August 19, 2009
A 34-YEAR-OLD woman, the mother of a 12-year-old girl, has been locked up in a Virginia jail for three weeks and could remain there for at least another month. Her crime? Blogging about the police.Elisha Strom, who appears unable to make the $750 bail, was arrested outside Charlottesville on July 16 when police raided her house, confiscating notebooks, computers and camera equipment. Although the Charlottesville police chief, Timothy J. Longo Sr., had previously written to Ms. Strom warning her that her blog posts were interfering with the work of a local drug enforcement task force, she was not charged with obstruction of justice or any similar offense. Rather, she was indicted on a single count of identifying a police officer with intent to harass, a felony under state law.
It's fair to say that Ms. Strom was unusually focused on the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force, a 14-year-old unit drawn mainly from the police departments of Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the University of Virginia. (Her blog at http:/
/ , expresses the view that the task force is "nothing more than a group of arrogant thugs.") In a nearly year-long barrage of blog posts, she published snapshots she took in public of many or most of the task force's officers; detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car; mused about their habits and looks; hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them; and, in one instance, reported that she had tipped off a local newspaper about their movements.iheartejade.blogspot.com
On the one hand, all she was doing was exercising her right to free speech and that should never be an arrestable offense if not for its own right than that it may lead to a slippery slope of increasing government censorship.
On the other hand, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a person broadcasting the location and activities of law enforcement officers engaged in very dangerous situations. Her blogging could clearly cost the lives of police officers who were doing nothing more than their jobs.
On the other hand, the drug war is bullshit for the most part and is clearly involved in some of the most egregious personal freedom encroachments in the history of the Republic.
On the other hand, if this information is so secret and well guarded how the fuck does she know about it in the first place? I'm inclined in that aspect to advise the police to tighten their lips a bit.
I'm leaning toward saying that what she is doing shouldn't be remotely criminal so long as she is not intentionally privy to any secret information that may be dangerous in the wrong hands. Being that she knows the information anyway, it seems that the real security breach is not her blogging but the fact that she knows it in the first place.
What do you Morons think?
Posted by: Moron Pundit at
03:43 PM
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He's pretty Libertarian (Like Boortz, one of the ones who make me really want to be a Libertarian), and he's pretty torn.
If she hadn't posted pictures it would be a much more difficult question for me. I'm conditionally on the cops side.
With one caveat:
What would have happened to someone who worked at CNN or Time or the Wash Post if they did this? Would they be arrested? They should be, but if not,
I hate "guilt by association", do a search on her name and see who's very upset about it. The Agitator gets into why they're troublesome.
If she's being treated this way because she's a white supremacist without a news outlet behind her, I'm agin it.
But posting the pictures makes me think even a "real" journalist would be treated the same way. I bet that would be stopped by at least one of the layers of editors.
Posted by: Veeshir at August 19, 2009 04:12 PM (qDebN)
I really don't know what to think about this over all though.
Posted by: alexthechick at August 19, 2009 05:20 PM (lQiq2)
I'm going to come out and judge her and say she's a useless shitstain of a human being whether she's in the Aryan nation or just doing this to expose cops to danger. I mean, even if this is legal, doing it probably makes you a bad person.
But the individual circumstances of this case shouldn't color the rule of law. Veeshir's point about what CNN or the NYT would get away with are not lost on me. They continually fucked with intelligence agencies and military secrets which clearly have the potential to result in far more loss of life in situations far more clear cut as to the righteousness of the cause.
But still, I think this is a tricky one and I'm mildly confused as to why this hasn't gotten more discussion.
I hadn't read the posting pictures part but I think it is pretty clear that taking pictures of police in ANY circumstance shouldn't be illegal. However, as I conditioned my stance on her being privy to confidential information, the same applies to her being even tangentially associated with the targets of the investigation. If that is the case, then she almost certainly should be considered an accessory to the crime.
But that would have to be proved. Of course, it COULD give a pretense for arrest. Interesting.
Posted by: Moron Pundit at August 19, 2009 05:48 PM (GC5S2)
That's putting their lives in jeopardy.
But this, from this story, makes me wonder about the "undercover" part.
Police say, since most JADE officers do undercover work, posting their names, pictures, and possibly home addresses could put the officers in danger.
That appears to be saying they're not undercover officers, but they occasionally do it. That changes things a little.
She was surely hasseling them, but that's every American's God given right. If you hassle cops, they will bust your balls hard, and if they can, arrest you, like that guy Gates, it's the price we pay for having human beings be our cops.
But they shouldn't be able to make felony charges stick just because nobody wants to defend her. The other problem is the facts are so murky. Saying "they often do undercover work" might mean lots of things not associated with infiltrating MS-13. Buying a half ounce of pot from some dude or being a 13 year girl in an internet chat room qualifies.
It's probably not being talked about because she's such an unsympathetic "victim".
The problem for Minitru, the ACLU and the rest of the Democratic social/political industrial complex is that they can't defend Nazis. If they do, their cocktail party invitations might dry up.
The Blues Brothers ruined it for Nazis everywhere.
Posted by: Veeshir at August 19, 2009 07:33 PM (RGMnd)
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