Police officer’s Facebook postings part of lawsuit against City of Bozeman

The City of Bozeman is in the news in con­nec­tion with Facebook again. This time, the city is being sued by Matthew White, who claims that Bozeman Police offi­cers vio­lated his civil rights when they came to his home on Feb. 14, 2009, look­ing for another man.

The law­suit names sev­eral police offi­cer defen­dants, includ­ing Cody Anderson, the offi­cer White says came into his home with­out knock­ing or iden­ti­fy­ing him­self. (Audio of White’s ini­tial inter­view with police, ~7 min.)

Police ended up arrest­ing White for obstruct­ing and resist­ing arrest. White’s law­suit claims that police vio­lated his civil and con­sti­tu­tional rights, were neg­li­gent, wrong­fully arrested him and caused him emo­tional dis­tress. Listen to the audio and read the Chronicle story for the details.

The facts of the arrest aside, there’s another kink in the story. The offi­cer, Anderson, has a Facebook pro­file. On the pro­file, Anderson appar­ently posted sev­eral para­graphs related to his job as a police offi­cer that com­plained about “stu­pid” peo­ple and boasted that Anderson liked “mess­ing with people.”

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle printed two para­graphs from Anderson’s pro­file, which the paper got from White’s lawsuit.

“I think there should be a law say­ing police can take peo­ple to jail for being stu­pid. Ask a cop a ques­tion like, ‘Don’t you have any­thing bet­ter to do?’ and you get a free ride in a cop car. If I had some­thing bet­ter to do, I would be off doing that, and not mess­ing with you. Speaking of mess­ing with peo­ple ... I like mess­ing with peo­ple. Just being in a patrol car look­ing at peo­ple while parked at a red light is fun. Make eye con­tact, squint your eyes like you know what they just did and watch them squirm and avoid all fur­ther eye con­tact. It makes my day fun.

“I’m always amazed at what peo­ple will tell a police offi­cer. I think peo­ple assume we are like priests and it is all in con­fi­dence. It’s not. We go back to the office and talk about every­thing we saw and heard. Then we laugh at peo­ple. Usually it is all on audio as well so we lis­ten to stu­pid things over and over. If we are lucky, it hap­pened in front of a patrol car with its cam­era on. Then we get to watch it over and over.”

On Monday, Anderson told the Chronicle that “any­body who knows me knows it was a joke” and that “taken out of con­text, it looks bad.” It cer­tainly does, espe­cially when you’re being sued for your behav­ior on the job.

My favorite part is that Anderson told the Chronicle that he thought his Facebook pro­file was only vis­i­ble to his friends and that “his com­ments were a joke intended only for them.”

The depart­ment told the news­pa­per that Anderson has been rep­ri­manded and that his post­ings do not reflect the way the depart­ment as a whole feels about the public.

I tried to find Anderson’s page. A search for “Cody Anderson” found three matches in the Bozeman net­work. Two of the matches had pro­tected their pro­files, but their friends lists were still view­able. One of the pro­files, which had a pro­file photo show­ing a slim, bald man in a suit, had a friends list that con­tained names I know to be con­nected to the Bozeman Police Department. This is prob­a­bly our guy.

Seems like he learned how to make his pro­file pri­vate after all — though I can’t rule out the pos­si­bil­ity that it’s been pri­vate this whole time and that White or his lawyers found some way around that. I can’t say for sure.

What I can say is this: It doesn’t mat­ter how White’s lawyers got a hold of the para­graphs from Anderson’s pro­file. They have them, and now they are even more pub­lic than they were before. Anderson was as stu­pid as the peo­ple he com­plains about in the rant if he thought that post­ing any­thing to the Web was com­pletely pro­tected or com­pletely private.

His posts show a lack of pro­fes­sional judge­ment, espe­cially since he’s a peace offi­cer. If he wants to com­plain about his job, he should not do it online — even on a closed net­work like Facebook.

Will the Facebook pages help White win his law­suit? Who knows. But it sure doesn’t make Anderson look good. That’s for sure.

I’m left with a cou­ple ques­tions at the end: Who thought to go search­ing for Anderson’s Facebook pro­file? Was it White, who looked up the offi­cer after the fact? Was it his lawyers dig­ging for dirt? Is check­ing Facebook going to be a com­mon part of fil­ing law­suits from now on?