00:00:00
Robert Ekas: So, I was driving with my
son, and there was a police officer who was traveling the opposite direction as us,
on the Clackamas Highway, but he was stopped
00:00:12
in the left turn signal, and he was going to be
turning left. And so, as I saw his patrol car,
00:00:19
I rolled down the window of my vehicle, and I just
stuck my hand out there, and gave him the finger,
00:00:24
and sped off down the on-ramp.
Phoebe Judge: Why did you give him the finger? Was he doing anything?
Robert Ekas: He was driving a cop car.
00:00:31
Phoebe Judge: That was it. [Laughs.]
Robert Ekas: Yeah, that was it. Yeah. Phoebe Judge: This is Robert Ekas. He's a
52-year-old white man, a retired cyber security
00:00:40
analyst. He's talking about a day in 2007 when
he was out with his son in Clackamas County,
00:00:46
Oregon. I'll admit I give people the finger
sometimes, but I don't want them to see me
00:00:52
doing it. I'd actually prefer they didn't.
It's best to do it when you're on the phone.
00:00:58
But Robert wanted to make a point, and
he made that point very clear. Before he
00:01:04
knew it, the police car was following him.
Robert Ekas: And I told my son, I said, "Well,
00:01:10
it looks like we got a trailer." [Laughs.]
And he immediately spins around and looks,
00:01:15
and sees the cop car, who pretty much drafted
my ass like it was NASCAR. And I thought that
00:01:23
was an aggressive sort of posture. He hadn't lit
up his lights yet, but my vehicle had a sunroof,
00:01:28
so I opened the sun roof and stuck my right
hand out the sunroof, and gave him the finger
00:01:33
again. And he made a high speed lane change
and sped up and went parallel to my vehicle.
00:01:40
And I continued to give him the finger. You know,
up yours, pal. I'm not going to be intimidated by
00:01:47
you, shove it. And so, I turned right, and as soon
as I turned off the main thoroughfare, he lit up
00:01:54
his overhead lights and pulled me over.
Phoebe Judge: You'd think at this point,
00:01:59
Robert might've backed off a bit. But
instead he rolled his windows all the way up,
00:02:05
locked the doors, and then he called 911. So, you called 911 on the cops?
Robert Ekas: Yes, I did.
00:02:14
Phoebe Judge: I bet that doesn't happen so much.
Robert Ekas: No. [Laughs.] He didn't
00:02:19
really know how to take that.
Phoebe Judge: He told the dispatcher that he'd been unlawfully pulled over, and that they needed
to send a supervisor to the scene. He refused to
00:02:29
talk to the officer who pulled him over and who
was now standing outside Robert's car, trying to
00:02:34
speak with him through a crack in the sunroof.
Robert Ekas: And I told him, "Your supervisor is en route, I'll
speak to him. In the meantime,
00:02:41
I will sit here at my vehicle and wait."
Phoebe Judge: How old is your son? Robert Ekas: He was 12 at the time.
Phoebe Judge: And was he just saying,
00:02:48
"Dad, please, please don't do this?"
Robert Ekas: Pretty much. Yeah. [Phoebe laughs.]
00:02:53
This was a sort of stress
he wasn't prepared for. Phoebe Judge: The supervisor showed and,
after an hour and a half of discussion,
00:03:01
Robert ended up with two tickets, one for having
a tinted cover over his license plate and another
00:03:08
for changing lanes without using his blinker.
As you've likely figured out, Robert Ekas has a
00:03:15
problem with the police. Not with
the individual cops themselves, so much as the institution as a whole. And he
protests every chance he gets. Always in the
00:03:26
exact same way, with his middle finger.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Plodding, mysterious piano and guitar music.]
Robert Ekas:
00:03:38
This isn't the first time I've done this. It's
not even the hundredth time I've done this. It's
00:03:46
just something that I do because I have a
generally contemptuous attitude towards law
00:03:54
enforcement and the officials who prop up the
institutions of our government. And that is a
00:04:03
really long political discussion. But I honestly
don't know why more people don't do this.
00:04:09
Phoebe Judge: We've been giving each other
the finger since ancient Greece. The first
00:04:13
documented use of it in the U.S. was in 1886,
when a pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters was
00:04:20
photographed giving it to the New York
Giants. It's kind of amazing that it's held the same meaning for more than 2,000 years.
Jerry Seinfeld: It seems like such an arbitrary,
00:04:30
ridiculous thing to just pick a
finger and you show it to the person. It's a finger, what does it mean? Someone
shows me one of their fingers and I'm
00:04:43
supposed to feel bad. Is that the way it's
supposed to work? I mean... [Fades out.]
00:04:47
Robert Ekas: I think it depends on how you give
the finger. You can just hold your hand out there,
00:04:54
flip them off, and that's sort of dismissive,
like, you're a jerk-off and here you go.
