(FLINT) State police officials are using online surveillance to monitor social media comments made about the Flint water crisis, according to emails released by Gov. Rick Snyder’s office.
The emails show that officials attempted on at least one occasion to initiate criminal proceedings against a Copper City man over allegedly threatening comments he made on Facebook about the government’s handling of the crisis.
“It’s time for civil unrest. Burn down the Governor mansion, elimionate (sic) the capitol where the legislators RE-INSTATED the emergency dictator law after the PEOPLE voted it down, and tell the Mich (sic) State Police if they use military force, we will return with same,” according to a state police email about the Facebook post.
A state police official declined comment on any possible investigations stemming from the online surveillance, but said the information they collect is shared with other state agencies that could be affected.
“In the interest of protecting our residents, the MSP monitors any incidents that have the potential to result in criminal activity and/or violence,” Michigan State Police spokesperson Shanon Banner wrote in an email to MLive-The Flint Journal.
“Threats against individuals and organizations are shared with the individual/organization so they have situational awareness,” Banner wrote
In January, a State Police senior intelligence analyst sent an email to the agency’s intelligence commander and an Upper Peninsula post commander that the Copper City man made a potentially threatening statement following a Detroit Free Press article regarding Flint’s water woes.
In the email, the analyst said she was assigned to the MSP Intelligence Operations Center and that she was monitoring Facebook and Twitter with regard to the Flint water crisis.The analyst asked that the U.P. post commander attempt to determine the author’s whereabouts and speak with him regarding the Facebook post.
State records show the man who allegedly wrote the Facebook post was on probation following his involvement in an armed standoff with police in April 2015.
The man was sentenced to two years of probation in September 2015 after pleading no contest to attempted felonious assault following a 12-hour standoff with law enforcement, according to The Daily Mining Gazette. Six other counts, including threats of terrorism, were dismissed in that case.
The charges in that case were filed after police said he made threats against multiple government employees, including a public works employee attempting to disconnect his water over a delinquent bill and a Copper City billing clerk.
Eventually, Flint water claims from the state analyst were forwarded to a Michigan Department of Corrections staffer, which oversees the state’s parole and probation programs.
MDOC spokesman Chris Gautz said a case probation agent looked into the information and sought a probation violation Jan. 22 but a Houghton Circuit Judge Charles Goodman decided against proceeding with the violation.
Goodman could not be reached for comment.
The probationer’s attorney, David Gemignani, declined to comment on the case..
Snyder spokesman Ari Adler declined to comment on what information is shared with his office by the State Police and what is done with it, stating the governor’s office doesn’t “comment on any work or actions by the State Police regarding security issues.”
The governor and his office have received extensive criticism for their handling of the city’s water crisis.
Snyder has been the recipient of public protests outside of his Ann Arbor home and high-profile tongue lashings from Democratic representatives during his March testimony in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The information was released as part of an April 15 release of more than 127,000 pages of state departmental emails related to the Flint water crisis. The dump included emails from the departments of Corrections, Natural Resources, Licensing and Regulatory Affairs and the Michigan Civil Service Commission.
It was the fourth set of emails released by Snyder’s office.
It is unknown how much the state is spending to monitor social media posts about Flint water but the April 15 email release revealed that state officials gave extra pay to more than 30 state workers assigned to special duty on the Flint water crisis.
While the records don’t usually indicate how much the overtime and extra pay awards amount to in total, in some cases, the water emergency resulted in officials receiving thousands of dollars of extra pay.
In one case, George Krisztian, who was assigned to act as a DEQ point of contact on the Flint crisis, received 5 percent extra pay, increasing his annual salary to $104,568 late last year.
Sheryl Thompson, deputy director of MDHHS field operations administration, also received a 5 percent bonus earlier this year for leading a task force to coordinate departmental response to the water crisis, bumping her annual pay to $142,014, the released documents show.
Investigators from Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office, which filed criminal charges against two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality staffers and a city water plant employee, say they have combed through roughly 2.5 million pages of emails as part of their investigation.