Friday, April 25, 2008

Police go after blogger who criticized them

We read:
"An anonymous blogger in Whitewater, Wisconsin has been critical of the police chief and how he runs things. He has been critical of various aspects of the town government as well. He recently criticized government roundups of alleged illegal immigrants for instance.

Police chief James Coan did not take kindly to be criticized so he had city employees begin an investigation in order to try to find out who was publishing the blog. Coan used his position in the police department to get two detectives, the director of public works, the information technology officer and the city clerk involved in searching for the identity of the blogger -- all at taxpayer's expense."

Coan had the blogger listed as a "suspect" even though he had broken no laws. Coan tried to bullshit his way out of the mess he created by claiming that the blogger was a "potential threat" because he was "so extremely angry at me".

Source

Sounds like they didn't find him, though. Lucky for him! More background here.

There is a lot of misbehaviour by police and prosecutors. Strange Justice documents a lot of it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a Civil Rights Suit to me - assuming the blogger wants to identify himself. Even the ACLU would love this one!

Anonymous said...

You don't have to commit a crime to be a "suspect". Having said that, and assuming we have all the facts, this Police Chief has clearly exceeded his authority. Of course, if there was any kind of threat made by the blogger, that changes everything.

Anonymous said...

Suspect? Suspected of doing what? In order to be a suspect, one must assume that a crime has been committed. No crime, no suspect!

This is a case of one more bully, angry because someone called his bluff. Back to the sandbox with him.