PEORIA — “i absolutely will prosecute. bring it on.”



Those words, typed in all lowercase blue font on March 13, constitute Mayor Jim Ardis’ response to the revelation that a criminal statute could apply to the creator of a Twitter account that mocked him.



The outcome of that enthusiasm to press charges is now known around the globe — police raided a West Bluff home April 15 to unmask the author behind @peoriamayor based on a flawed interpretation of the state’s impersonation statute.



The correspondence was included in hundreds of pages of documents turned over to the Journal Star this week as part of a Freedom of Information Act request for emails related to the execution of the search warrant that resulted in one arrest on marijuana and drug paraphernalia charges. No one has been charged in connection with the online account that pretended to be Ardis while tweeting about drugs, sex and a profane pride in the city of Peoria.



The police action to the parody account drew international media attention, and the collection of emails reflects an onslaught of negative reactions from around the country, many too obscenity-laced to publish. References to freedom and fascism — and demands for Ardis and Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard to apologize or resign — were common.



The back-and-forth conversations memorialized in the exchanges between the mayor and city staff also depict an aggressive, high-priority stance taken against the Twitter account within hours of it being noticed. And some statements contained in the documents contradict police reports made on the investigation and explanations given to the public in the wake of the raid.



The city’s FOIA response appears to be incomplete. Ardis failed to include several emails he sent to other city staff in his response to the Journal Star and specifically omitted his personal correspondence with the newspaper’s editorial board.



It is unknown whether other emails were left out, and the city administration representative who provided the FOIA response to the newspaper said no other communications would be provided after being alerted to the omissions.



City acts fast



One detail is clear: several of the city’s highest ranking employees were immediately tasked with taking down what was eventually labeled a parody Twitter account after it came to officials’ attention the night of March 10.



City Manager Patrick Urich set events into motion at 6:06 a.m. March 11 with an email to Sam Rivera, the chief information officer, that stated: “Someone is using the Mayor’s likeness in a twitter account. It’s not him. @peoriamayor Can you work to get it shut down today?”



Fifty minutes later, Urich asked Assistant Police Chief Jerry Mitchell to assign cyber crime investigator Jim Feehan to find out who created the account: “Can you ask Det Feehan to look into who might have set up this bogus account of the Mayor?”



Within five hours, Settingsgaard reached a conclusion on the criminality of the Twitter account that is the opposite of how the situation eventually played out.



“This phony Twitter account does not constitute a criminal violation in that no threats are made,” Settingsgaard 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.”



The chief additionally stated that Feehan had examined the incident as a possible case of identity theft, but that statute did not apply because the Twitter suspect did not use the mayor’s personal information to open the account and did not make any financial gain from it.



Twitter did not immediately suspend the account, and Feehan continued to research the issue, according to Settingsgaard. On the morning of March 13, the chief wrote to Ardis and Urich about the difficulty getting anyone on the phone with Twitter but also said there was a “good side.”



Feehan found an impersonation statute that had been updated in January and could apply to the situation. Settingsgaard needed to know if the mayor wanted to proceed so Feehan could begin drawing up court documents to serve Twitter as the first steps toward unveiling the identity of the suspect.



“Is it correct to assume that you wish to prosecute the offender criminally?” Settingsgaard asked the mayor. “It is a misdemeanor but it is still a crime. If so we can proceed on it. Feehan will need to meet with you to take a formal complaint from you.



“We will also check with the SAO (state’s attorney’s office) to make sure we are interpreting and applying this new statute correctly,” the chief concluded. “I believe we are.”



Legal action



The city proceeded with a three-pronged approach to shut down the account. Rivera navigated official Twitter channels in an effort to have the social media service terminate the account and turn over control of the @peoriamayor handle to the city.



Interim Corporation Counsel Sonni Williams, meanwhile, drafted a letter to Vijaya Gadde, general counsel for Twitter, threatening to file a complaint for injunction against Twitter in federal court to force the San Francisco-based company to close @peoriamayor.



On March 20, the same day the letter from Williams was faxed, Twitter responded to Rivera: “Twitter users are allowed to create parody, newsfeed, commentary, and fan accounts, as outlined in our policy for such accounts. … In response to your complaint, we are suspending the account and notifying the user with instructions on how to comply with our policy.”



Part of that policy indicates that parody accounts must be clearly labeled as such. When @peoriamayor was created, it did not self identify as satire, a form of speech protected under the First Amendment. The original bio professed the mayor’s pride in serving citizens and included Ardis’ city email address.



Within days of being created, the bio was changed to remove Ardis’ email address and replace it with the word “parody.”



Feehan prepared a search warrant for Twitter that Judge Kirk Schoenbein signed on March 14. Included as an attachment with the warrant was a screen shot of the Twitter account, including this bio: “I am honored to serve the citizens of our great city parody account.”