00:04:59
Or you can shake your hand around while you're
doing it, and that's a little bit more aggressive,
00:05:06
and indicating that you're angry with them
for some reason. Mine was dismissive slash...
00:05:14
What's the word I'm looking for here?
Dissension, dismissive and dissension. There wasn't any anger in what I did.
Phoebe Judge: The middle finger has been at
00:05:24
the heart of a surprising number of court cases.
Prosecutors have argued that it's disorderly
00:05:29
conduct or disturbing the peace, even an obscene
gesture. But consistently, courts have found that
00:05:37
the finger makes a statement and is a form of
speech protected by the First Amendment.
00:05:43
Robert was prepared to defend his right to free
speech, and he felt that the two tickets he'd
00:05:48
gotten that day in 2007 were retaliatory, and
had nothing to do with the way he was driving.
00:05:53
He set out to prove it in traffic court.
Robert Ekas: If you've ever been to traffic court,
00:05:58
you know that your likelihood of winning
is somewhere between zero and zero. I mean,
00:06:06
almost nobody wins a traffic court case.
Phoebe Judge: He not only cross-examined
00:06:11
the officer who pulled him over, but Robert also called his son, Brandon, as a witness.
Robert Ekas: Who said, "Yes, my father did,
00:06:17
in fact, use his turn indicator." And I showed the
judge the license plate cover, and pointed out the
00:06:25
exception in the law, and asked for a dismissal.
Phoebe Judge: He cited a 1995 appellate court
00:06:31
decision in Arizona, in which a man had been
arrested for screaming criticisms of the police
00:06:36
at the police. The appellate court ruled that
the man was allowed to exercise his freedom
00:06:42
of speech, no matter where it was directed.
Robert Ekas: If, for example, the sole reason that
00:06:49
a police officer initiates pursuit of a citizen is
because of his taking umbrage to protected speech,
00:06:59
then said pursuit is illegal and anything found
in the process of that pursuit is inadmissible.
00:07:06
And so, based on that, I basically told the judge
he had no business following me anyway. And even
00:07:13
if I didn't use my turn indicator, he shouldn't
have been there in the first place. So, the judge
00:07:18
acquitted me on that charge. He actually acquitted
me on both. He didn't dismiss, like I asked. And
00:07:25
being sort of the cocky S.O.B. that I am, there
were two sheriffs standing in the lobby and I just
00:07:33
couldn't help myself. So, I said to them, I said,
"That's a win for the good guys. And in case you
00:07:42
were wondering, we're the good guys." [Laughs.]
Phoebe Judge: We made several calls to the Clackamas County
Sheriff's Office, but they declined to comment.
00:07:56
I wonder, do you see yourself as a bully?
Robert Ekas: No, I don't think so. I really
00:08:04
dislike bullies. And if I had to consider
myself a bully, I'm not quite sure how I would reconcile that.
Phoebe Judge: I wonder still, sometimes
00:08:16
when I... This doesn't happen much, but I think
that someone's given me the finger before, and I
00:08:22
felt really bad about myself. And I've wondered,
"Wait a second, what did I do? Why do they think
00:08:27
that about me?" Do you ever think about that?
Robert Ekas: No. I mean, Christ, [Phoebe laughs]
00:08:33
I've been given the finger so many times
I can't even count. And usually what I do
00:08:38
is shrug my shoulders and go, "Okay, that's
the way you feel about it, pal, whatever."
00:08:46
Sometimes I know why he gave me the finger —
I had inadvertently changed lanes in front of
00:08:53
him — or sometimes I don't. I have no idea why
he's giving me the finger. But in all cases,
00:09:00
it's like, "Okay, whatever, I don't care."
Phoebe Judge: State and federal courts are divided
00:09:06
on the extent to which officers should be required
to tolerate insults. The U.S. Court of Appeals for
00:09:12
the Second Circuit held that critical speech is
protected unless it rises above, "inconvenience,
00:09:18
annoyance, or unrest." Some have argued that
police officers have a duty to shrug off insults;
00:09:25
they are trained not to react to provocation.
On the other hand, when faced with a middle finger
00:09:31
case, a judge in Pennsylvania stated, "We think
it contrary to public policy to send out a signal
00:09:38
to the general public that policemen are fair game
for any amount of verbal abuse some may choose to
00:09:43
heap upon them." And a judge in North Dakota said,
"We don't pay police officers enough to expect
00:09:50
them to quash the same human reactions other
people have." But for Robert, there's only one
00:09:56
kind of police officer exempt from his finger.
Robert Ekas: We live near a high school,
00:10:02
and if I saw a police officer writing somebody
a ticket for speeding in the school zone,
00:10:07
they were hands-off. I wouldn't say
anything out the window or I wouldn't give them the finger. I wouldn't do anything.
