Tempe Police Department obtained 10 search warrants to unmask anonymous Facebook critics, arrested one over protected GIF comment

On September 24, 2025, Tempe, Arizona police arrested Tucson-based political consultant Kathleen Tierney on suspicion of felony computer tampering and misdemeanor disorderly conduct and threatening-and-intimidating charges, culminating a monthlong criminal investigation into a Facebook comment she had posted under the pseudonym "Kadi Marie." The comment — a Game of Thrones GIF showing a silhouetted figure overlooking an explosion, captioned "Konner Culver watching tonight's meeting" — appeared on Tempe councilman Randy Keating's Facebook page moments before an August 28, 2025 City Council meeting on a contested parks ordinance. Tempe police treated it as a potential bomb threat, evacuated roughly 100 people from council chambers, canceled the meeting and moved subsequent meetings online.

Over the following month, Tempe Police Department detectives sought and obtained ten search warrants from Maricopa County Superior Court magistrates, gaining access to social media accounts, emails, text messages and call logs, and searching Tierney's apartment and company car and seizing electronic devices for weeks. The warrants turned up no evidence of a real threat or any coordinated plan to intimidate officials — conduct that would itself have been criminal — yet police arrested Tierney anyway and, in a press release, Police Chief Kenneth McCoy accused her of "interfering with democracy" as her mugshot was broadcast across local news. Separately, the same warrant campaign unmasked "Konner Culver," a pseudonymous account that had spent roughly a year criticizing Mayor Corey Woods and City Manager Rosa Inchausti, even though Culver had not written the comment and was merely tagged in it. Detectives obtained warrants for Culver's Facebook and multiple email accounts and sent officers to his homes in Arizona and Oregon; despite finding he had no connection to any threat, police publicly revealed his real name in a released police report, offering no justification beyond compliance with public-records law.

Legal experts said the investigation violated well-settled First Amendment protections for anonymous and non-threatening political speech. Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Aaron Mackey said the warrants reflected "systemic failures on behalf of both law enforcement and the judiciary to appreciate the First Amendment rights" of both Tierney and Culver, and that officers "should have been on notice that they lacked probable cause to pursue any further investigation, let alone to seek all these search warrants and then arrest" Tierney. Tempe police defended the response, saying nearly 100 people were in council chambers awaiting the meeting and that officers had a responsibility to treat the post as a credible threat and protect the public.

Updates

2025-12-10 — Maricopa County Attorney declined to prosecute Tierney [4]

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell's office declined to bring the recommended felony computer-tampering charge against Tierney, citing insufficient evidence and a low likelihood of conviction.

2026-07-10 — Tierney sued the City of Tempe over the investigation and arrest [6, 7]

Tierney sued the City of Tempe alleging violations of her First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, following a $3 million notice of claim filed in February 2026 accusing the city and Tempe police of abuse of process, malicious prosecution, false arrest and defamation. The city said it would respond to the allegations through the judicial process and maintained that officers had acted appropriately to address what they treated as a credible threat.