“Unacceptable behavior,” by Councilman Shawn Juris

[Mike Zannoni]

Folks--- I'd say a more than reasonable enough time has passed particularly if one has felt violated by a criminal act to notify the police or proper authorities.
This could easily be confirmed by the posting of the police report number.
Stan Austin

Yes, and if Steve Davis and/or Jim O'Bryan truly feel criminally victimized, they really ought to if they haven't already. They have not really been a part of the conversation, other than Steve's initiating it.

[Stan Austin]

Mike--- You are now delving into the esoteric , "victimology" which has been a bugagaboo by the entire political spectrum.

You have laid down the challenge to several of the participants in this exchange as have I.

Let's wait for their respective responses.

Stan

[Mike Zannoni]

Not saying Steve did this, but the picture was almost definitely altered with photoshop, it looks like more than just the back of his email was whitened.

I'm not sure what exactly you are seeing, Ryan, but I am fairly experienced in photo manipulation, and I see nothing "tell-tale" about it. There are artifacts from reduction in resolution, called aliasing, coming from reducing the pixel count (size) from full screen to smaller, and there are compression artifacts from the making of a file from the screen image itself, from creating a jpeg file from the native “bitmap” of a PC or Mac display, which reduces the file size by grouping redundancies of similar color and tone, tending to "flatten" the image, making similar shades the same shade.

But other than the "whiting out" of the domain name of Steve's email address I see nothing I don't see every day in my own screen captures.

I’m not a forensic computer scientist by any stretch, but it doesn’t look altered to me.

[Jeff Dreger]

Mr. Juris: What is the status of the investigation? What is the police report number?

Mr. Davis: Have you been contacted by the authorities?

If anyone else has information, that too would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Will Brown]

It hardly takes a technical wizard to send an email with a faked address. I would think any number of people who follow this board are capable of doing it.

And with the animus between some of us, it is certainly conceivable that someone would send a faked email to make the purported sender look bad. It wouldn't be the first dirty trick played.

I would hope that the police have something better to do than to investigate what doesn't appear to be a crime. Perhaps the original email could be shown to some clever sixth-grader who could see where it came from.

Since the email is apparently in the possession of the staff of the Lakewood Observer, I should think they are in the best position to investigate the email, unless they already know who created it, and don't want that information to come out.

[Grace O'Malley]

A prosecutor could find several ways of charging a person for a crime in this case. Impersonating someone else, particularly a public official, is a crime. Also, if Shawn's business account was used to send this without his knowledge, that is also a crime.

Let's be real, Shawn probably DID send that email, a grave mistake, then compounded the problem by denying he sent it when publicly exposed.

[Jeff Dreger]

Mr. Juris has already indicated that the police were investigating and that he was leaving it to them. I am merely requesting an update.

Regardless of the ultimate source of the email, I find this extremely troubling. If others feel that this is not a big deal, I will just agree to disagree. If my identity were stolen in such a manner, I would be all over it including alerting authorities as well as my contacts. If I were libeled by false images/posts, I would be all over that as well especially as a public servant and/or businessperson. That anyone would dismiss this as just folks bickering is upsetting. I have seen plenty of bickering on here and choose to stay out of it most of the time, but this an entirely different thing. At least to me. I just want to see evidence that this is indeed being followed up on and then I'll let the authorities deal with it. If there continues to be the impression that this may be a real message from a councilperson threatening LO/JOB that was simply denied/ignored then there should be more done. I don't know the individuals involved here and I don't want to rush to judgement but I am starting to get a bad feeling about this with the seeming lack of openness and follow up.

[Joe McClain]

Maybe I can shed some light on this issue.

There seems to be three possible scenarios:

1. Shawn Juris sent the e-mail, then denied it after Steve Davis made his post on the Observation Deck

2. Steve Davis made up the e-mail, then altered/fabricated a screen shot after Shawn Juris disavowed the e-mail.

3. The e-mail was the work of some hacker, a person who had unauthorized access to Shawn Juris's business account . Let's call him/her the Phantom Phisher.

