Parody Twitter account @peoriamayor pissed off mayor of Peoria, who sent SWAT; college kid now facing drug charges. http://t.co/j9XQSdxZ9z
— Nameless Cynic (@NamelessCynic) September 20, 2014
This is what it has come to in America. Sadly, an activist judge ruled this swat raid was legal.
The police hadn’t even come for him. When four fully-armed officers of a Swat team burst into Jacob Elliott’s house in Peoria, Illinois in April they were looking for the source of a parody Twitter feed that had upset the town’s mayor by poking fun at him.
It transpired that one of Elliott’s housemates, Jon Daniel, had created the fake Twitter account, @peoriamayor, and so incensed the real-life official, Jim Ardis, with his make-believe account of drug binges and sex orgies that the police were dispatched. Elliott was just a bystander in the affair, but that didn’t stop the Swat team searching his bedroom, looking under his pillow and in a closet where they discovered a bag of marijuana and dope-smoking paraphernalia.
Elliott now faces charges of felony marijuana possession.[snip]
A Peoria judge this week ruled that the police were entitled to raid the house on North University Street on 15 April under the town’s “false personation” law which makes it illegal to pass yourself off as a public official.
