from the first-amendment-isn't-subjective dept

Last fall, an Alabama police officer decided he wasn’t going to allow a 62-year-old woman to exercise her First Amendment rights — not if she was going to do so from inside an inflatable penis costume.

Yes, these are sentences we actually have to write here at Techdirt — things that seem so implausible you’d expect them to be generated from the sloppiest of AI prompts. It’s a real thing, though. It happened to Fairhope, Alabama resident Renea Gamble . It was inflicted by Fairhope PD officer Andrew Babb, who took apparently personal offense at Gamble’s inflatable penis costume and her “No Dick-Tator” sign she carried during a “No Kings” protest.

You can watch the arrest in all of its ingloriousness below. It’s alternately comical and horrifying. Horrifying, because it involves officers assaulting a 62-year-old grandmother.…