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Police in Peoria, IL raided the home of a 27 year-old resident who set up a parody Twitter account for the Peoria mayor. The raid did not result in any arrests, but computers and phones were seized and the residents questioned. The police are investigating the account for breaking a law forbidding "impersonating a public official". If the case moves forward, the alleged owner of the account, Michelle Pratt, could face a $2,500 fine and up to a year in jail.
Even if it is eventually dropped, this could have a chilling effect on satirical political speech and seems like a massive overstep by a local police force to save face for an elected official.
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Fake Mayor Twitter Account Leads to Police Raid
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by computersareevil on Thursday April 17 2014, @05:34PM
They only need to use it once, if they can get enough press coverage of how ruined the victim's life and finances are.
Better yet if they can shoot the family dog during the paramilitary raid.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:02PM
That's the real problem here. Thanks to a complete failure to control costs and limit impact, we have devolved to a system where the prosecutor picks people to punish and the whole court procedure is just deciding how much more punishment to add on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:14PM
Yes indeed we have transformed the process of investigating crimes to pre-emptively arrest people based on database queries.