From what I could tell from the article, an officer submitted a warrant request to a judge and the judge approved it. That request was potentially incomplete because it left out the fact that the victim here didn’t actually make the meme. On the other hand I’m not sure whether omission matters since it would still be protected speech if he made it.

So I would place a good amount of blame at the feet of the judge, who should be more knowledgeable about legal questions. I think cops should have a general understanding of the law but I doubt the legality of online memes comes up much.

So I don’t think it is catastrophic that the police came to the judge with this issue. The problem is the judge rubber stamping something that should’ve been rejected.

Second problem I see is that this took 37 days to resolve, which is also incredibly slow. So it really magnified the earlier mistakes.

That said, I’m not against liability for cops in general. I just think in this particular case I blame the judge more.