Ferguson Activist: St. Louis Officer Tried to Get Me Fired
A Missouri woman complained to the St. Louis Police Department after alleging that an officer attempted to get her fired from her job over her Ferguson tweets. And the officer did actually admit to calling her employer when she reached out to him.
Leigh Maibes has been tweeting about protests in Ferguson for a while, ever since the community was rattled by the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer. Well, apparently Officer Keith Novara was concerned about incitement in her tweets, and made her employer, a RE/MAX brokerage, aware of her tweets.
Maibes believes Novara was trying to get her fired, and shared video of her phone conversation with him. Maibes repeatedly asked him why he reported her to her boss. Novara said, “I was just doing it to let them know that their phones were gonna be ringing off the hook.”
He claimed he had seen some “inciteful” tweets of hers and felt the need to notify her employer. When Maibes pressed him to get specific, he said she had gone against the “neighborhood ownership model” and had tweeted some problematic things about the police. Maibes said she just has a problem with police brutality.
Maibes filed a complaint to the police department, and they say they’re currently investigating. The St. Louis Police Officers Association is defending Novara, with their business manager referring to “malicious accusations on social media” that he says Novara had every right to respond to and act on.
You can watch the video of their phone call here, via Jon Ziegler:
[h/t TPM]
[image via R. Gino Santa Maria/Shutterstock]
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