[emingo]

IMHO The interesting part of this story is NOT the 'level of wrongness' in police abuse. It's the policing of internet reviews!

On the surface this is a trivial story, but in reality, this is totally bananas! A local cop policing the internet through means of coercion? Sounds sufficiently interesting to me!

[notahacker]

Did you listen to the phone call? It's possible that she was subtly threatening an innocent autistic man for the thrill of power that comes from shutting them up. It's more likely that after receiving a complaint from some angry citizen about "this crazy autistic guy online that keeps posting stuff on the internet about me even though it gets deleted" she decided to try to satisfy both parties by defusing the whole thing. Especially if she sympathized with the autistic guy after reading the post and suspected (i) he probably wasn't doing much harm and definitely wasn't intending to but (ii) probably wouldn't stand a chance in a courtroom if the angry citizen that kept badgering her followed through with his legal threats.

It actually scans better if you assume the policewoman was exceeding her authority and legal knowledge in an attempt to prevent the needless harm of a disabled citizen being sued into oblivion by some over-litiguous asshole. And I'm generally in favour of police exercising that sort of discretion.

[KenL]

Given the known facts, I agree.

It's not a whack with a baton, but government authorities shouldn't call someone to wrongly warn him that his actions might be harassment.

Even if it's libel, that's what lawyers and the civil court system is for.