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Subscribe to RSSThe New York Police Department is investigating threats made on Twitter against Mike Tyson's Broadway show. WNBC's Chris Glorioso reports.
Updated at 5:13 p.m. ET: The NYPD subpoenaed Twitter Tuesday, forcing the social networking site to reveal the identity of the user who threatened to execute a "Batman"-style shooting rampage at a Broadway theater, police said.
"This s---t ain't no joke yo -- I'm serious, people are gonna die like aurora," the person tweeted, referring to the July massacre at a Colorado movie theater where a man in tactical gear opened fire on movie-goers during a showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."
Twelve people died in the Colorado shooting. Another 58 were wounded. Suspect James Holmes, 24, remains jailed on first-degree murder charges in that case.
See the original report | More from NBCNewYork.com
The Twitter user being eyed by the NYPD threatened to unleash similar carnage at the Longacre Theatre in midtown, where Mike Tyson is currently performing his one-man show "Undisputed Truth."
Detectives asked Twitter to turn over the user's information when the NYPD first noticed the posts, but the social media site refused. In an e-mail, the site told police it did not appear the tweet in question fell within its parameters for invoking emergency-disclosure procedures.
Michael Loccisano / Getty Images
From left, director Spike Lee, Lakiha 'Kiki' Spicer and husband, Mike Tyson, during a curtain call for "Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth" at the Longacre Theatre on Aug. 2, 2012, in New York.
As a precaution, the NYPD dispatched officers to the theater. Chief NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said the NYPD would continue to secure the theater until the Twitter user who made the threat was found. Twitter has since complied with the subpoena, providing police with the information they requested.
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"We take the threat seriously, especially in light of recent attacks in Wisconsin and Colorado," Browne said.
The menacing tweets referring to New York began last week, when the user wrote about making a hit list and tweeted, "i wanna kill alot of people."
On July 29, the user tweeted, "I might just shoot up this theater in new York I know they leave their exit doors unlocked. Ha now I gotta plan it step by step."
On Aug. 2, the user responded to another user tweet about Tyson's show playing at the Longacre "right now" with the tweet, "Well ima shoot that theater up tonight just trust me."
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On Aug. 3, responding to a tweet that mentioned not seeing anything on the news about the threat from the previous night, the user tweeted, "I had last minute plans. I'm in Florida rite now but it'll happen i promise I'm just finishing up my hit list."
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WOW, a threat from an illiterate tweeter...........what a surprise! It amazes me how stupid some people are, that think they can tweet something and get away without anyone knowing who sent it. DUH! My guess is this guy doesn't have a pot to piss in and couldn't afford bullets for a gun, much less an actual gun itself. He is just some nobody that desperately needs attention and this is the ONLY way he will ever get any. After successfully completing his senior year in school (6th grade), he probably has gone on to greater accomplishments like learning how to spell his name. What, I take that back, he probably can't spell his own name yet. Sorry.
Now I can understand why he would want to do this at Mike Tysons show, because anybody that is stupid enough to actually buy a ticket to that circus probably deserves to die, but not BATMAN STYLE (If I'm not mistaken, most serious criminals always use a comic book character for inspiration don't they?).
Oh God, now I see he has come to Florida, just what we need down here, another nut job! But our Governor (Ricky Scotty-Chief Nut Job) will probably hire him as a consultant!
Yeah, usually when people talk @!$%# they don't do anything. The ones that do go out and kill, usually don't talk @!$%#.
I can understand why people want to go and live in the middle of nowhere....away from most other human beings.
Oh great, he's in Floriduh right now.
It's easy for kooks and crooks to hide out here.
I am guessing that twitter has some information about this user, like his location, that is telling them that this is not a serious threat. Otherwise I can not see how Twitter can say that "... it did not appear the tweet in question fell within its parameters for invoking emergency-disclosure procedures." Twitter has obviously done some investigation on their own to determine the threat is no real, although I would definitely feel more comfortable if they allowed to police to make that determination as well. Instead Twitter forced the police to take the extra step of getting a subpoena in order to obtain the real identity of the user making the threats. Regardless of whether the threats were serious or not, this person is going to find out that the police do not take kindly to these kinds of threats. They are going to have their lives made miserable, at least for a little while, by the NYPD. They may even find themselves doing prison time for making the threats even if they were never serious about carrying them out.
Not sure which is worse--the article or the above comment...
I think it's pretty sad that NYPD had to supoena Twitter to get to the bottom of this.
I'm sorry but someone threatening to kill people should definitely be in the parameteres for invoking emergency-discluse procedures. If someone wants to take to social media sites to say stupid things then by all means that site should be able to tell the police who that person is.
