An armchair political scientist like me would probably prefer a system which maximizes speech right up to the point of disruption which is to say, criminality. That's great from ivory tower perspective but it must be a nightmare for a policeman on duty.
A cop on the spot has literally only seconds to decide whether or not to eject someone; the lawyers and judges have months and years to second-guess.
What do you think of my idea of publishing the rules before the affair? This clearly would work better in an indoor venue than a sprawling outdoor affair. I tend to believe that most people will adhere to rules which they believe are not ad hoc and which appear to be applied uniformly to both sides. In other words, if it were announced that there would be no comments tolerated before the question-and-answer session, that might be observed without much police encouragement. If the police have to enforce it, at least it has the look of regularity about it.
I have no doubt that you and most policeman enforce order in these affairs not according to the contents of the speech but according to your judgment of the volatility of the situation and the threat created by the heckler. I have a problem with that though, why should a minority voice that offends the majority, even to the extent of running the risk of a violent reaction by the majority, be squelched by the police because the majority is on the verge of committing the crime of assault? I know what the practical answer is, there aren't enough cops to control the majority that they can control a single heckler.
Even more difficult for me is a situation in which a heckler is suppressed by the police not because the crowd is on the verge of violence but merely because a segment of the crowd is offended by the content of the heckler's speech.
From the policeman's point of view, he is there to preserve the peace as the first order of business and not to act out hypothetical constitutional free-speech scenarios.
We often hear that the people in the audience have the right to hear the speaker but can it not be said that a heckler in the audience has an equal right to make his voice heard over the speaker? The audience will say they came to hear the speaker, but the heckler can say they came to be heard. I know which one the cops will favor and usually they will be right to favor the speaker over the heckler but that assumes that the speaker has some paramount right to be heard. This takes me back to the original questions about who was sponsoring the affair and who has established the rules originally?
With all these imponderables it is small wonder the policeman's lot is not a happy one.
Your comments are thought provoking and in the abstract are difficult (as a cop) to answer. Let me try and put this in some perspective by using an actual situation.
Did you see the older gentleman confront Arlen Specter at his town hall meeting? The video is up on youtube and the guy was on Fox complaining that he had called Specter’s office and was assured of the opportunity to speak for 5 minutes.
If you look at the video, as he was yelling at Specter, there was another younger, bigger man behind him that grabbed the guy and forcibly tried to move him out of the way. This was an incendiary moment. Here you had a man who was arguing with the Senator but presented a minimal threat other than his loud voice, the younger guy, though felt the need to intervent with force and grabbed the older guy. As he was moving the older guy, you can hear Specter raise his voice (yelling “Wait a minute...wait a minute..”) and in the background see plain clothes security personnel moving towards the confrontation.
Point is, it would take very little for something like this to explode out of control. In regards to the Cleveland incident, it is my understanding that there was an announcement prior to the start of the meeting that no outburst would be tolerated and that a Q&A session would be held at some point in the meeting.
While I share your thoughts on First Ammendment issues and I cherish the right of free speech there is a point when one man’s free speech tramples another’s right to hear. Look at it this way, if you and your family went to a public place, say a restaurant and the guy at the table next to you was making loud, salacious comments about your wife and daughter, would you still maintain the argument that he has a “right” to free speech or would you ask the restaurant management to take action?
I know this is probably an oversimplification of the issue, but again, I reserve comment only because I wasn’t there. Also, the video that is represented is only a small portion of the crowd and you really don’t know what the dynamic is outside of the lens of the camera.
And to address your first point, after the violence has erupted, there is a potential for totally innocent people to be impacted adversely when they were not a part of the original confrontation.
Thanks for making a good sound argument. I have always looked forward to trying to reconcile the philosophical with the practical. Unfortunately, once the genie is out of the bottle, it is difficult to put it back in.
Regards.