'That's not important right now,'' the complaint said. After a dispersal order was issued, the department arrested the approximately 20 remaining protesters and journalists. Officers put the group in zip-ties and 'held them against the wall for more than an hour,' the complaint said. Photojournalist Nicholas Stern was also 'struck in the face' and independent journalist Tina Berg was hit with a baton in an incident that 'ripped open the distal phalanx" of her little finger, according to the complaint. Most journalists were released at the scene, but two – Nate Gowdy and Carrie Shreck – were taken to a jail near downtown Los Angeles, the complaint said. Among other requests, the complaint asks the judge to find the defendants to be in contempt of court and modify its previous orders to 'expressly encompass use of batons and any other type of force.' A group of press and civil liberties groups also sued the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in June over what they described as federal officers' unconstitutional actions against journalists in Los Angeles. A preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for Aug. 25. BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@ USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Vox
a day ago
- Vox
Trump's immigration raids are now before the Supreme Court
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. Last month, a federal judge in Los Angeles handed down a temporary order placing some restrictions on the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in that city. The Trump administration now wants the Supreme Court to lift those restrictions. The contested provisions of Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong's order are fairly narrow. They provide that federal law enforcement may not rely 'solely' on four factors when determining to stop or detain someone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant. Under Frimpong's order, the government may not stop or detain someone solely because of 1) their 'apparent race or ethnicity,' 2) the fact that they either speak Spanish or speak English with an accent, 3) their presence at a location such as an agricultural workplace or day laborer pick-up site, or 4) the type of work that they do. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Frimpong's order prohibits the government from relying exclusively on any one of these factors or on any combination of them, so it could not detain someone solely because they speak Spanish and they are a day laborer, for example. The government may still rely on these four factors to determine whom to stop or detain, however, so long as it has other reasons for targeting a particular individual. Thus, for example, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could target someone because that person speaks Spanish, and they work as a day laborer, and they were witnessed getting into a truck owned by a company known for hiring undocumented immigrants, because one of the three factors that ICE considered in this hypothetical stop is not on Frimpong's list. That said, at least according to the Cato Institute's David Bier, Frimpong's order has drastically reduced the number of immigration arrests within Los Angeles. The central issue in this case, known as Noem v. Perdomo, is what courts are practically able to do in order to rein in overzealous tactics by law enforcement. Judge Frimpong's order is modest — again, it does not prevent the Trump administration from targeting anyone, just as long as part of the reason why a particular individual is targeted doesn't appear on Frimpong's list of four — but it is also unlikely to survive contact with a Republican Supreme Court that is extraordinarily solicitous toward Donald Trump. Indeed, the Court has long cautioned lower court judges against issuing broad orders imposing across-the-board restrictions on law enforcement. One of the seminal cases that the Trump administration relied upon in its Perdomo brief was handed down in 1983, well before the Court's recent partisan turn. The Republican justices, in other words, likely will not even need to stretch the law very far if they want to rule in Trump's favor in Perdomo. What is ICE up to in Los Angeles? The Perdomo case arises out of multiple immigration raids in Los Angeles, which have often taken place at job sites and other locations where the Trump administration believes that undocumented immigrants are often present. As Frimpong found, 'car wash workers, farm and agricultural workers, street vendors, recycling center workers, tow yard workers, and packing house workers were targeted.' One early operation 'detained multiple day laborers outside of the Westlake Home Depot.' At least some of these operations appear to violate the Constitution. In some instances, law enforcement appears to have targeted people because of their race. Frimpong, for example, pointed to an incident where 'agents approached and prevented a nonwhite individual from walking away but not those who appeared to be Caucasians.' A Latino car wash worker targeted by one of the raids testified that the federal agents who arrested him ignored two of his light-skinned coworkers, one of whom is Russian and another who is Persian. In other cases, federal agents appear to have targeted individuals despite having no reasonable grounds to believe they are undocumented. Plaintiff Jason Brian Gavidia, for example, is an American who was born in Los Angeles. According to an appeals court that upheld nearly all of Frimpong's order, agents 'forcefully pushed [Gavidia] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm' after he was unable to identify which hospital he was born in. The agents eventually released Gavidia after he produced a Real ID card, a document that is only issued to people who are legally present in the United States, but they took his ID. It is quite difficult to obtain a federal injunction against law enforcement officials It is likely, in other words, that at least some of the people targeted by these Los Angeles raids could individually challenge their arrests or detention in court. But the ability to bring such individual challenges often isn't worth very much. For starters, the Republican justices' decisions in Hernández v. Mesa (2020) and Egbert v. Boule (2022) likely make it impossible to collect money damages from an ICE agent who violates your constitutional rights. In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), the Supreme Court held that federal law enforcement officers who violate someone's constitutional rights may be personally liable for that violation. But Hernández and Egbert read that decision so narrowly that such suits rarely, if ever, move forward. So, even if someone like Gavidia brings a successful lawsuit, he probably wouldn't win anything more than the right to get his ID back. Someone who is unlawfully detained could potentially obtain a court order demanding their release. But many people targeted by law enforcement lack access to legal counsel or cannot afford to hire a lawyer even if they can find one who will take their case. While indigent criminal defendants have a right to a government-paid lawyer, defendants in immigration proceedings typically do not. And even when immigration defendants do prevail, an occasional court decision declaring some long-past arrest illegal is unlikely to deter future illegal arrests. Yet, the Supreme Court has long discouraged federal judges from issuing injunctions that forbid law enforcement from acting illegally in the future. The key case is City of Los Angeles v. Lyons (1983), which held that Adolph Lyons, a man who was allegedly choked out by police officers without provocation, could not obtain a court order forbidding LA's police from using such chokeholds in the future. 