I say if Twitter does not want to relase the info on the person and SOMETHING does happen then I hope ever person who is injured SUES the helll out of Twitter. IMHO Twitter is for those who have NO lives!!!!I for one am too busy to tweet every move I make throughout the day.
Twitter is for fools anyway, dumbest thing I've ever seen.
Our world has gone completely crazy.
I'm gonna arm myself and go live in a hole in the middle of the woods.
Whoever this is is exercising their right to free speech. I hope this person is also ready to accept the consequences of that speech.
Threats are now being taken very seriously and Twitter and Facebook are among the websites Homeland Security monitors for possible terrorism activity. Some, as a way of rebelling against the establishment, randomly insert keywords or post messages like this as a way of 'getting the government riled up' for no reason, but few stop to think about the possible consequences of those actions, not only for themselves but for others.
Earlier this year the University of Pittsburgh received a handful of emailed bomb threats. The emails were traced by the FBI to an anonymous remailer program on various sites hosted by an overseas firm, who had space subcontracted to a server hosted by PeopleLink, a democracy advocacy group in new York. The FBI informed them that the threats were being routed through their server, and despite PeopleLink's efforts to provide the FBI with the information they requested without actually giving them access to the server (PeopleLink coordinates democracy advocacy advocates from all over the world, many of them from countries in which their lives would be in danger from their own government if their identities were to be revealed), the FBI took their server from the server farm where it was housed, held it for three days to about a week, then mysteriously returned it one morning with no notice to anyone--the security camera catches three people in dark clothing, presumably FBI, putting the server back on its shelf, plugging it in, and doing something to the equipment and watching it for several minutes in an apparent effort to make sure it worked before leaving. They did not inform PeopleLink that they were returning the server, and they gave no information about what they did with it during the time they held it. People Link suspect that the remailer program that allows persons to send anonymous emails was somehow infected and have not returned the server to service.
It's an object lesson--think about what you're doing before you do it, for pity's sake! Being antiestablishmentarian is all very well and good, that is your right and our country was founded on such, but you can end up hurting many, many more people than just yourself with these kinds of pranks.
I'm not saying that the threats are a prank, and I do believe that they need to be investigated, but if this does turn out to be a joke or prank its in very poor taste and the person doing it needs to grow up.
Amanda
I followed your post as it seemed intelligent, until one comment you made.
I do agree with your next statement that it one's right, but the country was not founded on antiestablishment values, the opposite is true. In an antiestablishment styled society there would be no infrastructure of any kind and absoluteness nothing would work together for any common good, pure antiestablishment is the definition of anarchy. It may seem like fun and games for those that join it, but its pure poison to a peaceful society (im not confusing peaceful will controlled either). Totalitarianism is government control at extreme, on the same scale antiestablishment society has no control and then you have what Syria is experiencing right now.
Part of the reason that setters came here from Europe as to get away from the establishment, and so some of the values--like getting away from government control, less government and rule by the people, ring true as far as the reasons for colonizing this continent. But no, I agree with you that pure anarchy is the eventual goal of true antiestablishmentarianism, so in my post I should have specified that while some of the principles are good, it's not completely the basis of our Country's founding.
Congrats for even knowing what the word means, by the way--all too often here on newsvine I run into people who have problems with words of two syllables, let alone words with eleven!
There are way too many weirdos in this world and the cost to the normal people is outrageous. I would like to know how much money the guys tweet has cost taxpayers for police to investigate his dumb ramblings.
I am more concerned about the person actually doing something. See my other posts below. Seriously, your precious tax dollars again? Really????
I don't know about precious tax dollars, but if this is an idiot making empty threats, they should understand that responding to his little joke costs money and they should be fined accordingly. Idiots sometimes need to be made an example of, so hopefully the rest of the idiots get a clue.
Who the hell would even want to see dimwitt Mike Tyson do anything ... White people hater Spike Lee will give out his address to all as soon as the racist finds it out.
Raymond,
That was my first thought...Mike Tyson has a show? And people want to see it?
Evander Hollyfield said, I'll teach him to bite my ear!
Based on these tweets, these threats ABSOLUTELY need to be taken seriously. He speaks of hit lists and PLANNING. In other words, this person has been planning for some time probably and will actually carry something out. That's my take on it. Just remember George Sodini, James Holmes, Loughner, Brevik, ALL OF THEM, put planning into their efforts and carried it out over time. Sodini even kept a blog where he posted month after month about how close he was getting to the shooting, and how he had planned it for a long time but chickened out at first.
NYPD needs to find this guy. I have no knowledge of who it is, but I can pretty much gaurentee this person is serious. Who would type something that profound and not mean it? Seems too extreme for someone to be trolling.
twitter, reveal the tweets before something happens!!!!
No yelling on the Vine? This is something to yell about!!!!
