[P]olice arrested a St. Johnsbury man last Sunday night for online comments threatening the Department of Children and families, according to officials.
Timothy Bright, 40, was arrested at his Maple Street home for Facebook posts reported to police through their Crime Stoppers hotline. The comments were allegedly “threatening not only to the agency…but to the public in general,” according to a news release.
St. Johnsbury Police Chief Clement Houde said Bright threatened to “cause harm to (Department of Children and Families) workers,” according to the Burlington Free Press, which first reported the arrest.
Bright confessed to the posting, and was subsequently released with a citation to appear in court August 24. He is charged with disturbing the peace by telephone or other electronic communication, a misdemeanor.
Houde told VTDigger Thursday that Bright’s is the second threatening message to DCF that his department was aware of in the last several days.
The other, a phone call to the St. Johnsbury DCF field office, is still under investigation, he said.
In the wake of the shooting death of Lara Sobel, a DCF social worker, on August 7, state officials have publicly decried messages on social media and in the comments section of online news articles that attack or threaten state workers, particularly those with the DCF.
DCF Commissioner Ken Schatz said in a recent interview with VTDigger that his department’s concerns with public perception and online threats predate the killing of Lara Sobel, but have heightened in its aftermath. The department was already working with a labor management group to address the safety of social workers, he said.
“We are committed to making it absolutely clear that violence and aggression is not going to be tolerated,” he said.
Schatz also acknowledged the “incredibly strong” emotional reactions people have when their children are taken away, he said, and it’s understandable that someone might take a stance that makes it difficult to step back and see that in many cases children need the state’s protection.
Alan Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont Civil Liberties Union, said Bright is being charged under a broad statute that allows a person to be prosecuted for electronic communications that harm, harass, intimidate or offend.
Gilbert said the statute is most frequently applied to instances of online bullying among school age children.
Prosecutors will have to show that the caller or person posting online had intent to harm people, otherwise the statute could be applied too broadly and “some 13-year-old quoting the latest rap lyric” could face charges.
“It’s the old problem of speech itself generally being a greatly protected freedom that we have, but there are times when even speech can be limited,” he said.
The limits on speech have become vastly more complicated with the rise of of online communication, Gilbert said, where intent can be far more difficult to establish.
