<\/p>\n
A British man was reportedly arrested after posting a photo on social media showing him holding a gun.<\/p>\n
The image, taken in the United States, was uploaded to LinkedIn back in August. And, according to Jon Richelieu-Booth, an IT contractor, the photo caused a nightmarish legal drama with the West Yorkshire Police, despite the gun being legal and the image being taken on private property, Metro\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n
Listen to the latest\u00a0episode\u00a0of \u201cQuick Start\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n A cop initially came to his home and warned about his postings, citing a complaint from a person who saw the image. Then, cops came back later that night on August 24 and arrested Richelieu-Booth.<\/p>\n This was only the beginning, as The Yorkshire Post\u00a0reported\u00a0that he ended up having strained relationships with neighbours and others over the constant police presence and even had his equipment and devices seized by cops.<\/p>\n What\u2019s perhaps most perplexing is that the caption and accompanying text purportedly included nothing threatening or legally concerning. Richelieu-Booth\u00a0also told the media\u00a0that he tried to explain to cops that the photo wasn\u2019t taken in the UK and was, instead, captured in America \u2014 but to no avail.<\/p>\n Richelieu-Booth was reportedly held in prison overnight and interrogated, being accused of holding a firearm with the intent to cause fear of violence. After being released on bail, authorities came three other times to visit him through October, Metro reported.<\/p>\n The case was dropped eventually over a lack of evidence, but Richelieu-Booth is now speaking out against what he believes to be an \u201cOrwellian\u201d nightmare.<\/p>\n \u201cI have not been able to sleep, I\u2019ve lived in fear of a knock at my door for the last three months,\u201d he\u00a0said. \u201cI haven\u2019t spoken to my neighbours for four months. It has damaged my ability to run my business. I thought \u20181984\u2019 was a book, not an instruction manual.\u201d<\/p>\n Media outlets are now questioning the decision to arrest Richelieu-Booth over a social media post, something apparently not unique to his situation.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the evidence seen by The Yorkshire Post, there was never a scintilla of a chance of a successful prosecution, and so serious questions remain about the policing standards and motivations applied in this case, and the leadership who permitted his pursuit until the day after this newspaper applied to cover the impending court case,\u201d The Yorkshire Post\u00a0wrote. \u201cIt is not good enough, as it has, for West Yorkshire Police to hide behind its completely inadequate response that Mr Richelieu-Booth might complain about how they treated him, and so will not comment.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police told Metro that the complaint at the center of the crisis was based on fears that the initial photo was a threat.<\/p>\n \u201cPolice received a complaint of stalking involving serious alarm or distress, relating partly to social media posts, several of which included pictures of a male posing with a variety of firearms which the complainant took to be a threat,\u201d the statement\u00a0read. \u201cPolice investigated and charged a man with a public order offence but the case was then discontinued by the CPS.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A British man was reportedly arrested after posting a photo on social media showing him holding a gun. The image, taken in the United States, was uploaded to LinkedIn back in August. And, according to Jon Richelieu-Booth, an IT contractor, the photo caused a nightmarish legal drama with the West Yorkshire Police, despite the gun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2833,2941,2943,685,1141,2940,2939,2942,200,259],"class_list":["post-11629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-arrested","tag-british","tag-gun","tag-man","tag-media","tag-nightmare","tag-orwellian","tag-posing","tag-reportedly","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}