There is a strange obsession with the Coyotes that a group of disturbed Canadians have, they express their obsession nearly constantly on Twitter, Facebook and Internet bulletin boards dedicated to their negative fascination with the Coyotes. Some are rational, many more are semi-rational and many are disturbed enough to personally attack people such as Glendale council members doing their jobs.
Some are odd enough that they will use photographs of Coyotes fans and their children, some children younger than TWO, to add to their street cred with the other trolls. Sad, really, but cyberbullying is a fact of life in social media.
Once in awhile, though, somebody will cross a line and law enforcement will get involved.
Haters Gonna Hate
Here’s a November 20, 2012 tweet from the person who may be the queen of Internet trolls obsessed with the Phoenix Coyotes:
@CoyotesClubber URGING all #Nordiques fans! Email yknaack@glendaleaz.com and pretend you are a raging #Coyotes fan demanding YES vote!
A picture was attached to the tweet:
Twitter Screenshot
Here is the link to the tweet and the associated picture, it may or may not be active depending on the level of seriousness the troll feels she should give to a police investigation:
https://twitter.com/CoyotesClubber/status/271134245173485568
http://twitter.com/CoyotesClubber/status/271134245173485568/photo/1
Right around the same time the above tweet was posted, an email was indeed sent to CM Knaack. That email was, indeed, following the guidelines laid out by the troll in question. The timing is SO close, in fact, and required preparation to send, that one could assume that it was indeed the same person sending the email that posted the tweet.
Why Would A Human Do That?
Whether a human would, in fact, perform the above series of behaviors is debatable because the jury is out on the human/sub-human/cockroach nature of the Internet troll beast. But…
Cockroach At Work
By way of background, CM Knaack is likely to be the deciding vote on Tuesday, November 27 in the effort to ratify the arena lease agreement between Glendale and Hockey Partners. There is an inordinate amount of Canadian interest in this vote, partly because “Nordiques” (a defunct NHL hockey team) fans feel the Coyotes may be a likely tenant in the arena their government will be building soon.
The tweet in question has two “hashtags” (words/phrases preceded by a pound sign) in it, “#Nordiques” and “#Coyotes”. Hashtags are used to follow a particular subject, users of Twitter will add the hashtag to their “feed” to watch the commentary of other users. In this case, the troll wanted the request to send fake emails to CM Knaack to appear in the feeds of people interested in both the Pacific Division Champion Coyotes and the extinct Nordiques.
The screenshot of a tweet from me and one from Greg Dunaway show that we were trying to reduce the amount of emails being sent to CM Knaack from any of “our” people. Through a conversation with CM Knaack (something that no troll has bothered to manage) we found out that she had already received a series of emails from Coyotes fans regarding her vote. She was of the opinion that the emails “weren’t helping”, so we tried to cut them off. There was never any concerted effort to harass CM Knaack from real Coyotes fans while we see there was definitely plans afoot from the troll side.
Just The Facts
On Friday morning, two detectives from Glendale visited Darrold Larson. The subject they were interested in was an email sent from “darroldlarsen@yahoo.com” to CM Knaack:
From: Darrold Larsen [mailto:darroldlarsen@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 9:58 PM
To: Knaack, Yvonne
Subject: DONT SCREW THIS UP!!!!
Twitter is saying that you are voting no!!! I knew you were going to screw this up for the Coyotes!!!! Dont be a stupid bitch!!!!! VOTE YES or nobody will ever come to Glendale again!!! Stop being anti-Coyote!!!
As you can see, the name is spelled incorrectly, undoubtedly spelled using the metric system PROVING the email originated in Canada. After a very short visit with Mr. Larson, the detectives left after assuring him he had nothing further to worry about. They didn’t even bother to check the IP address of Mr. Larson’s connection or look at any of his computers. As you can also see, the body of the email follows the same pattern as the tweets of many of the more prolific Internet trolls obsessed with the Coyotes. The language, while mild by their standards, is also a clue.
Impersonating someone for this threatening purpose is much more serious than:
- Mocking them by poorly photoshopping their picture.
- Saying things such as “Enjoy unemployment you stupid cow” (a Mike Phelan classic).
- Making crude remarks and posting photographs of people’s children.
- Calling council members “classless slobs” and much worse.
- Mocking people’s disabilities while ignoring their own.
This is, undoubtedly, actionable should someone decide to file a complaint. I’m not sure if the source of the email turns out to be Canada that some US federal agency (Homeland Security perhaps?) wouldn’t become involved. One would expect the Canadian government to cooperate fully, of course.
Twitter offers little help:
If contacted by law enforcement directly, we can work with them and provide the necessary information for their investigation of your issue.
You can point local law enforcement to our Law Enforcement Guidelines (https://support.twitter.com/articles/41949).
Lawyer Up, Chuckles!
We’re sure that the Glendale PD has the ability and knowledge to be able to track the source of the email. I’m sure Yahoo has the facilities to provide information such as when an email account was opened and from where it was opened, assuming the actual source WAS Yahoo. If not, email headers and a wealth of information is contained in the email received by CM Knaack, as it is in every single server between the house of the “perp” and Glendale City Hall.
Regardless, the entire Glendale City Council and the mayor are completely aware of the situation and the background information. Being that it’s a holiday weekend, police reports and complaints are a little behind schedule. That will all change on Monday when business begins for the week.
I’ll update when/if I feel like it and as police reports become available.
Absolutely disgusting. I have no idea how these people justify what they’re doing. I wish Twitter would do more to punish some of these cowards who try to hide behind a computer screen to influence something that’s none of their business.
