A pair tweets vowing to haul the Ted Rogers statue into the harbour over a Blue Jays contract led to a cybercrimes investigation and a jarring knock at the front door of a young sports fan from police early last Saturday.

The affair, which revolves around whether remarks tossed into the digital ether amounted to hyperbole or a potential criminal code violation, landed tweeter Nicholas Kharshoum square at the intersection of public safety, free speech and privacy rights.

Kharshoum, 25, posted two tweets using his first name alongside his handle @TorontoHooligan on Feb. 22 as tensions flared around Toronto Blue Jay Jose Bautista’s contract demands.

“F--king pay the man or I’m throwing the Ted Rogers statue in the harbour you pieces of s--t,” Kharshoum typed in all caps — caught up, he said later, in the “passion of the moment.”

“Swear to f--k that the Ted Rogers statue is getting decimated. F--k Rogers. You don’t know sports. @Rogers @BlueJays,” read another tweet.

Rogers Communications — which owns both the Jays and that statue of their longtime company president in front of the team’s home park, the Rogers Centre — spotted the tweet and alerted 52 Division the next day, Toronto police confirmed. The cybercrimes unit got involved, investigated and tracked Kharshoum down to his home in Kitchener, said spokesperson Const. Allyson Douglas-Cook.

Nineteen days after the initial post, Waterloo police officers came knocking.

“They went to the address on our behalf,” said Douglas-Cook. “I’m not sure what his intentions were, but it was reported to us and because it is a threat it is taken seriously.”

Canadian Civil Liberties Association executive director Sukanya Pillay said the incident shines a light on the shifting sands of privacy and public safety.

“What concerns me is the response of the police. We understand they have to take threats seriously, and that’s good. But the question here is, was this a serious threat or was this just hyperbolic?” Pillay told the Star.

“Common sense would dictate that people might tweet things and they might express emotions in the heat of the moment, but we need to make sure that we’re not taking tweets so seriously that there’s a chilling effect.”

Kharshoum said the officers told him they were there because of tweets about the 3.5-metre bronze statue and warned him not to make online threats to private property, a crime punishable by up to two years in jail.

“My first thought was: Thought Police,” he said, alluding to the ubiquitous surveillance in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

“I’m aware that I did say something stupid. It’s not something that I should have put onto the Internet,” he said.

“That was still aggressive of them in my opinion . . . If I had said that out loud, no one would have taken me seriously. And that’s kind of what Twitter’s for, a stream of consciousness,” he added.

Kharshoum said he had no actual plans to “decimate” the statue or drag it into Lake Ontario, regardless of what the Jays do with Bautista, their slugging Jays outfielder said to be seeking a huge payday in his next contract.

Kharshoum says he makes Twitter “banter” often, whether it’s “rage-filled or playful.” He uses words like “smash” and “annihilate” when posting about opponents of his favourite soccer team, Tottenham Hotspur.

Rogers spokesperson Aaron Lazarus acknowledged the likely exaggeration in the tweet, but said the telecommunications titan can’t, “in this day and age,” afford to take chances.

“Blowing off steam happens, it’s OK. But threatening violence is not,” he wrote in an email.

“We recently consulted police around several violent threats against our drivers and property, including arson, so they could determine what, if any, action should be taken.

“We always err on the side of caution when the safety of our employees, property or fans at the Rogers Centre are threatened,” Lazarus stated.

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The company — also Kharshoum’s service provider — did not provide his personal information or IP address, Rogers stated.

Pillay added that circumstances change when there may be other reasons to believe there’s an actual threat, or if someone has a history of violence.

This isn’t the first time the sculpture of Ted Rogers, who died in 2008, has attracted controversy. When the besuited bronze figure went up in July 2013, some fans lashed out at the decision to commemorate the Canadian business luminary over the leading lights of the ballpark’s past like Joe Carter or Roberto Alomar, for example.

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