A day later, the first of three search warrants relating to the case was filed. At that time, the account had already been marked a parody, according to documents gleaned from one of three FOIA requests filed by Muckrock.
Parody accounts are allowed by Twitter as long as they are clearly marked as satire, and the social network informed city officials of this after they requested to have the account shut down. Despite this, and despite the fact that Twitter ended up suspending the account on March 20, Ardis and Settingsgaard continued to press the matter for weeks afterward.
“It’s not a joke & it’s not funny,” Ardis wrote to Settingsgaard on April 16, the day after the raid. “I want this Prosecuted because what they did was WRONG.”
The next day Ardis and Settingsgaard exchanged several emails after an Associated Press reporter contacted the pair seeking comment on the raid—by then, the story was becoming a national punchline. Settingsgaard sought the mayor’s permission to talk with the journalist.
“Jim, do you have a problem with me speaking (to the reporter) and telling them that this account violated Illinois law, with no indication that it was meant to be a parody until well into the investigation, and that you filed a criminal complaint?” Settingsgaard wrote to Ardis. “I can also ignore it and let them spin it the way they want to spin it.”
“Go ahead,” Ardis responded. “And tell them you couldn’t print what (Daniel) wrote in the paper or say it on TV because it was so crude.”
“I like that,” Settingsgaard replied. “For anyone in the media who would like to say that we should not prosecute this, I challenge them to print or cite what was written there word for word. It was patently offensive.”
Article Appeared @http://www.vice.com/read/how-a-power-mad-illinois-mayor-launched-a-police-crusade-against-a-parody-twitter-account