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A British IT consultant says he lived through a dystopian nightmare after being arrested for posting photos of himself holding firearms during a trip to the United States.
Jon Richelieu-Booth, owner and director of Phoenix Evolution Consulting, told Fox News Digital the trouble began after he visited friends in Florida over July 4 to celebrate the holiday and his 50th birthday. During the visit, he said he was invited to shoot a gun for the first time.
“They were shooting, and they offered me the opportunity to — as a Brit who’d never handled guns — to handle a gun,” he said.
After returning home to the UK, he posted a series of photos from his trip to LinkedIn. A day or two after sharing the posts, the police showed up at his house to tell him someone had made a complaint.
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They warned him to be careful about what he posts online. About 10 days later, Richelieu-Booth said, the police returned, forced their way into his home at 10:30 p.m. and arrested him.
He was told the arrest stemmed from the firearm photos and a separate post authorities claimed amounted to “stalking and harassment.” He was questioned and held overnight before being released.
About seven weeks later, he said he was arrested again on an allegation that he breached bail, which he says was based on a false complaint. The complaints were tied to a dispute with a former client, Richelieu-Booth says.
“I’d contracted to this gentleman’s business to deliver works for the government, and those works were still unpaid two years later,” he said. He explained that a business partner had taken a photo outside the man’s home while delivering a final demand notice, a step he said was lawful because the photo was taken from a public area.
“The arrest was based on two separate social media posts,” he said. “One was the photo of myself with the shotgun, which you can tell I’m terrified of. It’s the first time I’d held it and you can see from how I’m holding it. And the second one was my LinkedIn banner at the top of the page.”
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“I used the photo my business partner took on his premises as a header photo on LinkedIn with the intention he would look at that and go, ‘Why’s this guy posting that? I’d better call him and find out rather than dodging me’ as it had done for months,” he said.
“There was never any geolocation or evidence I’d been to that address, yet I was still arrested on it,” he added.
After his release, he said he was charged with a public order offense over a third post from August, which authorities said could cause “harassment, fear, alarm and distress.” He said that charge, along with the earlier allegations, was later dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Richelieu-Booth said the experience took a heavy toll, both professionally and personally.
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“I deactivated my LinkedIn, which meant I lost my trial of LinkedIn Premium, which I was using to find clients,” he said. “I lost the ability to run a Teams show called Coffee the Hashtag Guy that I run to support other contractors. I lost the ability to go out networking. I was very afraid and ashamed. I hid from everybody. I felt ostracized by my neighbors, my community. I just hid for pretty much the whole period from the world and I contemplated killing myself.”
He is considering whether to take legal action against West Yorkshire Police.
“Free speech in the UK? That doesn’t exist,” he said. “It really doesn’t. People are getting locked up for tweets, for memes. It’s embarrassing. It’s George Orwell, it’s ‘1984.’ That wasn’t an instruction manual.”
Richelieu-Booth said he no longer feels safe in the United Kingdom and has been thinking more seriously about relocating to the United States.
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“I lost my parents in 2023 in a car crash,” he said. “In one awful day, my entire family was gone. My adoptive American family has been very welcoming, and it’s made me think more seriously about America…. You’ve got the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, it’s the land of opportunity, and I don’t feel safe in the UK anymore.”
“If I moved to America and if that’s God’s plan for me, I would welcome that,” he added.
His story gained international attention after the Yorkshire Post first reported it.
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Elon Musk also weighed in on X, writing, “This is why we have the First and Second Amendments in America.”
A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police said Richelieu-Booth was charged with a public order offense over a complaint about the LinkedIn posts before the case was dropped.
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“Police received a complaint of stalking involving serious alarm or distress, relating partly to social media posts, several of which included pictures of a male posing with a variety of firearms which the complainant took to be a threat,” the police said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Police investigated and charged a man with a public order offense, but the case was then discontinued by the CPS.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Crown Prosecution Services for comment.
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