After getting sued by the ACLU, the City of Beech Grove is taking down two Facebook pages.
The police and city Facebook pages will go blank by noon Wednesday, after a lawsuit filed last week by the ACLU on behalf of two Beech Grove women who claimed the sites violated their First Amendment rights.
The women say the city removed their social media comments, then blocked them. A city attorney says it happened when people posted comments not related to crime. In some cases, the comments were seen as inflammatory and not true.
"We find there are some fascinating constitutional issues we could litigate in this case, but can't justify the cost to the taxpayers, so we're going to try to get this resolved," said Beech Grove City Attorney Craig Wiley.
Wiley says the city will try to reach a settlement with the ACLU that would include a new city social media policy. But for now, the pages will come down.
The police department says its legal counsel advised them to remove the page, but went on to say, "Unfortunately we will be losing our most effective tool for soliciting tips on unsolved cases. We still want to encourage people who have tips on crimes that have occurred to call our crime tips line at 317-782-4950."
"The police solved a lot of crime. They've got a lot of tips and now we've got to take it down, so that's the casualty in this," Wiley said.
The police page includes crime updates and photos of wanted persons.
The plaintiffs in the case were Kymberly Quick and Deborah Mays-Miller. Both women are members of Beech Grove Crime Watch. The ACLU says their posts "posed valid questions about the city's crime reporting and police action and inaction related to the removal of political yard signs."
"When a government entity opens up a space for public comment, it cannot regulate those comments based upon someone's viewpoint," said Jan Mensz, ACLU of Indiana staff attorney. "By giving itself unbridled discretion to determine what comments it deems acceptable, the City of Beech Grove has put all public speech on its social media sites at risk of further censorship."
One of the women is in a relationship with a former candidate for mayor.
"The government doesn't have a right to single out individuals," said Quick. "There was nothing wrong with my comments at all and other comments have been allowed to remain that are racial and violent."
Tuesday afternoon, some of the comments to which Quick was referring were still posted on the department's Facebook page. Under the video of a purse snatching, one reader posted the "N-word" and another wrote "shoot his (expletive)."
Some residents still value the page.
"I just took a DVD from my cameras, took it to the police and they put it on the Facebook site. I guess hit helped a little bit," said Bob Cagg.
"I mean, if it's helping the city, I think it should stay up," said resident Brenda Murphy. "Because there's crime going on that's unusual for here."
Tuesday evening, the women behind the lawsuit said they went to the city website and noticed they were no longer blocked. They think it's a sign that a settlement is close.