Phoebe Judge: But pretty much every other time,
00:10:19
his window goes down and his finger goes
up. He was pulled over for it again. And
00:10:25
this time the officer claimed it was because
the tint on his car windows was too dark.
00:10:30
Robert Ekas: And I was like, "This is complete
bullshit." It doesn't make any difference whether
00:10:38
my behavior is mature or immature, or kind
or unkind, it's still my right to do it. And
00:10:49
I hadn't actually made a firm decision
to sue, but I knew I had the option. And when it came right down to it, as the
statute of limitations was expiring, I decided,
00:10:59
"No, I'm not letting that slide."
Phoebe Judge: In 2010, Robert filed a lawsuit
00:11:05
against Clackamas County for violating his right
to free speech. His wife begged him not to.
00:11:11
Robert Ekas: You have to understand, I'm not
an attorney. And I don't hold any degrees,
00:11:20
certificates, diplomas, or anything. I'm just a
regular guy like everybody else, who works for a
00:11:28
living. And so this is a fairly daunting prospect
for me. I mean, there was a lot of reasons for
00:11:32
me to say, screw it. I mean, really, I mean, I
won the traffic court thing, isn't that enough?
00:11:41
But I decided to take it on and I started
to do some research, and I discovered that,
00:11:49
yeah, I think I can win this. So, I went ahead and
wrote the complaint, and filed it with the federal
00:11:56
district of Oregon, and the rest is history.
Phoebe Judge: And so, what happened?
00:12:01
Robert Ekas: Well, they settled.
Phoebe Judge: For money? Robert Ekas: Yeah.
Phoebe Judge: How much?
00:12:05
Robert Ekas: $4,000.
Phoebe Judge: The attorney for Clackamas County told the Oregonian, "We made a business decision.
It was cheaper to settle the case than to proceed
00:12:16
with litigation." And Robert's not the only person
to have received money. Other people have gotten
00:12:22
a lot more of it. In 2011, a man in New York
was jailed for giving a cop the finger, and got
00:12:28
$20,000. And a guy in Pittsburgh got $50,000.
Robert Ekas: If I give a police officer the
00:12:35
finger, or if anybody gives a police officer the
finger, the police officer has a number of choices
00:12:39
of response. They can wave, "Hi." They can give
you a look of disgust that can only be interpreted
00:12:47
as, "I don't really care what you think." They
can do nothing. Or they could pull you over. But
00:12:56
the choice is theirs.
Phoebe Judge: They could give you the finger back.
Robert Ekas: Sure. They could do that.
00:13:01
Phoebe Judge: Has anyone ever
done that to you before? Robert Ekas: Yes.
Phoebe Judge: I
00:13:04
kind of like that response the best.
Robert Ekas: I laughed at him when he did it.
00:13:11
Traffic was kind of heavy, and I kind of rolled
up along the side of him, rolled down my window,
00:13:17
and as I got up alongside him, I said, "Hey."
And he turned and looked at me, and I gave him
00:13:21
the finger. And he threw his car into gear and
sped up to catch me, and gives me the finger
00:13:29
back and says, "Same to you, buddy." [Laughing.] I
just laughed my ass off as I was driving away. The
00:13:36
funniest thing I ever saw.
[Upbeat, hard-rock-style guitar music.]
Phoebe Judge: When was the last time
00:13:49
you gave a cop the finger?
Robert Ekas: A couple, few days ago, maybe.
Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] This is ongoing.
00:13:55
Robert Ekas: Yeah. I still do it. Well, I've
been doing it since I was a child. Phoebe Judge:
00:14:00
So, this is like your own one-man protest?
Robert Ekas: Well, no, it's just my inability
00:14:06
to shut up. It really boils down to that.
Phoebe Judge: We spoke to Robert again a couple
00:14:13
of weeks after the interview. And he said he'd
been thinking about why I asked if he was a bully.
00:14:18
He wanted us to know that he's really
not. He said, "I know I'm a man full of idiosyncrasies, but unpopular speech
is the most important kind there is."
00:14:31
[Bouncy guitar and drum music.]
Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks
to Alice Wilder, Henry Gargan, and Russ Henry.
00:14:50
Julienne Alexander makes
original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can
see them at thisiscriminal.com.
00:14:58
Criminal is recorded in the studios
of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,
a collective of the 13 best podcasts around.
00:15:09
Shows like Mortified. The Mortified Podcast
features adults reading aloud the embarrassing
00:15:15
things they wrote as kids, shared in front
of total strangers. It's very funny.
00:15:19
Person Reading Diary: I wrote this letter
that night for her. "Sarah, I'm sorry I
00:15:24
denied kissing you today at school. I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm glad I kissed you, but
00:15:30
I'm sorry I puked on you." [Audience laughs.]
Phoebe Judge: Go listen. Radiotopia from PRX is
00:15:37
supported by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp,
celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork.
00:15:43
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal
Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.