A woman living in the Will County forest preserve near Chicago received a citation this month in the mail from police after she posted a comment in a private forum on Facebook, which to police seemed like a confession she was using a dog park without a permit.
The police department of a Chicago area forest preserve district used a local woman’s social media post as a basis to send her a citation in the mail after she made a Facebook post about a county park.
The woman says she wrote a Facebook post that was misinterpreted by Will County forest preserve police as an admission that she was violating park rules. It wasn’t long after she posted her comment that she received a notice of violation in the mail and was told she owed the county a fine for illegal use of a park.
Will County is situated south and a bit west of Chicago’s Cook County.
The citation came after Will County citizens began posting social media warnings that dogs were catching “kennel cough” at a particular dog park in the park system.
A Facebook page set up by private users of Will County’s Whalon Lake Dog Park – a page not connected to or run by county officials – started warning that dogs were getting sick after owners took them to the park.
One Facebook group member posted a badly worded entry to the page that got the attention of police who were evidently monitoring it.
The woman wrote, “I was feeling bad that I haven’t bought a pass and been bringing Ginger there but I’m pretty glad I haven’t.”
When contacted by a Patch reporter, the woman said that she meant to say that she hadn’t gotten a license and had not been using the park and was glad she hadn’t, because she would have exposed her dog to the illness that was going around.
However, park police took her post to mean that she hadn’t purchased a license but was still using the park in violation of park rules and so sent her a ticket in the mail after tracking her down through her social media account information.
Will County forest preserve spokesperson Cindy Cain admitted that the park police department did, indeed, send the woman a violation in the mail.
“We did issue a citation to a woman based on her Facebook post. The only reason we were monitoring the group is because of the complaints of kennel cough. When we saw her post about visiting the dog park without buying a permit, it was our responsibility to respond,” she said.
Cain also said that the woman would have her day in court and could protest the ticket.
Users of the Facebook page were alarmed that county officials were using their page as a platform to hand out citations. One even called it a “Gestapo tactic.”
Not surprisingly, the citizen who received the ticket in the mail said she was “shocked and confused” when it arrived.
County officials were quick to claim they aren’t trolling social media to find violators and just happened to accidentally come across this woman’s posting when monitoring the Facebook page for the health concerns of pets.
In a post to The Will County News, Steve Balich, a Will County Forest Preserve Commissioner, said he spoke to Don Gould, President of the Forest Preserve, and Gould agreed that his police department should not be trolling social media looking for violators.
Recently the same county turned back rules that allowed the assessor’s office to use aerial drones to search for violations of building and land use codes. In May an Executive Order by the Will County Executive dumped the rule after citizens complained of the invasion of privacy endemic by the use of the drones and other types of aerial photography as a means to hand out code violations.
These two issues – trolling social media and use of aerial drones to search for violators of county codes – are another marker of how authorities are using technology against citizens.
A lot of agencies troll social media sites. If there is a Fb page about a business, some peer group, plus different agencies pages and they did not open the page they will troll them to see what they are about, see the likes, see the dislikes, look for lies that are being spread and also your job, where you work trolls social media sites to see if their company is be bad mouthed, looking for employees see how they spend their “free time”, see if they are using these sites while they should be working, looking for drug and/or alcohol use.
What proof did they have that she had done what she wrote. It was not a confession under Miranda, it wasn’t a sworn statement before the court and they didn’t have a corroborating witness. How many statements on the web are factual and how many fictional? If they start to use Facebook posts they will have to arrest any under age drinker who posts pictures or stories about a party.
Dennis Deitsch http://to-be-prepared.com
just say you lied like our prez does
screw that would not pay
You’d have to be an idiot to assume that anything you post here or ANYWHERE on the internet isn’t automatically filed under your name.
Privacy is an illusion.
As is security. Governments and corporations peddle privacy and safety, but they cannot deliver these things. All they can do is fool us into believing they can. In return, we give vast amounts of power and wealth.
If this girl said that she was a Muslim dog owner would she have been punished?
I cannot understand why we are constantly afraid of making the Muslim world upset. In the world 3.4 percent are Muslims but in this country only 0.3 percent are Muslims. In the foreign countries they already hate us so we are not going to change their minds by behaving preferential toward them. Here they are a vast minority so they cannot easily swing votes for candidates. We are constantly ignoring other religious groups and their right in favor of not upsetting Muslim groups.
Is it because Muslim groups have been known to show their dislike by violent protest or even actions? If so that is only teaching the peaceful religious groups that to be heard they too must become violent. This does not sound like a good policy to me. It sound like by their actions our own government is encouraging violent protest.
To be heard you scream or threaten isn’t something you should teach. You should teach that intelligent compromise is best. But our government officials only seem to compromise on our rights. By their actions they are condoning violence and punishing law abiding behavior.
Do you think that this is a bad precedent and doesn’t make any sense?
Dennis Deitsch http://to-be-prepared.com
Egg on their face because they were so anxious to fine her that they didn’t read her post which clearly said that she had NOT used the dog park!
Big brother is really watching!