The New York Police Department (NYPD) will subpoena Twitter in an attempt to uncover the identity of a user who threatened a massacre at a Broadway theater.
Officers swarmed the Longacre Theater in Manhattan, where Mike Tyson is performing a one-man show through Aug. 12, following one user’s threat to “shoot that theater up” on Friday. That threat, which the user likened to the Aurora, Colo. shootings last month, was not carried out—the user claimed to be out of town at the last minute.
The NYPD wanted to discover the identity of the person who sent those messages. The police made an emergency request to Twitter for the user’s contact details according to The New York Post. Twitter refused to cooperate, however.
“We appreciate the timeliness and sensitivity of this matter, and have reviewed the reported Twitter account,” it told the NYPD via email Saturday. “While we do invoke emergency-disclosure procedures when it appears that a threat is present, specific and immediate, this does not appear to fall under those strict parameters as per our policies.”
A police spokesman said the NYPD obtained a subpoena from the District Attorney’s office Monday. It plans to send it to Twitter Tuesday.
Meanwhile, when asked by another community member why he did not carry out his threat, the user in question responded, “I had last minute plans and I’m in Florida rite now but it’ll happen i promise I’m just finishing up my hit list.”
Photo by Broadway Tour