The investigator, however, did not write any police reports about the case for more than a month, until six days after the Twitter account owner’s house was searched and the national spotlight had settled on Peoria — a move that several police sources said was unusual and that Feehan’s colleague working on the case noticed in a subsequent email.



Feehan’s first report mentioning he received Ardis’ complaint was dated March 11 — two days before the March 13 email in which Settingsgaard asked the mayor to meet with Feehan to file a formal complaint.



But the case number assigned to that first report — 14-7467 — was generated about 9:30 a.m. April 21, the same day Feehan was scheduled to review the case with the Peoria County State’s Attorney’s Office for consideration of charges and about 12 hours after the Journal Star filed a FOIA request for all documents related to the raid.



Stevie Hughes Jr., the detective who was assigned the case by Feehan and who executed the search warrant at the University Street house, remarked on the absence of an earlier case number in an email to Feehan following the raid. Hughes needed a case number, which are assigned sequentially to each case as they arise and are requested by officers, to document the arrest of resident Jacob Elliott on a felony marijuana possession charge.



“I did not know the case number for the original twitter case,” Hughes wrote. “So I pulled 14-7058 for the arrest for Jacob Elliott.”



The report Hughes wrote about Elliott’s arrest on April 15 did not mention the Twitter investigation. It simply said Elliott was taken into custody during the execution of a search warrant that would be explained in a different report. Charges against Elliott still are pending.



On notice



Three search warrants in all were obtained by police as part of the Twitter investigation — the warrant signed by Schoenbein on March 14 to obtain the Internet Protocol address where the @peoriamayor account was created; a warrant signed March 29 by Judge Lisa Wilson to order Comcast to reveal the physical address associated with the IP address; and the warrant to search 1220 N. University St. and seize electronic devices that was signed April 15 by Judge Kim Kelley.



Ardis maintained in the days following the raid that he made a complaint believing his identity had been stolen, his reputation had been tarnished, and he received the same treatment any citizen would be afforded by city police.



Settingsgaard indicated in an email response to questions from Journal Star opinion editor Mike Bailey that the mayor “was aware that we were investigating in this case but to my knowledge he was not aware of the search warrant in advance.”



Yet Ardis had been kept in the loop about the search warrants as they wended their way through the court system by Settingsgaard and Peoria County State’s Attorney Jerry Brady.



On March 17, Settingsgaard wrote to Ardis, Urich and city attorney Ron O’Neal: “Sirs, not sure if you heard this yet or not but Judge Schoenbein did sign a search warrant to order Twitter to preserve and produce evidence related to the Twitter case. That warrant was forwarded to Twitter but they have not yet responded and the account is still up.”



Once Judge Wilson had signed the search warrant ordering Comcast to reveal the identity of the Internet account holder where @peoriamayor was created, Brady updated the mayor on the progress of the investigation.



“Peoria Police have the return on the search warrant,” Brady wrote April 8. “Presumably, that should have the account holder and I will let you know as soon as I get it.”



Fallout



When the first media inquiry about the search warrant — from the Journal Star — arrived in Settingsgaard’s inbox on April 16, the chief forwarded the questions and his answers to Ardis and Urich, among other recipients.



Ardis demanded prosecution of the crime, then revealed his erroneous belief that the creator of @peoriamayor lived with a Journal Star reporter.



“It’s not a joke & it’s not funny. I want this Prosecuted because what they did was WRONG,” Ardis wrote at 9:32 p.m.



At 9:45 p.m., Ardis asked the chief: “What PJS reporter lives with this guy?”



The reference may have been to freelance journalist Justin Glawe, who interned at the newspaper until December 2012 and has written about the Twitter raid for online publications. Glawe was acquainted with the creator of the Twitter account, Jon Daniel, and was the first to identify him publicly in a piece published by the website Vice Magazine. Glawe does not live with anyone associated with the @peoriamayor Twitter account.



As additional media inquiries flooded the city following the initial report on the raid, Ardis and Settingsgaard strategized on how — or whether — to respond. They settled on the premise the tweets were criminal because they were too obscene for mainstream media outlets to publish.



“Tell them you couldn’t print what he wrote in the paper or say it in TV because it was so crude,” Ardis told Settingsgaard just before noon April 17.



The chief responded minutes later: “I like that. For anyone in the media who would like to say that we should not prosecute this, I challenge them to print or cite what was written there word for word. It was patently offensive.”

At 2:19 p.m. April 18, Settingsgaard broke the news that the @peoriamayor mission that had drawn international scorn may have been based on a misinterpretation of statute. The subject line of the email was “Twitter problem.”



“Det Feehan is going to review with Brady on Monday but there may be an internet exception to the impersonating statute,” Settingsgaard wrote to Ardis and Urich. “If it is exempt, everyone missed it from the investigators to the SAO and the judges.”



Brady made the announcement five days later, the morning after the first City Council meeting where the public and other elected officials had a chance to address the issue.







Matt Buedel can be reached at 686-3154 or mbuedel@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @JournoBuedel.



