Evansville Police have made an arrest following their investigation into threats that were posted on Twitter earlier this week.
Investigators have charged 24 year old Evansville resident NAQUAN POWELL with 2 counts of Intimidation, Class D Felony. Police believe POWELL posted two comments that referred to shooting up an EPD facility and a University of Evansville sporting event. The post caused the cancellation of a U of E baseball game on Tuesday night.
What’s interesting to me here is if you actually read the offending Tweets, they are not that bad. I see nothing there that could possibly hold up in court as a “threat”. This person is lamenting the fact that mental health services are not available unless someone threatens to shoot up something. They are saying no one cares. They weren’t saying “I’m going to shoot up the UE game.”
This is another overreaction. It’s trumped up and all it does is create unnecessary fear in the style of the Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’. Why not just send someone over to talk to this person and assess the situation? Why lock evreything down like we’re in frigging Fallujah?
PS: If we accept this arrest as “just ok”, it sets a pretty scary precedent for the kinds of speech that could be construed as a legitimate threat. I’m sure all of us here at some point have said worse than anything this person said.
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