Police taking online threats seriously

Cops showing up at doors to warn people not to follow through

Police in South Florida are increasingly knocking on people’s doors to confront them about potentially threatening messages they’ve posted online, a law enforcement tactic that some people interpret as harassment.

In an age of unrestrained social media threats, the cops insist their only intent is to warn online posters that following through could get them arrested. They say they’re taking a preemptive approach to make sure online chatter doesn’t evolve into real-life crime.

Critics say the attempt to curb crime, no matter how well-intentioned, could be an intimidation tactic that stifles people’s free speech rights.

The issue was spotlighted recently when a woman in Lake Worth, an opponent of COVID19 masks, made a Facebook post threatening to dump masks on the lawn of a county official. Two Palm Beach County sheriff ’s deputies showed up at her home one night in February — not to arrest her but warn her that she would be arrested if she actually took action.

The woman became furious and called them the Gestapo.

She was not alone. Police have shown up at the doors of others for posting threats to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and COVID-19 testing sites.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office says it makes about 30 such visits a month — essentially every day. The department made 21 house visits in February, according to records.

Not all of the visits are related to online posts. Sometimes they involve verbal threats between children, threatening texts between spurned lovers and even threats against high school classmates written in the margins of a textbook.

The Broward Sheriff ’s Office didn’t have specific figures but said it also will make home visits based on threats delivered online or other means, though more informally, as police in Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach do.

Police agencies and law enforcement experts say the warnings are an aggressive approach to stopping crime before it happens. They

point to the 2018 Parkland shooting and the Capitol riots on Jan. 6 as examples of times when the public has blamed law enforcement for not acting on online tips before it was too late.

“The criticism is often: ‘Hey, there were warning signs. Why didn’t anybody do anything?’ ” said Gerald Greenberg, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

But Angelique Pechaceck, the Lake Worth woman, said she feels as if she was intimidated over a “joke.”

In a video of her encounter with police that she uploaded to YouTube, Pechaceck accused an officer of fear-mongering and wasting taxpayers’ dollars by visiting her.

The officer explained that going onto someone’s property to dump masks would be trespassing.

“So don’t do it,” he said. Eric Friday, a constitutional rights attorney in Jacksonville, said he believes police might mean well but are actually overstepping First Amendment rights.

“What they call proactive, I would call being overly threatening to those who are merely engaged in constitutional speech.”

‘Threatening statements’

When deputies learn of concerning behavior, the protocol is to respond to all threats of possible criminal activity to “prevent it from happening,” said Palm Beach County sheriff’s spokeswoman Teri Barbera. But a small, specialized unit of detectives, clinical therapists and case managers are tasked with investigating and following up on threats online that concern the community at large, she said.

Often the people who find law enforcement at their door are reported by people who follow them on social media platforms.

On Feb. 2, two Palm Beach County detectives and agents from the FBI showed up at a Boca Raton man’s home after someone tipped them off about “threatening statements” he’d made toward Biden and Harris on social media, according to a police report.

When confronted by law enforcement, the man denied the accusation, according to the report. Asked if he wanted to harm himself or others, he said no.

The encounter did not meet the criteria for further police activity, but the report did say the FBI would continue to investigate.

Two days later, on Feb.

4, detectives assisted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement with an investigation into threatening emails sent to a COVID-19 testing lab. The email said, “Imma shoot tht s—t up,” according to the report.

The email was traced to the account of a 33-yearold Lake Worth man. Two detectives went to his home, but no one was there. They came back the next day but didn’t find him again.

According to the report, the police made no further efforts to contact the man.

Because the email was sent to a generic automated account and not a specific person, “it is unclear what the person sending the email was going to ‘shoot up,’ ” the report said.

The Parkland effect

Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said that as a result of events such as the Capitol riots, there is heightened sensitivity to online threats. But he also said officers in South

Florida have been taking preventative steps based on tips about a person’s speech online since the Parkland shooting in 2018.

He pointed to red-flag laws, passed in 2018, that allow judges to temporarily take away guns from someone who might be a threat to themselves or others.

“How do you determine that?” Aronberg said. “You look at their online posts, for one.”

In 2018, a tip about the social media activity of a Pembroke Pines teen led police to bring her in for more than two hours of questioning, according to Kendra Parris, her attorney. The Pembroke Pines Police Department tried to slap an order on the teen to bar her from purchasing a gun. The order later was dismissed.

Parris is an Orlando attorney who said she has represented over 30 people against risk-protection orders that require people to give up their guns to police or bars them from buying a gun when they are of age.

Parris said these orders are often based on social media posts, some of which might even be “odious.” But even so, she said, they often don’t meet the bar of a threat that requires law enforcement.

“If you want to take any sort of action like that against someone for the things they say,” she said, “it’s got to be a true threat.”

After evaluating the incident at Pechaceck’s home in Lake Worth, Parris said the police technically didn’t do anything illegal by issuing a warning. But given her work in courtrooms defending people who have been targeted by police for their words, people should get used to it happening more often.

“It’s definitely not slowing down,” Parris said.

A question of free speech

Friday, the lawyer in Jacksonville, agrees that the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the chaos at the Capitol were tragic, but he doesn’t believe either event should give more authority to the government to impede on free speech and expression.

“Government loves to jump on the crisis of the moment to justify encroachment on citizens’ rights,” said Friday, who represents pro-gun activists he said are often unfairly targeted for their speech.

In an interview with the Sun Sentinel, Pechaceck said the deputies who visited her home in February were overstepping their bounds.

She has been a vocal opponent to the county’s mask mandate, frequently appearing at Palm Beach County Commission meetings to criticize the decision. She believes the decision by deputies to visit her was a result of her political views.

“I don’t believe anybody should be intimidated or harassed by their local government,” she said. Pechaceck said she’s filed a complaint against the officers.

But Greenberg, the former U.S. prosecutor, said it isn’t unlawful for police to scrutinize someone’s words and decide they warrant a warning. He said the warning has nothing to do with her views because no one told her she can’t say things.

“They’re telling her, ‘Hey, if you act on this, that is going to be a problem,’ ” Greenburg said. “It would be a very different story if they had arrested her.”