PEORIA - Mayor Jim Ardis is facing a civil rights lawsuit stemming from his handling of an occasionally profane and often sophomoric Twitter account that a resident created using his image.
In legal documents filed this morning, Jon Daniel, 29, accused several city officials of violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights earlier this year, when police raided his home in an effort to stop him from tweeting under the handle @peoriamayor. Another occupant of the house was arrested on marijuana possession charges following the search, but Daniel was never charged for lampooning the three-term mayor.
Ardis unleashed his police department upon Daniel in March, after city officials discovered the Twitter account. Using both the mayor's official portrait and stating it belonged to 'Jim Ardis,' the account had less than three dozen followers and even fewer tweets.
'Im bout to climb the civic center and do some lines on the roof who's in?' one early tweet read.
There's no evidence that anyone on Twitter believed the account to be Ardis' official handle. The postings were often riddled with grammatical errors and misspelled words, perhaps making it difficult for anyone to believe they had been composed by someone with a professional communications staff.
But emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show how deeply the account's less-than-clever musings upset city officials, as they tried to find ways to hold its creator criminally responsible for portraying Ardis as a foul-mouthed politician with a penchant for liquor, drugs and prostitutes.
Within two days of the account's creation, City Manager Patrick Urich had seen enough. He sent an email to city spokesman Sam Rivera on March 11, asking for his help in getting the account taken down.
'Someone is using the Mayor's likeness in a twitter account,' Urich wrote. 'It's not him. @Peoriamayor. Can you work to get it shut down today?'
Less than an hour later, Urich turned to Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard and asked him to have a detective investigate the identity of the account's creator. The department quickly agreed to the request, beginning a series of events that would eventually subject Peoria to widespread ridicule and draw the ACLU's attention.
Settingsgaard quickly assigned the case to Det. James Feehan, a member of the department's computer crimes unit. By 11 a.m. - about four hours after Urich first contacted the department - Feehan expressed doubts about whether any crime had been committed.
'I looked at the comments and photographs posted by the suspect. Nothing contained within amounts to criminal violations,' Feehan wrote in an email to his chief. 'However, there are tweets posted by the individual which amount to defamation. Without a subpoena issued to Twitter to obtain the IP address of the account creator, there is not much else we can do. I did send Twitter the report of the impersonating account and requested it be removed asap.'
Settingsgaard passed the detective's findings along to the mayor, though he doubted whether Ardis could meet the legal threshold for a defamation suit.
'This phony Twitter account does not constitute a criminal violation in that no threats are made,' the chief wrote. 'I'm not sure if it would support a civil suit for defamation of character. I'm not an expert in the civil arena but my recollection is that public officials have very limited protection from defamation.'
Ardis was undeterred. He sent an email the next day to Urich, Rivera and Settingsgaard, urging them to get the account taken down.
'Any chance we can put some urgency on this?' Ardis asked.
Urich echoed his boss' wishes in a reply sent three minutes later.
'Quickly please,' he wrote.
Feehan and Rivera, however, already had separately reported the fake account to Twitter, which allows for parody accounts as long as they're labeled as such. Unable to reach anyone by phone at the company's San Francisco-based headquarters, they settled for filling out an online form and hoping for a quick resolution.
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