TRUMBULL COUNTY, Ohio — A US District Judge found that members of an Ohio sheriff’s office and board of commissioners were liable for free speech violations, according to our media partners in Cincinnati, WCPO-9 TV.
“Here in America, we do not arrest our political opponents,” U.S. District Judge Phillip Calabrese said.
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Two Trumbull County Sheriff’s deputies placed a lone republican member of the county’s board of commissioners, Niki Frenchko, under arrest for “disrupting” the meeting voters elected her to conduct in July 2022.
“I didn’t think it was real,” the commissioner said of the encounter she livestreamed on Facebook. “If you saw the video, I did a double take.”
Frenchko was arrested after the commissioner attempted to move a meeting along instead of allowing her to continue her speech criticizing the sheriff.
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Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa was identified in court records as the person who tried to end Frenchko’s speech.
“You’re talking about the chief law enforcement officer of Trumbull County. It’s unacceptable,” Cantalamessa can be heard saying on the recording.
The court ruled an Ohio law making disruption of a public meeting a misdemeanor didn’t give public officials the right to criminalize other’s criticism of other public officials.
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Frenchko believed the ruling sent a message to government officials that stifling speech, no matter which party is being targeted, wouldn’t be acceptable.
“That level of intimidation is intended to send a message to everyone to watch what they say,” Frenchko said.
While the judge ruled members of the sheriff’s office and commission were liable, Cincinnati civil rights attorney Matt Novak, said they would continue to seek damages in the case as the court had yet to set an amount to be awarded.
“The reality is, if the government didn’t have to pay anything, there were no financial consequences for their actions, what’s to stop them from doing it all over again — constantly, constantly, constantly,” Novak said.