It’s beginning to look a lot like a difficult holiday for Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren.
Screenshots of Facebook messages between someone claiming to be Warren and an unidentified user began circulating on social media on Monday. The unknown user criticizes the city for emptying out a settlement that was being used by the homeless, calling the mayor and the mayor’s office “a joke.”
“Lovely Ann Warren” responds by blaming advocates for the homeless for forcing people to live in unsanitary, unsafe conditions.
“I’ll tell them to put tents on your front lawn and use he (sic) bathroom where you have to walk and see what happens,” the message from Warren’s account says. “Stay in your lane and let me worry about my city. You don’t live here anyways.”
“Stay in your lane” quickly became a hashtag and a Twitter meme.
But the post did not come from Warren, a city spokesperson says, and Warren is investigating the origin. Several people have access to Warren’s official and personal accounts, the spokesperson says. Both of Warren’s Facebook accounts were suspended Monday until further notice.
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2014.
I doubt that the mayor wrote that comment, as she rarely uses Facebook. She has her paid staff to do that. While that is the way many of her staffers might feel about the city’s reaction to the tent city underneath the 490 overpass, it’s doubtful that any of them would be stupid enough to post it as being from the mayor and still hope to keep their cushy jobs.
On the other hand, many of my friends and acquaintances on Facebook have had their accounts hacked. This might be one such instance.
Steve Bathory
Rochester, New York
Wow. That’s some hasty and ungraceful backpedaling. Sorry Mayor Warren, if it’s possible that someone else used your account, then you suck at security, which begs the question how seriously you take the security of ROCity. The more likely scenario is that Mayor Warren did post that, but really, really, really wishes she hadn’t and believes that the citizenry of ROCity is stupid enough to believe that mysteriously someone else posted that. This is why our “leaders” are so afraid of transperancy; they’re afraid that if we actually see them for who they are and see what they actually do, we’ll hold them accountable.
It is hard to know whether to believe Warren’s claim that she knew nothing about the posting, as she has so often made dubious claims this past year, going back to her uncle’s reckless driving episodes. But assuming it is true, it brings up another question. How can anyone with basic intelligence provide their business passwords to several people (same question applies to personal ones). Most companies train their employees to keep the codes confidential and to change them at regular intervals. Does Rochester not have basic IT security standards, or does Warren simply ignore them as only applying to the little people? Perhaps she can explain that to everyone tomorrow.
This Facebook page has Lovely’s name on it. She is responsible for what is posted there, in her name, no matter how many people she allows to access the page. The claim, “I was hacked,” if made, is implausible and particularly unbelievable from a person who has done nothing but give us reasons to question her judgment – and ours in electing her in the first place.
Just when you think this train wreck of an administration cannot possibly get any worse, Lovely creates more madness and confusion out of thin air. Back when she was first elected, the fear was that she would be David Gantt’s puppet. Actually, that would be an improvement over what we have now. It just seems to be one unforced error after another with her. She’s not up to the job.