CPR News has the kind of Colorado story that should make everyone’s civil-liberties smoke alarm start screaming: Denver activist Regan Benson got 60 days in jail, two years of probation, a $1,000 fine, and a victim empathy class after a jury found she violated Colorado’s anti-doxing law.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way before the activist choir starts tuning up: livestreaming a police commander’s home address while kicking around “pig roast” rhetoric is reckless, stupid, and pure activist-brain theater. It’s the kind of sidewalk performance art that makes normal people want to throw their phones into Cherry Creek.
But stupid speech is still where free speech gets tested. And Colorado just used a squishy anti-doxing statute to put a police critic in jail over a livestream that legal experts say may be protected hyperbole, not a true threat. That’s where the shovel goes in.
Benson, 53, is a frequent Denver Police Department critic and advocate for unhoused people. The case came from a YouTube livestream outside DPD’s District 3 station last September, where she asked viewers to look up Commander Joel Bell’s home address, said it out loud when users found it, and repeated the “pig roast” line.
A Denver jury convicted her under Colorado’s anti-doxing law, which bars publishing personal information for certain public-facing workers, including peace officers, when it creates a “serious and imminent threat” and the speaker should reasonably know it would.
That sounds tidy until you actually think about it for eight damn seconds.
“Serious and imminent threat.” “Reasonably know.” “Malicious intent.” These are the kind of fog-machine legal standards Colorado’s ruling class loves because they let everyone pretend the law is precise while handing government a giant rubber hammer labeled TRUST US.
And sorry, but Denver government does not get automatic trust points. Not after Benson and her husband received a $130,000 settlement in 2024 over lawsuits alleging DPD retaliation tied to their homelessness advocacy and exclusion from public meetings. That does not prove retaliation here. It does prove why vague speech crimes are a mud pit: the people deciding what feels threatening may be the same people getting criticized.
University of Denver law professor Alan Chen told CPR the law’s “serious and imminent threat” standard is vague and could leave speakers guessing what they can legally say about public officials. He called it a kind of black box: how is someone supposed to know whether a post might result in a threat if they are not the person making one?
Exactly. That’s not law. That’s a roulette wheel with a courthouse attached.
Judge Isaam Shamsid-Deen said Benson took no accountability and had “no concept of what free speech means.” Spicy line. But nothing says “I understand free speech” quite like hauling someone off in a shirt that says “freedom” for speech a First Amendment professor says may be protected.
And conservatives tempted to cheer because the annoying activist got clipped should sit down and swallow the whistle. Rights don’t die when the government targets your friends. They die when the first defendant is someone half the room already dislikes.
Today it’s a Denver police critic saying dumb crap on YouTube. Tomorrow it’s a parent naming a school official, a citizen posting about a bureaucrat, or some rural crank exposing public conduct and being told the government felt unsafe.
Officers and their families deserve safety. Full stop. Publishing a home address is ugly business, and Benson practically gift-wrapped the state a loaded bat.
But Colorado also appears to be building another speech-policing machine with soft edges, broad discretion, and a smug promise that only the bad people will get crushed.
That is how they always sell it. And that is how the First Amendment gets strangled — not with a jackboot, but with a vague statute, a noble excuse, and a defendant you don’t feel like defending.
Source: CPR News
Just Stop It
