DA: Pittsburgh woman posted threatening, anti-police messages after Brackenridge chief's killing

The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office has filed a motion to detain a well-known Pittsburgh activist after, it said, she made threatening Facebook posts against police officers following the Jan. 2 killing of Brackenridge police Chief Justin McIntire.

“A pig died tonight,” Nicky Jo Dawson wrote. “They want us to cry over it. They will use this to exterminate us and call it ‘looking for a suspect.’ ”

Dawson, on probation after pleading guilty in July to arson and criminal mischief charges, also wrote, “Off the pigs.”

Chief Trial Deputy District Attorney William Petulla filed a motion Friday asking Common Pleas Judge Kelly Bigley to hold a violation hearing on the matter.

Some legal experts said they don’t think Dawson’s words rise to the level of a true threat.

“It’s speech most people aren’t going to like, but it’s constitutionally protected,” said Witold Walczak, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

“This looks like a clear effort to retaliate against her for what she said,” Walczak said. “It strikes me as overreach by the DA’s office.”

Dawson pleaded guilty in July to attempting to start a fire at two different pizza shops on the night of Oct. 29, 2019. She was ordered to serve three years of probation, including six months on home electronic monitoring.

At her plea hearing, Dawson told the court that, at the time of the crime, her “brain broke” and she had been exhausted. “I’m not a threat to this community,” she told Bigley, who sentenced her.

The recent motion filed by the DA’s office says she is a threat.

In the filing, Petulla summarized the background of Dawson’s previous case and her probation conditions, which were typical and did not include a ban on using social media. He said Dawson was required to pay court costs, but so far had only paid to set up the electronic home monitoring system.

She owes more than $5,635, Petulla said.

In the next paragraph of the filing, the prosecutor wrote that McIntire was killed Jan. 2.

“In the wake of these shootings, probationer Dawson took to the social media site Facebook and posted ‘Off the pigs,’ along with other inciting language,” Petulla wrote, noting two people shared the post.

Facebook removed Dawson’s post for violating its content policy, Petulla said.

“In what appeared to be a subsequent social media posting, Dawson again posted on Facebook ‘Kill all these chitlin (expletives). I said what I meant,’ ” the prosecutor wrote.

Petulla wrote in the court filing that the DA’s office is investigating the social media posts tied to Dawson’s account.

“By virtue of Dawson’s violent and potentially life-threatening prior crimes, the commonwealth submits that Dawson has violated the conditions of her probation and requests a detainer to be issued and a (probation violation) hearing to be scheduled.”

On Tuesday, Bigley gave the parties 10 days to file briefs on the issue.

A message left at the number for Dawson’s Blaqk House Collections art gallery was not immediately returned.

A request to speak to District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. was denied because he was attending McIntire’s funeral Wednesday.

Walzcak said Dawson’s speech is protected by the First Amendment because it does not rise to the level of a true or imminent threat.

“She’s shouting into the wind. She’s expressing frustration,” he said.

For her words to rise to the level of inciting a riot or violence, he continued, the threat has to be more direct.

University of Pittsburgh criminal law professor David A. Harris said the DA’s petition implies the posts themselves constitute a new offense that would violate Dawson’s probation.

Although the court filing does not lay out what offenses those could be, Harris said Pennsylvania’s criminal code includes a statute for criminal solicitation.

“A person is guilty of solicitation to commit a crime if with the intent of promoting or facilitating its commission he commands, encourages or requests another person to engage in specific conduct which would constitute such crime or an attempt to commit such crime or which would establish his complicity in its commission or attempted commission,” the statute reads.

However, Harris said it would be a stretch to make Dawson’s conduct fit that crime.

“Solicitation is simply asking another person to commit a crime,” he said. “It’s really specific. You have to have the intent to actually facilitate commission of the crime. Just sending a thought out into the universe is not enough.”

While Harris called Dawson’s posts “reprehensible,” he said they are not criminal.

“They’re a long way from getting there,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t try and have her picked up.”

If the DA’s office charges her, Harris said he does not believe Dawson would be convicted, and instead it would appear to be retaliation.

“I don’t think that pays off in the long run. We don’t arrest people for stuff they say in this country,” he said. “There’s a First Amendment right to speak your mind — even in the most odious way.”