What is and isn't protected speech by law officers using social media outlets?

[Dr F]

Can officers be held liable for posting lies, inciting people, or intimidating people?

[Excessivegrandfather677]

Same as applies to anyone else. Anyone can be held liable.

[Elana]

The differences in legal responsibility with respect to speech between law enforcement and non law enforcement are pretty small.

They can lie to you to get you to say something which they can then use against you in a court of law. They can lie just as individuals do in social media, etc.

And to the degree (and only to the degree) that non law enforcement can be prosecuted for libel, etc, so to can law officers.

That being said, if people take action on the basis of what the police say and that action is deleterious to some party, that party could certainly sue the individual who said it, or the entire police force or some subset depending on the situation.

That doesn't make their speech would be illegal - only that the speaker can be sued for the results as is true for the rest of us.

You can well imagine that the position requires truth telling to do it well - the system starts to break down if people believe the police regularly lie - but that isn't a legal issue. You can imagine that a police officer that told a lie and caused harm to the department might be fired.

The police are FREQUENTLY called to testify in everything from traffic violations to murder trials and under those circumstances, they are under oath. If they lie, they suffer the same penalties as any other witness.

[Elana]

Yes. Free speech doesn't mean that a person can't be held to a certain standard of behavior or code of conduct.