San Diego County Sheriff Sued by Ares Armor CEO Over Censorship on Department's Facebook Page

By | October 30, 2014

Dimitrios Karras, who runs a weapon kit firm called , yesterday sued William
Gore, sheriff of San Diego County, the county itself, and unnamed
administrators of the department’s Facebook page in U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of California. Ares’ .

Sheriff Gore was, in his previous career with the FBI, one of
the principals on the scene during the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1993,
which ended with the murder by the FBI of an unarmed woman, Vicki
Weaver, who was at the time holding an infant child. (See
Reason‘s 1993 feature story by Alan Bock, ) Gore’s role in Ruby Ridge has made him a
target for many still outraged by the government’s behavior during
the incident

According to Karras’ own suit, the S.D. Sheriff’s Facebook page
used to have this statement on it:

We are not opposed to dissenting opinions on topics we post, but
we ask that our social conversations remain civil, respectful
and on-topic. Many of our postings concern matters of employee
and volunteer successes. We believe it is the height of
incivility to use those opportunities to vent about unrelated
topics or offer unrelated insults. We are respectful of the
right we all have to free speech. We invite any users with
opinions on any topic to post anything they want on their
social media accounts. We simply ask for a degree of civility
when making comments on our pages. Any user would likelyexpect the
same of those posting made by others to their pages.

Karras tells me tonight that that statement disappeared from the
site today.

Karras had comments of his deleted from the Sheriff department’s
Facebook page, and then was eventually barred from posting on the
page entirely. One of the comments he had deleted, according to his
suit, filed under an alias, was:

Sheriff Gore: Do you plead the 5th about your involvement
in the 
MURDER of an unarmed woman who was holding
her baby? 
REMEMBER RUBY RIDGE.

Karras believes that the department’s reserving the right, as
stated above, to keep away “unrelated topics or…unrelated
insults” is in fact government censorship of political commentary,
and actionable under the First Amendment. In his complaint Karras
alleges:

Plaintiff lost valuable time investigating Defendants’
First Amendment 
violations and notifying
Defendants of its First Amendment
Violations. 
Accordingly, Plaintiff has suffered
unnecessary damages in lost
productivity. 
Plaintiff suffered irritation,
shame, and humiliation of being denied the 
same
access to a public forum, as any citizen of the United States
should enjoy. 
Defendants, by denying Plaintiff’s
political speech, caused Plaintiff to lose 
a
critical opportunity to communicate on topics of importance to
society….

Plaintiff alleges that no reasonable police officer,
knowing that the First 
Amendment right to engage
in political discourse in a designated public forum
is 
“clearly established,” would so wrongly and
arbitrarily regulate political discourse in the same manner as
Defendants. 
Plaintiff alleges that Defendants,
even after being placed on notice of
First 
Amendment violations, ratified its previous
wrongful behavior, and continues its 
wrongful
custom or practice to censor the public debate.

The suit further argues that the manner in which the comments
were deleted, with no chance of discussion or recourse, violated
his rights to due process. He further claims violations of
California state constitutional free speech guarantees. Karras is
seeking compensatory and punitive damages. The Sheriff’s department
said it cannot comment on ongoing suits and referred me to the
County Counsel’s office, who have not yet responded to a request
for comment; will update if they do.

In an emailed statement, Karras got to the nub of his complaint
in less legalistic language:

A government entity that uses tax dollars to set up and
maintain a Facebook page as a designated public
forum 
cannot use more tax
dollars to then violate the
1
st amendment rights of speakers in
that designated public forum through arbitrary
censorship.

Imagine if you were told that because the government owned a
sidewalk, you were forbidden from criticizing them while walking
down it. Then further imagine that they use tax dollars to hire a
security guard to ensure that you may never walk down the sidewalk
again because they previously found the words you spoke to be
“uncivil”.

Ares is partnered with ” project of making untraceable
lower receivers for AR-15s.

Ares was also raided by the ATF back in March, in search of
consumer records and questioning whether his plastic lower
receivers themselves constituted firearms. This was the subject of
this March Reason TV video:

Among the comments in a thread about Hallowe’en safety
on
that I found about 90
minutes ago, as yet undeleted:

Will you be shooting children as well or just their
mothers this weekend?

· ·

Don’t forget to check your brownies for foreign
substances and ensure that you and your loved ones don’t get
murdered on the orders of rogue government agents.

· ·

Pretty sure shooting a child’s mother while she is
holding him isn’t very safe for them.

· ·

Taking comments down won’t bring innocent people
back from the dead, either.

· ·

I would like to know why my comment was deleted no
bad language was used just truth? I figured since this page is
administered by a person on the payroll of San Diego SO it would be
considered free speech

· ·

Try not to shoot any mothers on the 31st

· ·

I love America. It’s a country where you can be in
charge of an operation that got a mother and a child murdered by
the very people SWORN to protect them. Then a few years later be
elected as a sheriff of one of the premier counties in the country.
What a country.

· ·

Sometimes the truth hurts. I wonder how he
sleeps at night, knowing he willingly murdered a woman holding a
baby?

· ·

If you mention v i c k i e w e a v e r your post gets
flagged.

· ·

Kids do love candy, they also love it when
rogue feds don’t shoot their mothers in the head.

You sleep well at night sheriff? Or do you hear
the voices of the Americans blood that are on your hands

Category: Liberty
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