Let's leave exotic scenarios involving amnesia and alien abductions out of this right now. Does anyone believe that the Phantom Phisher scenario is credible? Of course this sort of thing happens all the time, but the author of the message knew Mr. Juris was in a position of some authority. He or she also knew that Mr. Juris wanted to address the board of the Observer and that Mr. Davis was somehow connected to the Observer. There were none of the earmarks of phishing or spam. So what is the possible motive? Is it reasonable to suppose someone would risk arrest to create a minor bit of mischief between a councilman and the Observer? If you look at other Ob. Deck threads, you'll see that the relationship between the councilman and the Observer is a bit strained.

Once we discount the Phantom Phisher, that leaves Mr. Juris or Mr. Davis as the possible responsible parties. I want to point out that I had a lengthy phone conversation with Mr. Davis the night before he made the initial post. He explained the situation to me and shared his concern. We talked about the absurdity of it all and I remember saying that an attempted coup on Jim O'Bryan by an elected official would be like calling for an ouster of Chas Geiger because you didn't like the shirt he sold you. We talked for nearly two hours and I made some suggestions.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am friends with both Steve Davis and Jim O'Bryan. That said, I believe that the preponderance of evidence points to Mr. Davis's original story as the more credible.

No I haven't overlooked the possibility of someone pouncing on Mr. Juris's unattended keyboard to send the message, but once again: Why? Who would benefit? Why is Mr. Juris leaving his computer unattended in the presence of those who wish to embarrass him?

I hope this helps. If not, consult the Dalai Lama.

Joe

[Grace O'Malley]

Scenario 2 doesnt work. How could Steve alter the email AFTER Shawn disavowed it when he posted it in the opening post?

[Corey Rossen]

I agree that this should be looked into and investigated. I agree that it is a serious matter - regardless of the outcome of the investigation, whether it be focused on Davis, the "Phantom Phisher" or Juris. I also hope that whomever does the investigating took English class at Lakewood High School. I remember having to break down point of view, meaning, intended audience and semantics (amongst many other things) of many literature pieces, stories, and letters.

"Steve, I am sick and tired of the Lakewood Observer’s bullying and shenanigans. Jim O’Bryan has got to go. I will use the full force and power of my position to make this clear. I look forward to our meeting."

The supposed author is Shawn Juris who has three roles in Lakewood - resident, businessman and council person. What point of view is this coming from? Email address indicates from the business address, but which role is the author writing as?

"Full force and power" from which role, resident, businessman, council? Where is the force directed - making it clear that the Lakewood Observer bullies, or, making it clear that the LO conducts shenanigans, or, making it clear of the opinion that Jim O'Bryan has to go? As a resident he can stand up for himself and speak out in accordance within the laws. As a businessman in the community, he can stand up and speak out within the laws. Council is where it would become a serious problem.

The meeting part was addressed in a previous thread where Juris was told to submit to be a part of the meeting, he could not just show up. In accordance, Jim O'Bryan and Shawn Juris apparently worked that part out.

I would think that addressing him as Councilman Juris throughout the thread does show due respect for the position he holds, but also may be inaccurate depending on the role/point of view the supposed email suggests.

I have always loved semantics and the power of language. My wife hates that I love semantics so much!

Corey

[John LePlae]

To be honest, I never expected for one second for Shawn to file a police report. The "police looking into it" is probably someone he knows on the force that he mentioned it to. We'll see but it doesn't look good after this much time has passed.

[Peter Grossetti]

It is being reported (elsewhere) http://lakewood-oh.patch.com/articles/councilman-juris-claims-email-account-was-hacked that a police report has, in deed, been filed.

[Brian Pedaci]

An article on... another site has the Mayor quoted as saying the police are taking the matter very seriously, which indicates a formal police report had been filed.

"However, Juris claims that he didn’t send the email, noting that his account had been “manipulated.”

He filed the police report later in the day.

As of Thursday afternoon, the report was not available.

“The police are investigating,” Juris, who represents Ward 3, told Lakewood Patch.

Mayor Michael Summers said the police department is taking the report seriously.

