A Tennessee man who was held in jail for more than a month after police arrested him over a meme he posted on Facebook has settled an \u201cunlawful incarceration\u201d lawsuit for $835,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Retired cop Larry Bushart, 61, committed the mortal sin of sharing a meme which referenced a vigil to Charlie Kirk shortly after he died. The meme was captioned \u201cthis seems relevant today\u201d and included a photo of Trump saying \u201cwe have to get over it\u201d regarding the Perry High School shooting in Des Moines, Iowa\u2026
That\u2019s it. That\u2019s literally the meme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day, four officers showed up to Bushart\u2019s home, arrested him, and took him to jail for \u201cthreatening mass violence at a school.\u201d Wait, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, you see, because the post contained the word \u201cPerry\u201d and a reference to a school shooting, local authorities determined that it constituted a threat against the local Perry County High School<\/em>. They looked at that meme and thought Larry Bushart, a former police officer himself, was threatening to shoot up a school!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The court imposed an extraordinarily high $2 million bond, which Larry could not pay, meaning he spent 37 days in jail before public pressure and legal intervention forced prosecutors to drop all charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By that time, he had lost his post-retirement job providing medical transport, missed his wedding anniversary, and missed the birth of his granddaughter. How fvcked up is that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Naturally, Bushart filed a lawsuit against Perry County, Sheriff Nick Weems, and a county investigator, asserting that his arrest was a blatant, politically motivated retaliation that violated his rights to freedom of speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed \u2013 it sounds like freedom of speech in the U.S. doesn\u2019t apply you hurt MAGA\u2019s feelings, and Tennessee is certainly a MAGA stronghold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the news, Bushart has now been paid $835,000 to drop the lawsuit, though that sum will be covered entirely by Perry County\u2019s insurer rather than out-of-pocket by the individuals who took away 37 days of his life for no reason. The idiot sheriff will not be held accountable!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well anyway, it sucks that Bushart lost his job and missed both his anniversary and the birth of his grandaughter, but $835,000 for 37 days in prison? That\u2019s a pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Still, very annoying that this could happen in the first place and even worse that heads won\u2019t roll for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Tennessee man who was held in jail for more than a month after police arrested him over a meme he posted on Facebook has settled an \u201cunlawful incarceration\u201d lawsuit for $835,000. Retired cop Larry Bushart, 61, committed the mortal sin of sharing a meme which referenced a vigil to Charlie Kirk shortly after he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10795,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10793\/revisions\/10795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}