Article Date: November 1, 2000

Original Article Link: http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=4700

First Amendment Outrage

Getting handcuffed for citing your First Amendment freedoms is a bit over the top.

The Philadelphia Police Department will soon find itself facing a federal lawsuit because of the amazing overreaction by one of its officers to a New Jersey man's correct insistence that his sidewalk ministry was protected by the First Amendment.

The incident occurred July 31 on a Broad Street sidewalk in a trendy section of South Philadelphia. Across town, Republicans were gathering at a sports arena for their convention. The sidewalk preaching of William Romansky, 45, of Pennsville, N.J., apparently set off a Philadelphia policeman who was taking quite seriously the city's mission to keep all sorts of demonstrations and disruptions — constitutional or otherwise — under wraps. The officer told Romansky he needed to move out of the area, down the street a block or so where there were no people around to preach to.

Romansky refused. The officer then asked Romansky if he had a permit for sidewalk preaching. Romansky, who has been engaged in street ministry work for more than 25 years, said he did, and that the officer would find it in his left pocket.

When the policeman reached into Romansky's pocket, he found a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. "It's right there, under the First Amendment," the preacher said.

The officer apparently did not consider Romansky's First Amendment right to exercise his religion without government interference an acceptable permit. He arrested Romansky, handcuffed him and stuck him in a police car for nearly an hour. The preacher was eventually released when he signed a citation charging him with disorderly conduct for "standing in the middle of the sidewalk 'preaching' to passersby."

The citation went on to describe Romansky's preaching as "yelling" that was causing passersby "to stop to see what the commotion was."

It's hard to imagine that in a city the size of Philadelphia, Romansky's "commotion" warranted the attention of a police officer. The preacher was simply following a mission that he has considered his calling since he was 19 years old. It is equally hard to imagine what the police officer found so disruptive. After all, those passersby who didn't want to listen simply had to keep on walking.

As it happened, just a couple of hours before Romansky's arrest, he and his son were sidewalk preaching in another location in central Philadelphia. A sleek black limousine pulled up, the passenger rolled down the window and called them over, introducing himself as "Brother Jerry Falwell." They shook hands, chatted briefly and then Falwell drove on to the GOP convention site, urging them to "keep up the good work."

After Romansky was arrested, he contacted Falwell's office to let the televangelist know what had happened. Falwell referred Romansky to the Liberty Counsel, a civil liberties education and legal defense fund based in Orlando, Fla.

The Liberty Counsel contacted Michael McTigue, a Philadelphia lawyer, who took Romansky's case. At a hearing last week in Philadelphia Municipal Court, Judge Craig M. Washington dismissed the case from the bench after only about five minutes. He accepted McTigue's argument that Romansky had done nothing to violate the disorderly conduct statute and that his actions were clearly protected by the First Amendment.

But there was no written opinion, and Mat Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, said that concerned him.

"I think that the judge is absolutely correct, but there's no written opinion, and tomorrow the police officers could go and harass someone else for doing the same thing. The prosecutors certainly wanted to prosecute the case, and the police officers certainly wanted to arrest him," Staver said.

So in a few weeks, the Liberty Counsel intends to file a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia against the police department, charging it with violating Romansky's constitutional rights.

"The purpose of the subsequent action will be so that the police officers won't use their arrest powers to stop orderly, expressive First Amendment activities on the sidewalks of Philadelphia," Staver said.

"The time he (Romansky) missed (preaching while awaiting the outcome of the case) is forever lost," Staver continued. "That opportunity is forever lost. If something else comes up and he wants to be there, he needs to get his message out rather than fear he will be caught up in a legal system."

This fear that police may step in at any moment to stop a street preacher from delivering his or her message creates a chilling effect. The Founding Fathers tried to insulate against such an effect by clearly spelling out the five freedoms in the First Amendment. It's too bad some Philadelphia police haven't read those 45 words closely. They may have to now.