Pat did not demand $300,000 for anything. He only provided that number as a representation of what the site (design, maintenance, hosting and bandwidth) had cost so far. Though I believe that number could be true, that is not the point.
The only thing he did was ask the sheriff to help him pay for part of the future cost of the website. He didn't 'give anything back' because it was all his from the beginning!
If you go and look at the wayback versions, most of the stuff on the site was public documents -- owned by the people of the state, not the sheriff's dept. As far as I can see, there wasn't any special 'sheriff only' info there. If you find something, point it out...but I didn't see anything.
Domain and server were both owned by Pat and the content was (as far as I can tell) accumulated from public documents. How this is extortion and larceny is totally beyond me.
A civil issue? Probably. A criminal issue with penalties of 50 yrs in prison? Not a chance.
First of all, the stories say Pat did not give anybody anything. He bought a domain name (macombsheriff.com), and he built an (apparently popular) community and law enforcement resource. He developed it himself. He hosted it himself. He maintained it himself. He did that for three years -- the entire time trying to engage in discussion with the sheriff about funding.
The sheriff refused to discuss finances. Pat could no longer provide all that effort for nothing, and shut down his site. Then he sold his domain name.
The closest analogy I can think of is this:
The local convienent mart offers free coffee to cops who come in. They do this for years. They decide money is tight and they can't afford to give away coffee anymore. THEN, the store gets raided of all its doughnuts and pastries, and the owner is charged with extortion and larceny for no longer providing free coffee!
Hopefully nobody here would think that would be an appropriate use of law enforcement powers.
"...when the police start resolving contract disputes this way, I think there is cause for concern."
And that is exactly the right point, I think. If the sheriff would have said, "I'm not happy, let's settle this in a civil court." This wouldn't be getting 1/10th the attention it's getting. That's what civil courts are for!
This hillbilly sheriff got too big for his britches and thinks he can use his badge and six-shooter to solve all his problems. He's not acting like he's part of the civilized world, but instead trying to run his own little lower-Michigan junta.
I think some of you relied solely on the poorly written and sheriff-friendly article at the Macomb Daily.
Why don't you see what a real newspaper like the Detroit Free Press has to say about the situation?
Mr. Richard did not ask for $300k. He only cclaimed that to be his previous investment. The only thing he asked for was help in the future.
He gave 12 months formal notice, and more than two years of informal notice, that he needed help financing HIS site. The sheriff refused to help. The site went down. Simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Pat did not demand $300,000 for anything. He only provided that number as a representation of what the site (design, maintenance, hosting and bandwidth) had cost so far. Though I believe that number could be true, that is not the point.
The only thing he did was ask the sheriff to help him pay for part of the future cost of the website. He didn't 'give anything back' because it was all his from the beginning!
If you go and look at the wayback versions, most of the stuff on the site was public documents -- owned by the people of the state, not the sheriff's dept. As far as I can see, there wasn't any special 'sheriff only' info there. If you find something, point it out...but I didn't see anything.
Domain and server were both owned by Pat and the content was (as far as I can tell) accumulated from public documents. How this is extortion and larceny is totally beyond me.
A civil issue? Probably. A criminal issue with penalties of 50 yrs in prison? Not a chance.
First of all, the stories say Pat did not give anybody anything. He bought a domain name (macombsheriff.com), and he built an (apparently popular) community and law enforcement resource. He developed it himself. He hosted it himself. He maintained it himself. He did that for three years -- the entire time trying to engage in discussion with the sheriff about funding.
The sheriff refused to discuss finances. Pat could no longer provide all that effort for nothing, and shut down his site. Then he sold his domain name.
The closest analogy I can think of is this:
The local convienent mart offers free coffee to cops who come in. They do this for years. They decide money is tight and they can't afford to give away coffee anymore. THEN, the store gets raided of all its doughnuts and pastries, and the owner is charged with extortion and larceny for no longer providing free coffee!
Hopefully nobody here would think that would be an appropriate use of law enforcement powers.
"...when the police start resolving contract disputes this way, I think there is cause for concern."
And that is exactly the right point, I think. If the sheriff would have said, "I'm not happy, let's settle this in a civil court." This wouldn't be getting 1/10th the attention it's getting. That's what civil courts are for!
This hillbilly sheriff got too big for his britches and thinks he can use his badge and six-shooter to solve all his problems. He's not acting like he's part of the civilized world, but instead trying to run his own little lower-Michigan junta.
I think some of you relied solely on the poorly written and sheriff-friendly article at the Macomb Daily.
Why don't you see what a real newspaper like the Detroit Free Press has to say about the situation?
Mr. Richard did not ask for $300k. He only cclaimed that to be his previous investment. The only thing he asked for was help in the future.
He gave 12 months formal notice, and more than two years of informal notice, that he needed help financing HIS site. The sheriff refused to help. The site went down. Simple.