A St. Louis police officer has been placed under investigation after he reportedly called the employer of a woman who criticized the police during the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The department announced on Thursday that officer Keith Novara was being investigated after the woman, real estate agent Leigh Maibes, alleged he had tried to get her fired for comments she posted to Twitter, according to the newspaper.
After the officer allegedly called the woman’s bosses to inform them of the social media activity, the woman apparently called Novara and recorded the conversation, which she posted to social media on Wednesday.
In the recording, the officer reportedly confirmed he had called Maibes’ employers to let them know about her social media activity.
“To me this feels like intimidation,” Maibes said in the recording.
Novara maintained he was simply giving her employer a “heads up” while acting in his capacity as a police officer.
The Post-Dispatch reported that Novara’s actions were under investigation but he had not been suspended.
Some cop needs his ass fired.
I saw mention of this yesterday.
The activist was smart enough to record the call of her calling the cop to inquire as to why he called her boss. His responses were weak and I did not feel he adequately justified why he needed to contact her employer about her tweets. I agreee with her assertion; he was definitely trying to intimidate her.
But see, according to some on the right, we should just respect the cops, do whatever they say and bow to their authority. They are always right when they target us and us civilians are always wrong.
Acting in his capacity as a police officer? How?
It’S hIGHLy ILLEGaL to ENgage IN sociAL medIA that is OVerTLY criTICAL of POlice inCOmpetence.
We should respect cops, yes.
That shouldn’t mean they should get away with murdering people in the streets, robbing people of their hard earned money, watch child porn*, beat people for no reason, assault people for no reason, and so on.
*cop was fired in my city for, in part, accessing the evidence seized during an investigation into a child pornographer. He was never charged with anything because they couldn’t verify he was not doing it as part of his duties despite not being his case. If I recall correctly, though, he was later charged for his part in the beating of a restrained suspect.