Peoria Mayor Is Still Unclear On How The First Amendment Works
By aaroncynic in News on Jun 16, 2014 8:30PM
Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis
Peoria police executed a search warrant on Daniel’s home under orders from Ardis two months after Twitter suspended the @Peoriamayor parody account, which Daniel created. Police raided the home, confiscated several computers and smartphones and detained five people. Michelle Pratt, who told reporters she “was brought in like a criminal,” was detained for several hours. Another individual was booked on an unrelated pot charge.
Daniel, a 29-year-old father of two who works as a fry cook, was arrested at his workplace the day of the raid. He said he created the account as a joke he thought his friends would find funny. “The joke of the account was to have my fictional mayor saying things that no one would possibly think that Mayor Jim Ardis would say,” he said. Daniel also said when people who he didn’t know followed the account, he labeled it as a parody.
Despite this and a member of the Peoria Police Department’s computer crimes division telling police chief Steve Settingsgaard he didn’t believe a crime had been committed, the department went through with the raid and arrests.
“The behavior here not only violated the Constitution, it violated common sense,” said Harvey Grossman, Legal Director for the Illinois ACLU. Ed Yohnka, the organization’s Communications and Policy Director said in a statement:
This case reflects the great tradition of the ACLU of Illinois to defend free speech—to insure that governmental power is never used to coerce individuals from speaking out in jest or in serious policy debates. As Harvey also pointed out in the press conference announcing our filing, "The City fathers (in Peoria) need to be taught a lesson on free speech."
Arids however, has yet to learn that lesson. He threatened to file his own defamation lawsuit last week:
“My identity as mayor was stolen. Anyone reading the content would assume they were reading my comments as the mayor.”
He then gave a live reading of some of the more “scandalous” tweets, which any Twitter user would obviously confuse for official statements, particularly because of their grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. These include statements about drinking, strippers and “doing lines off the civic center.”
Since the story made national news, several more parody Twitter accounts were created. It’s unclear at this time if Ardis plans to have police raid more homes or threaten to file additional defamation lawsuits.
