Opinion

Smith v. State Department of Public Safety

  • 716 So. 2d 693
  • 1998 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 177
  • 1998 WL 81610
Court
Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama
Filed
Feb 27, 1998
Status
Published
Author
Crawley
On the bench
Robertson, Yates, Monroe, Thompson, Crawley
Cited by
2 cases
Authority
More cited than 0.6%

The opinion

CRAWLEY, Judge,

concurring specially.

I concur specially to point out that, the letters written by Smith had “the reasonable tendency to lead to [the] disruption [of the internal operation of the department].” Angle v. Dow, 822 F.Supp. 1530, 1540 (S.D.Ala. 1993). Captain Oscar David Kyles, Smith’s troop commander, testified that the comments in Smith’s letters created friction between Smith and the people involved in the investigation and could possibly have resulted in friction between the Highway Patrol Division and the AJBI division of the Department of Public Safety. In light of the need for discipline in law, enforcement agencies, see Angle, 822 F.Supp. at 1540 , and the fact that law enforcement officers are “subject,to greater First Amendment restraints than most other citizens,” id., Captain Kyles’s testimony is sufficient to satisfy the requirement that the speech in question have the reasonable tendency to disrupt the efficient operation of the department.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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