Weedman busted for calling cop a ‘pedophile,’ so he calls cop a ‘tender-butt’

You just can't keep a Weedman down.

As reported by NJ 101.5 Sunday, marijuana activist, frequent New Jersey 101.5 caller and repeat adversary of the Trenton Police department Ed Forchion — who goes by the nickname NJ Weedman —  was charged just days ago with cyber-harassment and disorderly conduct.

He's accused of posting a video online of his altercation with Officer Herbert Flowers in which he called the officer a "pedophile" on a Trenton Street outside his restaurant, NJ Weedman's Joint. The disorderly conduct charge is for cursing — shouting "F--- the police" in "public and social media forum,” according to the criminal complaint against him.

Monday, in a Facebook post "checked in" to Trenton Municipal Court — where he'd been scheduled to appear — Forchion doubled down on the insults.

"Dealing with Officer Flowers hurt feelings and pending lawsuit!" Forchion wrote.

Weedman wrote he "can't believe this dude handed me such a platform to speak about free speech. I couldn't of scripted this Officer Herb Flowers vs NJWeedman — lol."

According to Forchion's post, he's now being represented by a lawyer to take on "this bulls---" charge. The lawyer, Edward Heyburn, will also represent him pro-bono in a federal civil case in which he claims Trenton's efforts to shut down the Joint and adjoining Liberty Bell Temple violate his religious freedom, Forchion said.

"Since officer 'tender-butt' Flowers reads my FB I want to thank you Officer Flowers I didn't have a lawyer until u made a ASS of yourself filing phoney(sic)/false charges because your feeling got hurt

"PS — Don't get Butthurt in the future just keep it moving. (let's see what comes out in depositions BIG BOY )."

Along with the message, Forchion posted a picture of Flowers with the text "Help! This is Herb Flowers requesting immediate backup! Feelings hurt on Facebook! Memes fired! Send all units!"

Forchion called into New Jersey 101.5's Deminski and Doyle Monday to give his account of the incident seen on the video — when, last Tuesday, Forchion stood out in front of the Joint with a sign saying it was open, and "F-- the police." Forchion, in recent months, has been charged smoking and distributing pot, running a business past curfew, and not keeping his restaurant’s kitchen clean enough.

"And then this officer showed up," Forchion told D&D. "This officer has a reputation — he's kind of a thug, and he has that other reputation. When he started trying to tell me to put my sign down, and I couldn't do that, and get out of the street — all this stuff he's trying to tell me — to me, I'm a First Amendment guy, anyway. I know he cannot tell me not to do this. So I was doing it anyway despite him, and it got heated between us. I said the personal ... thing about him, I called him a pedophile."

But Forchion said someone else was video-recording the incident — and that person posted it online, not him.

"I didn't, but even if I did — you read the statute, that's not what the statute says," he told D&D.

The ordeal, which included an arrest by Trenton's Violent Crimes Unit Warrant Squad and posting $500 of $5,000 bail to get out, took about eight hours, Forchion said.

"People kind of laugh and giggle sometimes at the kinds of things I get into. I totally didn't think these officers were that untrained in basic First Amendment rights," he said.

Host Jeff Deminski, during the program, argued Forchion's case — citing the ACLU-NJ's statements to New Jersey 101.5 that the charges against Weedman were "pretty ridiculous."

"If you call somebody a pedophile, and you do it maliciously, and they're not, yeah, you can get sued, civilly — that's very very different than a criminal charge," Deminski said. "But it seems that there's absolutely not business that the police had in filing any criminal charges against Weedman, even if it were Weedman who posted this."

Shalom told New Jersey 101.5 this weekend an offensive language provision of New Jersey's disorderly conduct statute was ruled unconstitutional by a state appellate decision in 1985, even though it remains on the books and is occasionally used by police to charge individuals.

Courts around the country have struck down similar laws in recent years.

As to the alleged cyberbullying — Shalom also this law only considers an online posting a crime if “what you post is lewd, obscene or indecent — and saying that someone is a pedophile is none of those things.”

Trenton police did not return a phone call Monday seeking comment.

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