...More Obamaganda to get us ready for his upcoming harsh gun control legislation.
getagrip1,
"his upcoming harsh gun control legislation"
Can you provide a source for your comment other than Limpballs or Faux News?
As a gun owner this concerns me.
I research .gov sites for past and proposed legislation and this proposed legislation you speak of is absent.
I am always willing to review fresh, factual material on this claim.
I was thinking more of a Patriot Act 2.0 that will force Twitter and other places to expose users private information for any reason. I am glad that they have to go through the proper channels to get the information (although, I'd like to see those channels made a LOT more efficient! Too much red tape and 'have to wait until Monday, regular business hours' to do much good).
You have a right to privacy, even online with a public website. I can see how it would do a lot of good to just give up the information, but where would they stop?
Just an opinion. Not really bashing anyone or arguing. Just a thought....
PC TWITTER is NOT PRIVATE! Its an electronic public billboard. So anything said on it can be held against you. If it were private then police wouldn't even have heard about it. You put a person's right to threaten and plan murder above victim's rights to protect themselves, that is NOT the way it should be nor does it make a free society either.
"Detectives asked Twitter to turn over the user's information when the NYPD first noticed the posts, but the social media site refused. In an e-mail, the site told police it did not appear the tweet in question fell within its parameters for invoking emergency-disclosure procedures."
Twitter - just three letters away from "twit".
We live in an incredibly backwards country. When G.W. Bush wanted to data mine for information, with no specific threat to speak of, the phone companies gave them complete access to information. Now that there is an explicit threat, Twitter will not cooperate. In my opinion, if this nut hurts someone, the executives at twitter should be held CRIMINALLY liable and do time in Attica or some other maximum security prison. Legally, that's not possible, but it would convince the next "born with a silver spoon in the mouth" executive that withholding information that may prevent the death of innocent people will not be tolerated.
"no specific data to speak of" ...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ... you gotta love the mindlessly ignorant toad stools from the left and their knowledge of well, NOTHING.
There are LOTS of reports about how many potential terr0rist incidents have been thwarted because of those policies and they continue to be very effective to this day.
Also lemming, the way the Patriot Act was established, referring to authoritative guidelines concerning civil liberties, the only people that had anything to worry about were those that received phone calls from zones that had been classified as terr0rist hotbeds or those that were moving around cash in denominations of over $10K, which became $2.5K ... neither I'm sure were / are things you would have to worry about.
Ok, so Mikey partially ate someones ear, went to prison for Rape, beat his wife, .....Why, oh why would anyone have a problem with Mike? Oh, Wait a minute.... Beat His Wife... Prison for rape... .....Hmmmm seems to be a pattern emerging here.
Yer Pal Always,
Thee
I for one would love to see a picture of this guy, there is no telling what he looks like (snicker) ... even though the mostly illiterate half-wit won't do a thing, how many people could actually be in a theater at a one man Mike Tyson show, no one would be kiIIed no many how many shots were fired?!
People never seemed to get tired of acting a fool!
So, would a threat need to be nuclear before Twitter considered it an emergency? WTH????????
Well, if he do decide to carry out his threat, he better do it when Tyson ain't there, because if Tyson get his big mitts on him, it's lights out for the dummy....And screw twitter and their stupid rules.
Wow.....I didn't realize Mike Tyson's show was that bad. BTW other than boxing what talent does Mike Tyson possess?
biting is one that I heard of
Tyson is a pos and a joke if it saves lives cancel his show and solve the problem
Bit** gotta all go puss* on dem twitta... can't all face Tyson like uh wheeeel man... Yo...
Ebonics, when all else fails within your academic environment always trust in your ebonics.
I've liked Mike since he was a teenager under the tutelage of Cus D'Amato. He's my homey. We're both born in Brooklyn!
No one compared to him in his prime as a boxer. He made lots of mistakes in life. Hurt people for no apparent reason. But he knows what he is and has done.
The interview that he did on the YESNETWORK, with Michael Kay, was one of most emotional things I've ever seen. Heart wrenching actually.
The fact he has a one man show on Broadway isn't a surprise to me, nor is the fact that some nutjob is threatening him and the audience over Twitter.
I've never had a Twitter account, because I do not live any where near cell phone coverage. They should be forced to give up the name and location of the person who is making these threats. People who use this "system" for communications are all crazy imo and should delete their accounts until the honchos at Twitter give up this person's identitiy to law enforcement. It is no doubt some person intent upon publicity and has not the courage to actually do anything.
Anyone who was planning to attack a theater, would just do it and not issue a warning.
Can you imagine the lawsuits twitter would have if this person delivered on his threats and they refused to identify them to police?
I can't decide what's more disturbing. The nut that made this threat or the fact that Mike Tyson has show. Way of the world, I guess.