It sounds like the Peoria State’s Attorney is too chicken to prosecute Ardis!  Now you know why corruption rules in Illinois.

Jason might want to review his campaign video:  Justice over Politics?

by:  Diane Benjamin

It’s not legal to do favors for campaign contributors.  It’s not legal to sell items for friends from your official office.

Mayor Renner is guilty of both, but Jason Chambers refuses to prosecute him.  See this post for the details:  http://blnnews.com/2014/05/05/pay-to-play-okay-if-nobody-prosecutes/

Meanwhile in Peoria, Mayor Ardis is in HOT water.  Mayor Renner used City employees to hand out price lists and show the artwork in his office, Ardis used the Police.  Both are official misconduct – a FELONY!

Here is the latest on Ardis:

EMAILS SHOW PEORIA POLICE KNEW THERE WAS NO LEGAL BASIS TO PURSUE TWITTER USER WHO PARODIED MAYOR JIM ARDIS

Thanks to FOIA requests, more information has been uncovered about Peoria, IL mayor Jim Ardis’ quest to shut down a parody Twitter account. Shawn Musgrave at Muckrock has secured copies of the warrants and police reports related to the Peoria Police Dept.’s raid of Jon Daniel, the person behind the not-even-illegal @peoriamayor Twitter account. Matt Buedel at the Peoria Journal-Star has obtained email correspondence between the mayor and the police department.

Justin Glawe at Vice has more details, including the fact that Mayor Ardis and his office pushed hard to prosecute the owner of this Twitter account despite there being no evidence that any laws had been broken.

Ardis and others learned of the account on March 11 and sent dozens of emails over the next few days, apparently panicked by the idea that someone with a few dozen Twitter followers was making fun of the mayor. On March 12, Ardis himself asked City Manager Patrick Urich, “Any chance we can put a sense of urgency on this?” Urich passed that request on to Settingsgaard, saying, “Quickly please.”

Ardis (and his office) pursued this vigorously, telling the Chief of Police (Steve Settingsgaard) that he definitely wanted to prosecute. The first of three search warrants went out March 13th, at which point the Twitter account had already been marked as a parody. Twitter informed the city of this fact, but the push went on regardless. Twitter yanked the account on March 20th, but that still didn’t stop Ardis from pushing a very compliant police department into raiding Daniel’s home on April 15th.

Glawe points out that, according to obtained emails, the police were initially reluctant to pursue this as they could see no evidence of any laws being broken, at least according to an email sent by Chief Settingsgaard to Mayor Ardis on March 11th.

Mayor/Manager, I reviewed this matter with Detective Feehan. He is in the process of shutting down the account as you saw from my last email. This phony Twitter account does not constitute a criminal violation in that no threats are made. I’m not sure if it would support a civil suit for defamation of character. I’m not an expert in the civil arena but my recollection is thatpublic officials have very limited protection from defamation. I asked (Feehan) about identity theft and he advised it did not qualify because the statute requires the use of personal identifying information such as a social security number, DOB, etc., and a financial gain form (sic) the use of that information. Twitter does not require identifying information other than an email address and name, and there appears to be no financial gain.

Read More:  http://www.blacklistednews.com/Emails_Show_Peoria_Police_Knew_There_Was_No_Legal_Basis_To_Pursue_Twitter_User_Who_Parodied_Mayor_Jim_Ardis/35174/0/0/0/Y/M.html

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