Fake Parma Facebook

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the Parma Police Department's official Facebook page, and a parody cite that led to a man being charged with a felony.

(Facebook)

Anthony Novak

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Anthony Novak was leaving a convenience store on March 27, where he had been shopping for last-minute supplies ahead of Easter weekend, when a Parma police squad car pulled up in front of the store.

"We even tried to walk past it because we're like, someone's screwed," Novak said.

Somebody was screwed: him.

"Somebody came up to me and said, 'Fake Parma Police Facebook page,'" Novak said. "And then they arrested me."

Before he was in handcuffs, Novak says he had forgotten all about the fake Parma Police Department Facebook page he made a few weeks earlier while sitting at a bus stop in downtown Cleveland. But after three days in county jail, the page, which he described as a spoof aimed at gathering laughs from his friends, would become the center of the 27-year-old's world.

After being acquitted Thursday by a jury, Novak says he is planning a civil lawsuit against the police department that arrested him. He claims his First Amendment rights were violated.

Following his arrest in March, a grand jury charged Novak with disrupting public service for creating the fake page, a fourth-degree felony that carries a possible 18-month prison sentence. Novak refused to settle the case for a lesser charge.

"I knew that I didn't do anything wrong. I wasn't going to plead guilty to something that wasn't wrong in the first place," Novak said Sunday in a live interview with cleveland.com.

The Parma Police Department declined a request Friday to discuss or comment on Novak's case.

Live with Anthony Novak, arrested for fake Parma police Facebook page Posted by cleveland.com on Sunday, August 14, 2016

By the time he was released from county jail the following Monday, Novak believes that everyone he knew was aware he had been arrested.

"My roommate called in to tell my boss that I had been arrested, and they said don't bother, we saw it on TV," Novak said. "People were coming and wanting to take my photograph, because I had been arrested for a felony."

His apartment had been raided shortly before his arrest. Police broke through the front door with guns drawn, and seized every piece of electronic equipment with an internet connection, including both his and his roommate's laptop computers, cell phones and two video game consoles.

Novak's attorney, Gary Vick, made several unsuccessful requests to dismiss the case on the grounds that the Facebook page was a protected form of free speech. The judge in the case, Maureen Clancy, wouldn't entertain the dismissal motions, however, and the case went to trial last week.

After one day of testimony, during which Parma police officers testified that the Facebook page led to 911 calls that distracted the department's emergency dispatchers, a jury acquitted Novak of his felony charge.

Now Novak, still hoping that the police department will return his and his roomate's computer equipment and video game consoles, said he doesn't regret making the page and wants to sue the department to send a message.

"I just want them to pay for what they did. They maliciously arrested me because they were mad about what I said," Novak said. "I live in Parma right now and it makes me a little uneasy that my police department probably doesn't like me."