“The first question is ‘was there a crime committed?’” he said. “Was there an identity theft or the impersonating of a public official? Right now, they’re trying to figure out the facts and whether a crime has occurred.”

According to the city’s codified ordinances, those charges are classified as first-degree misdemeanors.

“There’s something to be learned from all of this,” Summers said. “I am not sure what it is. I am certainly willing to give Councilman Juris the benefit of the doubt. I think he deserves that. Calling for his head is uncalled for.”

I agree with the Mayor. I also am not sure what is to be learned from all this.

[Missy Limkemann]

The one thing I find disturbing about this is the "body" of the email. Normally when you get hacked, someone sends a false link to your address book. i seem to get those emails daily from various friends. (my mom fell victim to her email being hacked and she sent me several emails with goofy links but it was a yahoo account )

I do remember, maybe about a year ago someone else had their personal email hacked and emails were sent out that they were visiting another country, got mugged and needed money sent so they could get home. Everything was stolen etc. I am sure I could dig that up here because I remember it being posted on the deck. However that person was not out of the country and was sitting at home minding their own business.

[Scott Meeson]

I agree that this should be looked into and investigated. I agree that it is a serious matter - regardless of the outcome of the investigation, whether it be focused on Davis, the "Phantom Phisher" or Juris. I also hope that whomever does the investigating took English class at Lakewood High School. I remember having to break down point of view, meaning, intended audience and semantics (amongst many other things) of many literature pieces, stories, and letters.

"Steve, I am sick and tired of the Lakewood Observer’s bullying and shenanigans. Jim O’Bryan has got to go. I will use the full force and power of my position to make this clear. I look forward to our meeting."

The supposed author is Shawn Juris who has three roles in Lakewood - resident, businessman and council person. What point of view is this coming from? Email address indicates from the business address, but which role is the author writing as?

"Full force and power" from which role, resident, businessman, council? Where is the force directed - making it clear that the Lakewood Observer bullies, or, making it clear that the LO conducts shenanigans, or, making it clear of the opinion that Jim O'Bryan has to go? As a resident he can stand up for himself and speak out in accordance within the laws. As a businessman in the community, he can stand up and speak out within the laws. Council is where it would become a serious problem.

The meeting part was addressed in a previous thread where Juris was told to submit to be a part of the meeting, he could not just show up. In accordance, Jim O'Bryan and Shawn Juris apparently worked that part out.

I would think that addressing him as Councilman Juris throughout the thread does show due respect for the position he holds, but also may be inaccurate depending on the role/point of view the supposed email suggests.

I have always loved semantics and the power of language. My wife hates that I love semantics so much!

Corey

Hello Corey,

Interesting post!

Whose interests are being pursued with the following post from the " Next Board Meeting" thread:

Shawn Juris
Post subject: Re: Next Board Meeting Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:05 am[

Gee Gary, maybe you're right. Hmmmm, maybe we can answer it here then.
Is the role of the board to serve the mission and ensure that management/staff abide by and ensure policies are complied with? Say for instance if there was a breech of policies where someone was threatening, or slanderous or otherwise not being civil, would the board step in? Would they treat all equally or would it matter that it was the Publisher who's behavior would be considered utterly inappropriate had his target not been a public official? Would it be addressed if say a poster expressed that she felt insulted because this poster dismissed her position and argument by ignoring the message and attacking the person. I seem to recall these were some of the no no's from the old rules of engagement that were kicked around. Would a board member address a claim that is obviously a lie or would they allow their own name to be used to defend the misrepresentation. Has the board become comfortable with this not being a place to amplify civic intelligence and replaced "good neighbors talking over a digital fence" with something all together different? I suppose in general, I'm at a loss for what this forum has become and what it's stated purpose is. If it has people that are sincere then maybe it's worth a run, but if it's just another place for people to yell at each other and spread ignorance, then that's another story.
Just curious. Thanks. My email is shawn@thejurisagency.com if the board would like me to "stop by". I thought that the meetings were open but maybe I was thinking of the advisory committee or something else completely.

Thread Link:http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11026

Just asking.

Scott Meeson