In 2016, Parma, Ohio resident Anthony Novak created a Facebook page parodying his local police department. Though he deleted it after one day, soon afterwards he was arrested for an obscure felony: “disrupting public services.” Though he won his trial, his lawsuit was dropped and this lead to the head writer of the comedy publication “The Onion” writing an amicus brief for the Supreme Court. Alternately funny and disturbing, “Crime and Parody” is an eye-opening and entertaining documentary about how easy it is for the government to deny us free speech. The film premieres this Saturday, February 21 at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Go here for ticket information.
Parma, Ohio is a working-class neighborhood a few miles south of Cleveland. For reasons unknown it is associated with tacky Flamingo decorations. Novak and others jokes about how mediocre the city is and how the local police department is viewed as being corrupt and foolish. (A quick check of the city’s Wikipedia page shows that in 2014 is was rated the third safest city in the United States–make of that what you will.) Novak, an amateur comedian, created a Facebook page pretending to be the official Parma Police page with the same images and a “We No Crime” motto. He posted only a few times: “free abortions for teenagers provided by police in the Wal-Mart parking lot,” “Parma is an equal opportunity employer but is strongly encouraging minorities to not apply.” Within hours the page got a lot of views and replies, most of which identified the page as a parody. Ten Parma citizens called the police, alerting them about the page, which Novak deleted twelve hours after creating it. A few weeks later, police arrested him and raided his apartment with guns drawn. He was charged with a fourth-degree felony of “disrupting public services” and tried later that summer. After having the detective who brought the charges read Novak’s posts in court, the members of the jury were visibly amused and they gave Novak a “not guilty” verdict.
A few months later Novak filed a lawsuit against the city but it was denied by the court, which said that the officers had “qualified immunity.” At this point the story switches to Omar Arrington-Bey, a black resident of Bedford Heights, Ohio who, in 2013, was arrested in a Lowes for “disturbing the peace.” Omar was bipolar and the police didn’t let him take his meds for this. After a few hours spent in jail and in a restraint chair, he died of a sudden cardiac event. His family filed a law suit but it was denied because, though there was clear police policy about how to treat mentally ill prisoners, the police had not been required to read it, so they had “qualified immunity.”
The film gives a brief history of the 1967 Supreme Court case (Pierson v. Ray) which introduced the concept of “qualified immunity.” Police and other government employees, the ruling said, should not be penalized for arresting someone if they have probable cause even if the person is later found to have been innocent. One interviewee opines that the government was afraid it would be difficult to recruit police if they were fearful of being sued all the time.
In 2022, Novak’s lawyers reached out to the satirical publication “The Onion”, which agreed to write an amicus brief to send to the Supreme Court. The brief, hailed by many to be the best amicus brief ever, was satiric itself, with jokes provided by head writer Mike Gillis and legal precedent supplied by the publication’s legal team. The Court denied the petition.
The free speech and government accountability issues are highly relevant to political events in 2026 as ICE agents claim to have “absolute immunity” and Jimmy Kimmel is briefly fired for making too many jokes about the Trump administration. Director Will Thwaites (who also grew up in Parma) has made an engrossing and often funny documentary about the authoritarian tendencies of our government, police and judicial system.