

PEORIA — Jim Ardis said he doesn’t regret his attempt to protect his identity. Some City Council members and others regret Peoria has become a nationwide punchline.



Debate about the Peoria mayor’s legal pursuit of the creators of a Twitter account that parodied him reached dramatic tones before and during a council meeting that extended late into Tuesday night.



Ardis defended his actions, which led to search warrants, a police visit to a West Bluff residence and the arrest of one occupant on a marijuana-possession charge.



He said the profane tweets, on a Twitter account created by Peoria resident Jon Daniel, could not be tolerated. That was true even after the account was re-labeled as a parody and was deactivated.



“I still maintain my right to protect my identity is my right,” Ardis said in an interview with the Journal Star before the council meeting.



“Are there no boundaries on what you can say, when you can say it, who you can say it to?” Ardis said. “You can’t say (those tweets) on behalf of me. That’s my problem. This guy took away my freedom of speech.”



Beth Akeson was among council members who appeared not to agree.



“I’m just floored,” the at-large councilwoman said. “When the mayor didn’t want to have that kind of commentary going on … it was crass, totally impolite — but that’s what our country is all about.



“People get to talk about things that sometimes are really stupid.”



That last word might have been an appropriate description for the entire situation, in the view of Ardis detractors.



Akeson and colleagues Jim Montelongo and Chuck Weaver spoke with varying degrees of opposition to the actions of Ardis and the Peoria Police Department. Their words came about three hours into a meeting that began at 6:15 p.m. and ended after 10:30.



Weaver, an at-large representative, wondered how a search for the proprietor of a Twitter account morphed into a drug arrest. He also wondered why municipal staff — City Manger Patrick Urich in particular — appeared unable to help prevent the escalation of aggression.



“When we start going down the path on something like this, someone should be saying, ‘Hold on a minute, guys, let’s do a gut check here,’ ” Weaver said.



Akeson appeared concerned about negative attention Peoria has received. Major news organizations across the country have reported about Ardis’ Twitter battles.



“I’m still struggling with how did it escalate to the level that it has, and now we’re the butt of jokes covered by every news station,” she said. “We’ve lost our credibility about how we run things in Peoria.”



Montelongo said the episode represented an abuse of Ardis’ authority, as well as the police department’s.



“There was too much power of force used on these pranksters,” said Montelongo, the 4th District councilman. “It made it look like the mayor received preferential treatment that other people don’t get or will never get.”



In his pre-meeting interview, Ardis said he believed his complaint was handled no differently than anybody else’s would be. He said he didn’t orchestrate the police investigation, nor the search-warrant process.



“That’s a heck of a lot more power than any mayor I know,” Ardis said.



“My guess is as far as the judge is concerned, it doesn’t matter if it’s the mayor. They’re looking at the substance. Why would they allow something without a foundation? That’s the core of everything they do.”



Ardis said the situation provides an opportunity to discuss the proper limits of commentary on social media. He also said the news media is responsible, in part, for the problem.



“You’re the ones responsible for getting full information, but not to spin it in the way you want to spin it,” Ardis said to a Journal Star reporter. “To make us look stupid.



“It’s your responsibility to put actual information out there and cover both sides. Not to opine. And that didn’t happen. Clearly, that didn’t happen.”



Akeson, it appears, wishes none of this had happened.



“If somebody does a parody account using my name, are we going to investigate them for drug use?” she said. “Now what are people going to be expecting from the city of Peoria? This is the consequence of this kind of action.”







Nick Vlahos can be reached at 686-3285 or nvlahos@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @VlahosNick.