Newport News, Va. - The Virginia Marine Resource Commission is outraged after someone created a fake Facebook account for one of their officers, posting his personal information online.
Virginia Marine Police patrol our waters and respond to emergencies, enforce laws and issue citations to violators. Recently, a Marine Police officer noticed that someone created a fake Facebook account in his name.
Laurie Naismith is the Public Information Officer for the Virginia Marine Resource Commission. She said the agency was shocked when they learned what happened.
According to a search warrant, the Facebook account had the officer’s name, home address, and a photo of where he lived posted on the site exposing his personal information.
Naismith said they don’t know who did this but she suspects it was someone the officer possibly issued a citation to in the past.
Naismith said the officer is “a distinguished, almost 4 decades of service to the Commonwealth, to the Marine police. He knows the waters. He knows what he's doing and he knows that he makes people unhappy sometimes when he does cite them."
Now State Police are investigating this situation.
They said no one has been arrested and they would not elaborate on what types of charges they could face.
But records show the offense would be "use of a person's identity with intent to harass a law-enforcement officer" which could be a felony – according to Virginia Law.
Other Marine officers NewsChannel 3 spoke with are stunned by the bold move to expose the officer’s personal information online.
Facebook tells us the site has been taken down and say there is a policy for removing fake accounts.
”It's not a good thing. It happened, but we move on," said Naismith.
