A man acquitted of a felony for creating a fake Facebook page that parodied a suburban Cleveland police department is suing the city, saying they violated his right to free speech.
Anthony Novak filed the lawsuit against the city of Parma and three officers on Tuesday.
He created a Facebook page in March last year that appeared similar to the page of Parma’s police department and posted items suggesting police were performing free abortions for teenagers.
The page also suggested it would be illegal to help the homeless for three months, and it had a recruitment post “strongly encouraging minorities to not apply.”
Parma police announced an investigation into the page on the day it was created.
Novak, 28, took the page down less than 12 hours creating it.
Officers sent Facebook a letter requesting that the Menlo Park, California-based company shut the page down and issued a subpoena to obtain Novak’s identity.
Novak was charged with disrupting public services, a fourth-degree felony that carries a sentence of up to 18 months in prison.
A SWAT team raided his apartment and confiscated his laptops, cellphones, tablets and gaming consoles.
Novak and his attorneys called it a “sham investigation” that violated Novak’s constitutional rights to free speech and protection from unreasonable seizure.
“This is one of the most extraordinary examples of government retaliation I have ever seen,” attorney Subodh Chandra said. “The idea that police officers would jail and prosecute someone for criticizing them is fundamentally abhorrent to who we are as Americans.”
A police spokesman on Wednesday did not immediately respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
During Novak’s trial, officers said they were worried that protesters would show up at the police station because of the “socially contentious” posts.
State prosecutors said the fake page disrupted public services by prompting 10 unnecessary calls to police dispatchers.
Novak’s attorneys said that no protests took place, that there was no evidence police were worried about protests and that the page was obvious satire protected by the US constitution.
They said that the calls to police were brief and did not disrupt their operations.
A jury acquitted Novak in August last year.
The lawsuit seeks financial compensation, legal fees, an injunction against Parma police and the return of Novak’s electronic devices.
It is the second lawsuit Novak has filed against Parma.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing