“Remember to screen shot every comment you make on the Polk County Sheriff’s Office page, government pages cannot delete comments (which is a violation of the 1st Amendment). They will try everything they can to sweep this under the rug.”
Taylor Cadle’s name has become nationally known in recent months.
In October, PBS NewsHour broadcast a segment detailing how the Polk County Sheriff’s Office charged Cadle, then 12, with filing a false report after she accused her uncle — and adoptive father — of raping her. Cadle, who was required to write letters of apology to Henry Cadle and the Sheriff’s Office, later captured photos and video of Henry as he raped her while stopped in his van along a Polk County road.
That evidence resulted in his prosecution, and he pleaded no contest in 2017 to sexual battery on a child 12 to 18 years old.
Since the October TV report from Rachel de Leon of the Center for Investigative Reporting Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and his office have steadfastly avoided any public comments about the case or Taylor Cadle.
Now, it appears, the department is blocking or removing comments about Taylor Cadle from appearing on its social media accounts.
Mother Jones recently reported on a pattern of comments that mention Cadle disappearing from the agency’s Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram feeds.
The previous articles prompted people from across the country to post comments on the Sheriff’s Office’s accounts, criticizing the agency or seeking an apology or other justice for Cadle, now 21 and living in North Lakeland. Much of the outrage focused on Melissa Turnage, the detective whose investigation led to the 2016 charge against Taylor.
As detailed by reporter Julia Lurie, comments mentioning Taylor Cadle have vanished from the Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts managed by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and the accounts of Judd.
Lurie’s article included screenshots from the three social media platforms suggesting that the Sheriff’s Office has created a filter to remove Cadle’s name from comments. In side-by-side images from Instagram taken in November, a commenter’s question, “When are you going to apologize to Taylor Cadle?” was gone the next day.
Posts mentioning Cadle’s case also vanished from the Facebook feed of the Sheriff’s Office, Mother Jones reported. In one image, a man urged others to document their comments, writing, “Remember to screen shot every comment you make on the Polk County Sheriff’s Office page, government pages cannot delete comments (which is a violation of the 1st Amendment). They will try everything they can to sweep this under the rug.”
Some of the deleted comments did not mention Taylor Cadle by name. One that disappeared from Facebook said, “PBS NEWSHOUR! Ran a story about their treatment of a child’s sexual abuse treating her like a criminal! Make her write an apology letter to her abuser!”
In some instances, the people posting comments could still see them, but the comments were not visible to others, Lurie reported.
“I’m confused, 43 comments and the public can access only 2,” a commenter wrote in November.
The Mother Jones article quoted an unnamed commenter who said he experimented to confirm that any TikTok comments containing the name “Taylor” would disappear from public view. He said that his comment, “What’s your fave taylor swift song” quickly vanished, but “What’s your fave t swift song” did not.
Limited public forums?
Scott Wilder, communications director for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, declined to answer specific questions emailed by The Ledger and said that agency would not discuss the Henry Cadle case. He criticized the reporting by Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting and provided a link to the agency’s social media policy.
“We are not violating anyone’s First Amendment rights on our social media platforms,” Wilder wrote in an email.
The social media policy is posted on the agency’s website, though not on its official Facebook page. The guidelines describe the feeds as “limited public forums for discussion with and among our followers/fans about the posted information.”
The overview states: “The platforms are not intended as a venue or forum for the expression and/or postings of unlimited comments.”
The social media accounts are intended to “convey important public safety information, increase our ability to quickly, effectively, and efficiently reach Polk County and Central Florida residents to help us find criminal suspects” and otherwise fight and reduce crime, the policy says.
The Sheriff’s Office often posts about minor crimes, either through cartoons or videos featuring Judd.
PCSO’s Office of Communications monitors and manages the accounts. The agency reserves the right to remove or block anyone “who posts inappropriate material or violates these posted social media content policies as determined by the Office of Communications staff.”
The policy says that comments should be civil and “related to the posted content.”
Comments described as not allowed include those that defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or violate the legal rights of others; include racism, hatred, slander, threats, obscenity, violence, vulgarity; constitute trolling (deliberately provoking others or maliciously harassing, attacking, or cyberbullying others); contain “disruptively repetitive content” or links to websites; and are “off-topic or not related to the content within the post, or any content posted on the platform.”
A search through the Facebook feed of the Sheriff’s Office finds many comments that could be considered off-topic and, in some cases, cyberbullying toward suspects who are the subjects of posts.
A recent post about DUI arrests drew such comments as “Why doesn’t Polk County have BodyCams?” A few commenters, noticing that some of the suspects had Latino names, made such statements as “Looks like we need to call ICE.”
One follower made successive derogatory posts implying that another commenter was gay.
Under a Facebook video about a woman accused of stealing from a store, several commenters discussed having moved to Florida from other states and the political orientations of various states, comments unrelated to the original post.
In a video from Jan. 29, Judd talked about the arrest of a woman accused of stealing from a Tractor Supply Co. store. One commenter wrote: “Support your local co-ops and farm stores. TSC is fleecing everyone that walks through the door.”
Another commenter described the suspect as a “POS.”
Deletions not allowed
Bobby Block, executive director of the Florida-based First Amendment Foundation, said that the Sheriff’s Office seemed to be violating free speech rules as established by a series of court decisions.
Block cited rulings in which courts sided with individuals who sued public officials over the blocking of comments on their social media accounts. In the case of Davison v. Randall from 2019, a federal court ruled that the “interactive component” of a local official’s Facebook page made it a public forum, meaning that banning a citizen from commenting amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
Comments may be removed if they violate “neutral speech” standards, Block said, but the deletion of comments based on viewpoint or subject matter is a violation of the First Amendment.
“It appears, based on what you’re describing, that he (Judd) could very well be deleting posts to protect himself from what was, in his mind, a less than shining example of police work in the county,” Block said. “If the only threshold is that they (comments) are critical of this less-than-sterling police work, then yes, the courts have found this to be unconstitutional.”
Block said that the removal of critical comments from the social media accounts of government agencies or elected officials is “a widespread practice” in Florida. He said a legal argument could be made that the practice constitutes the destruction of public records.
“But, like many things involving your rights under the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, you’re going to have to sue to assert that,” Block said. “Those are comments that are legally protected. It’s protected speech. The sheriff says that their social media is a limited public forum. Case law seems to indicate that it’s not. If someone sues, we’ll find out who’s right.”