'Past exposure to illegal conduct,' Justice Byron White wrote for the Court in Lyons, does not permit someone to seek an injunction. Rather, 'Lyons' standing to seek the injunction requested depended on whether he was likely to suffer future injury from the use of the chokeholds by police officers.' Indeed, White's decision placed nearly impossible barriers before most plaintiffs seeking court orders requiring police to modify their behavior. To obtain such an injunction, White wrote, Lyons 'would have had not only to allege that he would have another encounter with the police, but also to make the incredible assertion either (1) that all police officers in Los Angeles always choke any citizen with whom they happen to have an encounter, whether for the purpose of arrest, issuing a citation, or for questioning, or (2) that the City ordered or authorized police officers to act in such manner.' At least some of the plaintiffs in Perdomo present an unusually strong case that they are likely to be caught up in an immigration raid again in the future. According to the appeals court which heard this case, 'at least one individual with lawful status was stopped twice by roving patrols in just 10 days.' So a court could quite reasonably conclude that this individual is 'likely to suffer' the 'future injury' that Lyons demands. But Lyons also places such a high bar in front of plaintiffs seeking an injunction against law enforcement that it would not be difficult for the Republican justices to write an opinion relying on Lyons to toss out Judge Frimpong's order, assuming that they even bother to explain their decision in the first place — something that the Court's Republican majority often refuses to do. In addition to arguing that Lyons requires the Supreme Court to block Frimpong's decision, Trump's lawyers also point to the Court's recent decision in Trump v. CASA (2025), which held that federal courts typically should not issue injunctions that extend beyond the individual parties to a lawsuit. So, even if the one plaintiff who was stopped twice may obtain an injunction, that court order might have to be so narrow that it protects him and him alone against future illegal stops. Trump's CASA argument is hardly airtight. Though CASA did hold that broad injunctions are generally discouraged, it did permit them when necessary to give a victorious plaintiff 'complete relief.' Frimpong argued that a broad injunction is warranted in Perdomo, because law enforcement officers cannot reasonably be expected to know which suspects are protected by a court order. 'It would be a fantasy to expect that law enforcement could and would inquire whether a given individual was among the [plaintiffs] before proceeding with a seizure,' she wrote. The only way to stop ICE from targeting the Perdomo plaintiffs is to issue a court order that protects everyone in Los Angeles. Will that argument persuade a majority of the justices? The honest answer is, 'Who knows?' CASA is a brand new decision, handed down less than two months ago, and the Court has yet to apply its new rule to the facts of any specific case — including the CASA case itself. And the fact remains that it is exceedingly difficult to obtain any injunction against law enforcement, much less the broadly applicable one handed down by Judge Frimpong. The Supreme Court has generally preferred for judges to adjudicate alleged legal violations by law enforcement one at a time, rather than issuing wholesale injunctions halting an illegal practice — even though individual decisions often do little to stop these practices. At least some parts of Frimpong's order are probably overly broad In fairness, there are some good reasons to prefer individual lawsuits over wholesale court orders. Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases typically turn on the very specific facts of a particular case. Police might reasonably suspect, for example, that a person spotted with a large wad of cash in a neighborhood where illegal drugs are often sold is engaged in illegal activity. By contrast, police may not have reasonable grounds to suspect a similar person spotted walking near a business where people often make down payments on their new homes. As a general rule, the Fourth Amendment permits police to briefly stop and search someone if they reasonably suspect that person is engaged in illegal activity — or, in an immigration case, of being illegally present in the United States. To be sure, there are some things that law enforcement may almost never consider when determining whether to stop a particular individual. In Kansas v. Glover (2020), for example, the Court said that police may not target someone based on 'nothing more than a demographic profile' or stop and question someone about their immigration status because of their 'Mexican ancestry.' Frimpong's conclusion that ICE may not target someone solely because of their 'apparent race or ethnicity' is consistent with Glover. But Frimpong's conclusion that law enforcement may never reasonably suspect someone of being undocumented solely based on their presence in a particular location is probably a bit of a stretch. As a federal appeals court explained in a 2014 case, day laborer jobs are 'one of the limited options for workers without documents.' These jobs are often grueling, unreliable, and underpaid. They are unattractive to virtually anyone who is authorized to work in the United States and, thus, have less-demanding and better-paying job options available to them. There are at least some cases, in other words, where a law enforcement officer could reasonably suspect someone of being undocumented if they are consistently seen at a location where undocumented workers seek jobs as day laborers — what Frimpong described as a 'day laborer pick up site.' It is difficult to come up with categorical rules governing which factors law enforcement may consider when deciding whom to stop. Even race may be an acceptable factor in very limited circumstances; if multiple witnesses to a robbery tell police that they saw an East Asian man commit the crime, for example, then police could reasonably limit their search to people who appear to be East Asian. This is one reason why cases like Lyons exist: to prevent judges from handing down categorical rules that prevent police from conducting lawful investigations.
