On Sept. 18, Tempe police began surveillance of a suspected criminal in Tucson's Armory Park neighborhood.
The morning of Sept. 24, at 5 a.m., a group of Tempe officers and deputy U.S. Marshals set up near the suspect's home, preparing to serve a search warrant. At 6:30 they watched the suspect let out the dogs and later park a work vehicle in front.
Then they sprang to action and made the arrest. The target: Kathleen "Kadi" Tierney, a longtime political fundraiser in Tucson who had been working this year for Cox Communications as public affairs director.
Her alleged crime: Posting a GIF comment on the Facebook page of a Tempe City Council member that showed a fictional city exploding in fire, in a scene from the Game of Thrones TV series. That day, the council member, who is a fan of the series, reported the post to city leaders as a possible threat, leading to the cancellation of the council meeting out of safety concerns.
A month later, Tempe police were also calling it a felony. They announced Sept. 24 they had arrested Tierney and accused her of felony computer tampering, and two misdemeanors — disorderly conduct and threatening and intimidating. So far, Maricopa County prosecutors are reviewing the case but have not pursued charges.
It's wise they're thinking this over. That's because, based on the 43-page Tempe police report released last week, there doesn't appear to be a crime here, let alone a felony, and severe punishment has already been served.
It's a situation that should remind all of us how careful we need to be online. But it also raises the issue of local government cracking down on the free speech of critics.
Tierney, who does not have a criminal record, told police in an interview that the post was a "joke" that she took down that evening. She didn't realize it was her own post that had got the meeting canceled, instead assuming someone had called in a threat, she told police.
"They make you seem as guilty as possible, then they conduct the investigation," said Tierney's attorney, Booker T. Evans. "Had they done the investigation before arresting her, we wouldn’t have got so far down this road."
Fundraiser for candidates
Tierney, 56 is a longtime Tucsonan who has done fundraising recently for candidates such as Pima County supervisors Rex Scott and Jen Allen, as well as for a variety of ballot issues, especially during former Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild's time in office.
She also was executive director of the Pat Tillman Foundation and joined Cox this year. Her connection to Tempe comes from being longtime friends with former City Manager Andrew Ching, who left in 2023, and from doing work with a couple of officials there, Tierney told police.
That Aug. 28 council meeting was expected to be triumphant for many Tempe residents, and their supporters like Tierney, who opposed an ordinance passed in July by the city council. That ordinance, a response to a lawsuit, imposed new regulations on people wanting to give food to the needy in Tempe parks.
Because the lawsuit had been dismissed in the interim, the city council was expected to rescind the new ordinance Aug. 28. In other words, Tierney had no interest in interfering with that meeting, Evans said. Indeed, although that day's meeting was canceled, the council rescinded the ordinance five days later.
Game of Thrones scene
Shortly before the Aug. 28 meeting was supposed to begin, Tempe council member Randy Keating noticed someone had posted a new comment on a Facebook post he had made two days before, with video of a dust storm. It was Tierney's comment, posting under the name "Kadie Marie," crucially without a last name.
She wrote a reference to the pseudonym of a frequent online critic of Tempe government, saying "Konner Culver watching tonight's meeting." The attached gif, a seconds-long repeating video, shows a person in silhouette overlooking a city in a valley below, where buildings are exploding into fire.
It was a scene from Game of Thrones in which a character, Cersei Lannister, destroys her enemies. Tierney told police, according to the reports, that she didn't know the context of the scene, but that she knew Keating named his dog Cersei after that character. The plot details were important to Keating.
"He said at first he didn't think much of it, but being a Game of Thrones fan he knew that this scene specifically is about the majority of the nobility are (being) murdered," the police report says.
It's of course fair and advisable these days, for people to be cautious about possible threats. Keating showed the post to a deputy city manager, who consulted with others before deciding to cancel that day's meeting. They even evacuated the building.
'Probably a bad joke'
When interviewed by police, Keating told them he does not feel like a victim.
"Now knowing that the post was KATHLEEN, he said he thinks it was probably a bad joke but unfortunately you have to take deadly (sic) serious in this day and age," the report says.
He's right, but once police figured out the post was not a threat, why did they keep pursuing it? Not only did they search Tierney's apartment, but they received search warrants for four digital accounts, going through her text messages and emails as well as posts.
They noted posts such as this comment about legal action involving the current city manager: "The city manager wants to send a message to the current whistleblower and every single other Tempe city employee. Cross me and you will not only lose your job, I will take everything you have."
They also say twice that after sifting through Tierney's online and text messages: "There were no text messages observed with direct connection to Tempe city council or any threats to cause harm to anyone."
A related search warrant served as part of this investigation also allowed Tempe police to uncover the name of the pseudonymous Konner Culver a frequent online critic: He was Steven Methvin, a previous deputy city manager.
Lost job, reputation
In the aftermath of her arrest, announced by Tempe police and covered heavily in the Phoenix media, Tierney lost her job at Cox. Her reputation has also taken a hit, Evans said.
Of course, she brought some of the consequences on herself with the ill-advised post. People need to learn not to get so carried away with their political posting. But if her post was not a threat, it was protected free speech.
Treating that speech as if it were criminal allowed the city of Tempe to dig into the private records of some of its most persistent critics and track one of them down in Armory Park, in the words of her attorney, as if they "they were coming after a terrorist."
