A man from Florida has been arrested after he refused to remove a bumper sticker from his car which read ‘I Eat Ass’.
A deputy from the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office claimed 23-year-old Dillon Shane Webb had violated a state obscenity law by plastering the sexually suggestive sticker on the rear window of his brown Chevrolet truck.
After the officer confronted Mr Webb about the sticker, he responded by claiming that the explicit content of the sticker was ‘just words’.
As reported by the Lake City Reporter, the deputy proceeded to ask Webb how ‘a parent of a small child’ might explain the meaning behind those words. To this, Mr Webb replied how it would be ‘up to the parent’.
The deputy issued Mr Webb with a notice to appear before the Columbia County Courthouse on May 23, and took a photograph of the offending sticker to put into evidence.
The deputy then requested that Mr Webb take away one of the letters from the word ‘ass’ so that the statement in question would ‘no longer be derogatory’.
Mr Webb refused to do so, and cited his First Amendment right. It was at this point that Mr Webb was detained. He was put into a patrol car before being taken to Columbia County Detention Facility, where he was charged with ‘obscene writing on vehicles and resisting an officer without violence’.
Speaking with the Associated Press, Mr Webb stated his plans to submit a wrongful arrest lawsuit towards the police department, claiming the deputy who detained him had been out to get him:
I’m worn-out of police forces questioning they are above the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
Like the whole time, he was just certainly rude, It simply felt to me like his aim was once to get me in jail.
Mr Webb added that he had never experienced a problem with his rude sticker, adding:
I’ve had parents force by way of me with their children taking pictures. They point and chuckle and giggle, and they go on about their day.
However, The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office have since defended the arrest, with Sergeant Murray Smith stating:
If the law is faulty then the legislature can address that or if the law is unconstitutional then the judiciary will address it.
Mr Webb is due to face the charges put against him at Columbia County Courthouse on May 23.
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Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.