Broward Sheriff Blocks Filmmaker Billy Corben on Twitter; Is This a Public Records Violation?

Chris Joseph January 2, 2015 1:50PM

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Local documentarian Billy Corben has claimed on his Twitter and Facebook feeds that the Broward Sheriff's Office twitter account blocked him over a tweet regarding a story of one of their deputies being arrested for shoplifting.

The issue came up late Thursday night after Corben tweeted a story linked to CBS12.com about Deputy Theodore Parrish being charged for shoplifting food items from Walmart.

Moments after that tweet, Corben tweeted a screen grab of the BSO twitter feed blocking him from following them. Corben also took to Facebook and questioned BSO's transparency.

But there's also a greater question here: Is the BSO twitter feed violating public records laws by blocking people from seeing their tweets?

This is what @BrowardSheriff calls transparency: blocking me for tweeting about the arrest of one of their deputies pic.twitter.com/zZdGWSp4X4
— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) January 2, 2015

Corben claims that the agency blocked him after he tweeted that story. But BSO tells New Times that Corben has actually been blocked for months. And that the reason had to do with profane comments directed at the BSO twitter feed from Corben's followers.

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