The lack of intelligence and common decency some people north of the border show is absolutely disgusting. I hope that Karma comes calling and punishes them.
It’s sickening to see the tweet that some of the trolls from Canada post. This has gone FAR beyond wanting a team & I think that the league should look into this when considering Quebec as a future candidate for an NHL team. They have gone far enough to make me embarrassed to have some Canadian branches in my family tree. If the vote doesn’t go our way, then I would be okay with the team going to Seattle or Kansas City as Quebec has shown ZERO class or shown they deserve a team. When you are picking on a 2 year old child, you are showing that you are either A) the lowest form of humanity or B) a child molester (which does fall into part A as well). I, like many fellow Coyote fans, have stopped following #Coyotes due to their actions. When you start mocking people for disabilities, picking on 2 year olds, going after council members who are trying to do the right thing for their city you cross the line. When you are writing e-mails and signing them as someone else where you make inflammatory remarks goes WAY beyond the line of reason & I hope that they do catch & punish who sent that email. Also, I think Darrold could have a case for defamation of character, but I doubt the troll has much in the form of case for a profitable lawsuit.
Like Brendan said, Twitter should punish these cowards who hide behind fake names & a computer screen. I know that Twitter is supposed to be free & open to everyone, but if they don’t start to police itself then maybe they should be held partially accountable. I said it once & I’ll say it again, when some of the trolls Karma-cards are called in, it won’t be pretty & I hope that nearby innocent bystanders will be hurt as it will not be pretty.
Jean…
Not all of the problem children are from Canada. There are a couple of people living in the Phoenix Metro area, and one well known person in the Midwest region of the US who have been total jackasses towards Coyotes fans and people associated with the situation for the past several years.
Likewise there are many Canadians who understand the situation and many even sympathize with Coyotes fans.
Don’t you think Homeland Security is a little bit too busy to get involved in this? How can you PROVE the email’s country of origin when the ‘perp’ may have simply misspelled someones name? If these ‘perps’ call people offensive names, how are you any better than them when you call them trolls and cockroaches? And before you accuse me of being a Canadian saaboteur, I was born, raised and currently reside in Detroit. All I’m saying is if the Coyotes are valued so much by the Phoenix area, why cant they find more than 12,420 avg. to attend games?
Residing in Detroit is not a resounding endorsement of either hockey knowledge or knowledge of how to deal with boorish behavior.
Had you read what I had to say, I speculate that the person writing the email is Canadian based on the fact the anonymous troll is Canadian (based on her spelling of words such as councilor) and four years of experience dealing with lame cyberbullying from north of the border.
Yes Homeland Security may be busy, I am not the one that called the police in this matter, it was a government official that felt threatened by an email that called in the authorities to investigate and prosecute. My suggestion, had you read rather than scanned what I had to say, was that such an agency might be called in because of the potentially international aura of the event.
Speaking of attendance, we were sold out for three rounds of the playoffs this year. How many tickets did you sell at “Golftown” (that’s “Hockeytown” in your city for the playoffs) after you got blown out this year?
If it looks and quacks like a duck………………………….Johnny of course you are one trying to sabotage the process. If all you can bring up is an average attendance just crawl back into your sorry hole and actually understand the process. Your herd mentality is so old and outdated it’s laughable.
Brendan…
They justify it by living in that hockey madrassas known as Kay Beck.
These repulsive social Neanderthals live in the belief that the sport of hockey is indigenous to that armpit portion of can’tada.
If you wish a concise depiction of the french-canadien mentality, this SAYS IT ALL (particularly from 3:11 through 3:20):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF43P-FJrFo
Goon sums it up rather well.
http://i.imgur.com/rZ6wD.jpg
And, by the way:
Until the Coyotes situation is settled, and God willing, with the team remaining at Jobing.com:
STAY OUT OF GLENDALE
If canada is the sole hotbed of all things hockey, why am I seeing pathetic attendance at the OHL and WHL games on NHL network?
My presumption from the AZ Central “trolls” was they could have cared less the NHL was locked out…that amateur hockey was where it was at.
One pathetic nuisance espoused ad nauseum that he preferred bigger rinks and lower tier leagues the NHL, and was just perpetually cruising the site to agitate.
I’ve seen half-full houses for all the games shown, save for the Russian series’.
As for Detroit – hahahaha! They claim sell outs, and that may well be based on folks who had purchased tickets but fear for life and limb venturing into inner-Gotham City.
This season, with a new owner, would have poised the Coyotes to finally likely turn the corner from all their perennial ills.
Where games prior to the holidays were seldom sell outs, the new outlet mall may have consolidated things into the long sought after shopping / dining / game night.
Instead, the hicks and hickspanics that are soon to be the Glendale “brain trust” believe their profound skill sets and intrinsic knowledge into large venue management (and endorsement of family members who’s heretofore experience in this respect was little more than hanging a pinata in a backyard tree for a cookout and thus calling it a major promotion) will yield a competitive alternative to the GWI mafia running CityScape. And, notice that CityScape has an ice rink? I thought the Kendricks’s (PLURAL) didn’t think there was an interest in this patch of desert.
While getting Homeland Security involved in cross-border twittering may be a leap to the panic button, the NHL should take note as previously mentioned to tread cautiously prior to considering granting a new LNH franchise to those snail eaters in Kay Beck. It’s a little guarded secret that facets of the NHL are less than enthralled dealing with Montreal on game nights.
The notion of doubling down on that cultural nightmare holds no appeal to those in such positions.