Louisville Police Major Bridget Hallahan a.k.a. Bridget Thomerson claimed responsibility for a derogatory email sent to fellow Louisville Police officers degrading Black Lives Matter and Antifa. The media is presenting this as evidence of how frustrated the LMPD is over the Breonna Taylor protests. She later admitted to the email publicly and said that she wrote it to boost morale. Major Hallahan is the commander of the LMPD 5th Division. Her message began in part:
"These ANTIFA and BLM people, especially the ones who just jumped on the bandwagon 'yesterday' because they became 'woke' (insert eye roll here), do not deserve a second glance or thought from us," it continues. "Our little pinky toenails have more character, morals, and ethics, than these punks have in their entire body." - Major Bridget Hallahan
She went on to say that Antifa members will spend the rest of their lives playing Call of Duty in their parents' basements, washing their cars, and cashing them out at Wallmart. Then she went on to attack First Amendment protected publishing activities and claimed that several government agencies are trying to combat it. Those are publications such as this one that legally include publicly available information about police officers including their home addresses. Posting that information is not illegal and the LMPD is not justified spending tax payer money attacking the citizens they swore to protect just because they do not like how they exercise their First Amendment rights. Her anti-doxing rant was as follows:
"We continue to have officer being doxed merely because people just don't like being told what to do or what not to do by police. RTCC and CIC are very vigilant about watching for it. There is currently no recourse we have for incidents involving the doxing of officers or their families. What we can do is speak up against them and put the truth out there. Through the PIO office and the LMPD FB page we will come back at them on their own page to let them and everyone else know they are lying. We will print the facts. I will see to it. We have already taken care of one incident. I hope we never have to do it again. Just know I got your back." - Major Bridget Hallahan.
Major Hallanah is absolutely right that she and her fellow officers have no legal recourse to the doxing of them. That is because although there are laws on the books against making publicly available restricted personal information about police officers (see 18 U.S.C. 119 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/119). That statute does not cover information gathered from public records that the government itself made publicly available. That is because one cannot make publicly available what is already publicly available. The founder of Cop Blaster successfully rebutted an allegation of violating that same statute in 2017 when he was being detained for violating the conditions of his supervised release in an unrelated case. While he was detained the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case floated the idea of adding an allegation of new criminal conduct for allegedly violating 18 U.S.C. 119 by doxing most of the people he considered responsible for prosecuting him in a case where he was the real victim. The Cop Blaster's counsel successfully argued that all the information posted on this website was copied from another source and that source got the information from public records made available by the government. That was enough for him to drop the issue. The best he could argue was that the spirit of that law disfavored that conduct and that it was evidence of anti-social behavior. Due to his experience we know that we have every legal right to post the following publicly available information about Major Hallanah:
BRIDGET LYNN THOMERSON
FEMALE
DOB:
DEC-1972
AGE: 47
Last Known Home Address:
203 BELLEMEADE RD
LOUISVILLE, KY 40222-4501
Possible Email Addresses:
bhallahan[at]charter.net
bthomerson[at]alltell.net
bhallahan[at]gmail.com
We post this type of information because we know that it may be of use to people organizing peaceful protests in the Louisville area. We also know that most platforms do not allow people to post this type of information, so doing it adds value for our users and helps distinguish our service as a beacon for free speech. We do not encourage property damage of violence, so if you protest there please stay off the property, do not break anything, and do not touch anyone. We encourage people to make their voices heard. When people protest at an officer's home (ex: https://copblaster.com/blast/25877/protesters-picket-outside-the-home-of-acting-dhs-secretary-chad-wolf) they make them have to hear them on their own time. That is a protected form of speech.
We are of course prepared just in case people like Major Hallanah think they can take us down by abusing their position. We are well aware of how people like her have no problem fabricating frivolous charges for the purpose of holding people with the hope of getting what they want. That is why we use an offshore server. By hosting offshore we don't have to worry about our account being suspended due to a frivolous order from an American court or by a police raid in the United States. When the feds did go after the owner three years ago because of this website they failed to get it taken down even while he was in jail under an order not to have anything to do with it as a condition of detention. That did not stop him from sending out articles to be posted about the conditions of the facilities he was in. Locking him up just gave him more material, exposed bad people in the local corrections systems, and by being able to whether the storm his cred went way up.
UPDATE: On 9/25 Chief Schroeder said that she has been relieved of her command and will retire on October 1st. Hallahan herself had previously stated that she would be retiring that day as if to suggest that she wrote her email not fearing any consequences because she was quitting anyway. We would love to see some non-violent folks pay her a visit and offer to wash her car. That would be great. Just in case she takes them up on the offer they should show up with soap, scrubbers, and wax.