Plum Council passes resolution denouncing posting of individuals' private information on internet

Plum Council unanimously passed a resolution that denounces doxing in the wake of Councilman Mike Pastor posting the addresses of Plum Borough School Board members on the internet.

Doxing is defined as the act of searching for and publishing private or identifying information about a particular individual on the internet, typically with malicious intent.

Pastor posted the addresses on Facebook to encourage anti-mask protesting at the homes of the school board members in Plum Borough School District. Pastor declined to comment for this story.

“Doxing has kind of become more commonplace,” said council president Dave Odom, who also mentioned during the meeting that the resolution wasn’t just in response to Pastor’s post, but in response to the rise of doxing as a whole. “We’ve seen people with concerns about posting personal information about individuals on social media and that information can be used to threaten or even put individual safety at risk.

“So we feel that this is now becoming a problem and as a council, we needed to develop a resolution to discourage the actual practice of doxing and make sure people know that if they engage in that type of behavior then they will be held accountable.”

The resolution was supported by Plum Borough School Board president Mike Devine, who emailed council members about the matter and spoke about Pastor’s post at the Sept. 13 council meeting.

“When I brought this to council’s attention, they acted very swiftly, and without a doubt were very disheartened by Mr. Pastor’s actions,” Devine said. “Mr. Odom called me within 24 hours to let me know he received my email and that they were going to take action.

“I was very happy to hear that they passed the resolution on doxing. It shows this community that they do take our safety seriously and hold it to a high standard. Council has been nothing but wonderful to work with on this issue.”

Toward the beginning of the meeting, council confirmed the existence of Pastor’s post and its purpose to encourage protests at the school board members’ and administrators’ houses, then read their official statement in response.

“The members of council denounce the actions by councilman Pastor and express our opinion that his actions are not becoming of an elected official in the borough of Plum,” Odom read from the statement. “We do respect Mr. Pastor’s right to free speech, as awarded to him by the Constitution, but do not believe that it gives him the right to take action that has the potential to threaten the well-being and safety of those that were negatively impacted by the release of their personal information.”

At the end of the meeting, Devine spoke to council and asked for Pastor’s resignation. He stated that his comments were his alone “and do not represent anyone else on the school board.”

Devine also accused Plum Mayor Harry Schlegel of “liking” the Facebook post.

“That was political theater,” said Schlegel, in reference to Devine’s speech. “I never said I liked that post.”

The post has since been taken down.

“Mike Pastor posted it,” Schlegel said. “I don’t condone it, and I don’t condemn it.”

Schlegel also said that after Pastor didn’t resign when Devine called for it, it should have been the end of the issue. He referred to a Facebook post made last year by Plum School Board member Amy Wetmore. A post that Schlegel said “started it all” and is “unbecoming of an elected official.”

Wetmore’s post, made on July 8, 2020, read: “For those who haven’t seen it, there is a heated debate about someone implying Republicans are racist. I would take that statement even further. If you are white and you are living in the United States, you are racist. I say this as a white woman.”

Wetmore a day later changed the broad stroke of all white people being racists to: “I would argue that racism doesn’t care about political parties. Rather, if you are white and you are living in the United States, you are a product of white privilege. I say this as a white woman.”

Schlegel said that after he called for Wetmore’s resignation and she didn’t resign, that was the end of the issue, with everything after that being political theater.

“We’re not talking about Amy Wetmore,” Schlegel said. “We’re talking about Mike Devine’s theater on (Sept. 13). A lot of statements made there were false. It was all drama.”

Devine also mentioned the school board’s handling of Wetmore during his speech to council.

“At the end of the day, I will lose no sleep over our Mayor’s actions, or lack thereof,” he said in a statement to the Tribune-Review. “If bringing up Ms. Wetmore’s post, yet again, helps him sleep better at night, so be it. I have nothing further to say on that, it happened over a year ago.”