socialmedian: Woman Arrested for Facebook Poke

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clips

Woman Arrested for Facebook Poke

Source: mashable

Oct 10, 2009

Summary

Beware: a Facebook poke could land you behind bars. Just ask Shannon D. Jackson of Hendersonville, Tennessee, who faces that very real possibility.

Jackson was arrested and transported to Sumner County Jail on September 25th with a bond set at $1,500 after she violated an order of protection by allegedly poking a woman on Facebook. The alleged poke broke the terms of the court order: “no telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”

If found guilty, Jackson could face some more extended jailtime: a possible 29 days in jail and a fine of up to $2,500. The Tennessean writes:

According to the affidavit filed in Sumner County General Sessions Court, Jackson is accused of using the “poke” option on Facebook to contact a Hendersonville woman, thus violating the terms of the order of protection…Hendersonville police have made copies of the page in which the alleged victim is shown to be “poked,” according to the affidavit.

While the story seems unbelievable at first glance, the logic is impeccable: poking a person on Facebook is indeed a

...Read the full article

Comments (8)

Ricky1146,

Oct 11, 2009

I can see it happening

Denise Washington,

Oct 12, 2009

What part of "no communicating with the petitioner" did she not understand? Probably thought the "petitioner" was somebody else!!

Girlintheforest,

Oct 12, 2009

Well ... okay. But wow this seems ridiculous! Police records of Facebook pokes, wow ...

Still, dumb on the part of that woman. If it did say, "no communication," then it did say that.

Stefn3245,

Oct 12, 2009

How ridiculous can you get.

Eyebee,

Oct 13, 2009

OK, on first glance it seems ridiculous. While I don't know the whole story, there was obviously a reason for the order of pretection in the first place.

Repeated poking could certainly be annoying in normal circumstances, and could be considered harassment if it got out of hand, and if it's from someone that you've already had to get an order of protection against, it's probably much more than that.

There has to be a lot more to this story that just a Facebook poke.

Girlintheforest,

Oct 13, 2009

I agree. It does sound wild at first glance so it makes a good story, even though the background story might be logical.

Eyebee,

Oct 13, 2009

That's the way the whole corporate media empire works these days though doesn't it?

Take a sensationalist soundbite and get it all out of context. Then the people watching don't really listen/watch/read the story, and before you know it, (in this case) there's a whole huge group of people going around telling everyone else that you can get arrested for poking someone on Facebook!