Police harassment arrest sparks free speech debate

When his car turned up missing, Charlie Jones called the police. Then he called them again, and again and again.

In each call, he demanded authorities investigate the alleged theft. But police suspected his car had simply been towed, and told him they couldn’t do anything.

So Jones kept ringing, dozens of times. One day later, the Houston Police Department filed charges against the 55-year-old for telephonic harassment. Now, Jones’ attorney is fighting back by arguing that law is an unconstitutional damper on free speech.

“He’s been charged for asking the cops to do their jobs,” said defense attorney Mark Bennett.

Police saw it differently, saying they tried to work with Jones, letting him speak to multiple supervisors even though repeated calls ate up time that could have been used to respond to other cases. “It wasn’t like we got tired of the phone calls and filed on him,” said police spokesman Kese Smith. “Every effort was made to work with this individual for hours and hours at a time before taking this step and filing these charges.”

It all started last May, when Jones was staying at a friend’s place on Hiram Clarke. At some point, the home went into foreclosure, and Jones never moved his car from the property.

The vehicle disappeared from outside the house sometime on May 25, and Jones started calling police the following day. Between the eviction and the fact that a bystander reportedly spotted the car being taken away by a dump truck, police viewed it as a civil matter. They suspected his car had been legally removed; he believed it had been stolen.

Unsatisfied with their reluctance to investigate, Jones called repeatedly — at one point 12 times in two hours, demanding police list the vehicle as stolen. He was “argumentative and irate” and said he didn’t plan to stop calling, according to charging documents.

Eventually, police warned him not to call back, but he ignored them.

By May 27 — one day after he’d started calling — prosecutors accepted charges.

“After police looked into Mr. Jones’ concerns, and even spent hours meeting with him in person, he called over and over again to the point that it was harassment under Texas law,” said Harris County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Dane Schiller.

Even after authorities charged him, Jones kept looking for help, and eventually showed up at a City Council meeting to complain. When security there went to remove him, they realized he had a warrant and instead arrested him.

It wasn’t until that day that an investigator finally figured out what had happened to the vehicle, Bennett said. It was not stolen but simply towed by a company that failed to report the tow like they’re supposed to.

But now the misdemeanor case has blossomed into a broader legal issue, as Bennett — a Houston attorney best known for defending free speech — is challenging the constitutionality of the telephonic harassment statute both in general and as applied to Jones’ case.

The state law at issue bans making repeated calls “in a manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend another.” But it doesn’t define how many calls that requires, which makes it too vague. And it restricts certain speech based on the content, which Bennett says makes it too broad.

But aside from arguing that it’s unconstitutional in general, Bennett also contends that it’s unconstitutional in this situation because Jones was simply asking the government for help — which is an explicitly protected type of speech.

Now, Jones is out on bond and the case is set for a hearing in March.