A Facebook post about problems with the City of Trinidad's water quality led to the arrest of a Henderson County resident, who says she's filed a lawsuit against the city and called the arrest "political retaliation."

Jennifer Combs was arrested after making claims in a Facebook post that residents had been hospitalized after consuming the water in Trinidad.

Trinidad officials confirmed that the city has been having water issues, but wouldn’t say if anyone had been hospitalized.

Combs has since filed a lawsuit against the city and several officials, claiming the arrest was an act of “political retaliation.”

  • morysal@lemmy.world
    58·
    1 month ago

    The moment governments start treating online criticism like a criminal threat instead of a public complaint, trust usually gets worse, not better.

  • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    1 month ago

    The update is that the grand jury no-billed her case yesterday, meaning that they did not find enough evidence to indict her with this criminal charge.

    Inasmuch as the city is not denying its water quality problems, plus the amount of effort being put into silencing her, I think it is likely that she did not lie at all and that there really are people who were hospitalized with inexplicable gastrointestinal illnesses that they have chalked up to being related to the water.

    The problem is that to prove, legally, that the two are related, both the suspected illness-causing pathogen that hospitalized these people AND the water have to be tested and matched, both for the pathogen and the timing (was it demonstrably in the water at the time they got sick?) AND those interested in proving causation have to have access to all these test results, not just their own medical test results but also those of any water management tests, and this is something the city and its water management people can easily block at every step.

    Lawyers know that, citizens don’t. And that’s how these bright officials of the City of Trinidad, Texas thought they could shut this woman up via legal means: correlation does not prove causation, and she is alleging causation, hence criminal charges. But even a grand jury refused to indict, meaning whatever the city brought against her was weak indeed.

    Somewhere in this world, Barbra Streisand is singing. People have their own medical records and everyone there can turn on a tap, so I bet someone proves that shit now.