In a letter to the City Attorney's Office the North Tonawanda Common Council has called for a through review of the Mayor's conduct. The Common Council stating they were "greatly disturbed by the possibility that taxpayer-funded resources were used to suppress political speech at the direction of an elected official."
In a grave reach of mayoral authority North Tonawanda Mayor Austin Tylec requested two police officers over to “Restful Sleepin” furniture store to question employee, Jacob Quinn about a parody Facebook account. The Mayor has described Quinn as an antagonist.
“They asked for me. I came out there and the police said, we're here to question you about your connection with an anti mayoral spoof page, like a parody page. And I go, I have no idea what you're talking about. And the officer goes, well, Mayor Tylec has instructed our police chief that you are the creator of this page, and we're here to get you to shut it down. We need to look at your phone. We need to verify this. So you know, I complied. I didn't know what else to do at the time they're at my work. I have customers coming in and out. The day had just started. I needed to, you know, get this going. So I gave him my phone, and then when they left, you know, I kind of completely felt violated, because they had looked at my phone, they had seen nothing, and there is nothing on my phone, because I'm not the guy who created the page,” said Quinn.
Although Quinn willfully gave over his phone, he mentioned the police did not show him a warrant. Joseph Finnerty, a first amendment lawyer, called what the Mayor did a violation of Quinn's first amendment right.
“So when a public official who has power over a police force dispatches that force to interrogate an individual on that individual's statements and views. It's something that I consider, at least, to be very extraordinary and should be considered extraordinarily rare and in fact, a non-existent type of invasion of a citizen's rights to express himself.”
North Tonawanda Common Council member Frank DiBernardo mentioned he understands why Quinn would be upset but at the moment, there's nothing the Common Council can do about it.
“Anybody in their right mind, if the police show up at your place of employment with questions, would be upset. So Jake has a right to ask questions, and they gotta, they gotta find out why this happened the way it happened, period. And if it was not proper, that has to be addressed. Mayor has to own [it]. They gotta address that. But once again, that would not be anything that we can deal with. The council, you know, we're all elected positions. The mayor doesn't work for us. We're the legislative branch. He's the [executive] branch, and that is outside of our wheelhouse. So….would we make a statement? I don't want to comment because we don't, we won't know, and if it comes out [that] something that was done wrong, we're gonna have to have to talk to [the legal team] and say, Okay, you guys tell [us] the next step.
Quinn mentioned he does plan on taking legal action against the mayor. Mayor Tylec has since come forth and apologized to Quinn regarding the incident. To listen to the full story please click the blue listen button above.
