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Northampton County resident Simon Radecki posed a deeply uncomfortable, and some say threatening, query about immigration to Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey at a Thursday-night town hall televised on Bethlehem public TV station PBS39.
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When is a question illegal? Bethlehem police say questioner broke law at Pat Toomey town hall

Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer

When is a question illegal? Bethlehem police say questioner broke law at Pat Toomey town hall

Ask a stupid question … get a criminal charge for an answer.

That may be the fate of Northampton County resident Simon Radecki, who posed a deeply uncomfortable, and some say threatening, query about immigration to Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey at a Thursday-night town hall televised on Bethlehem public TV station PBS39.

Bethlehem police appear poised to charge Mr. Radecki for the incident, a move that concerns some civil-rights advocates.

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“He didn’t disturb the meeting,” said ACLU of Pennsylvania legal director Vic Walczak. “He was trying to ask a question.”

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After thanking Mr. Toomey for appearing, Mr. Radecki said, “We’ve been here for a while. You probably haven’t seen the news. Can you confirm whether or not your daughter Bridget has been kidnapped?”

The ensuing four-second pause was punctuated by Mr. Toomey uttering “uhhhh,” before Mr. Radecki added, “The reason I ask is because that’s the reality of families that suffer deportation …”

As Mr. Toomey called that a “ridiculous question,” Mr. Radecki himself was removed by Bethlehem police, who later said he’d be charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting a public meeting.

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“If you were in the room, it was one of the scariest things that I have ever been a part of,” said PBS39 CEO Tim Fallon. Even after Mr. Radecki attempted to explain his query, Mr. Fallon said, “All I was processing was ‘Oh, my God, what has happened?’ … It was perceived as a threat by myself [and] folks I have had interactions with.”

“Asking questions that are based upon kidnapping a child is not only reprehensible, but it is inherently threatening,” said Steve Kelly, a spokesman for Mr. Toomey.

Both the station and Mr. Toomey’s office said the decision to press charges was being made by the Bethlehem police. Police Chief Mark DiLuzio did not return phone or email messages for comment Tuesday: Charges had not been formally filed against Mr. Radecki as of late Tuesday afternoon, according to a check of the court docket.

Still, Mr. Walczak said the charges seemed problematic. State law defines disrupting a public meeting as acting out “with intent to prevent or disrupt a lawful meeting, procession, or gathering.”

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“That wouldn’t apply at all” in this case, said Mr. Walczak. “You aren’t going to show that intent, and the disruption stemmed not from his question but the response to it.”

Should Mr. Radecki need legal aid, he said, “We’d love to talk to him.”

Mr. Radecki is an activist with Make the Road Pennsylvania, which advocates for immigrants. Reached Wednesday morning, he said organizers hoped his question would be “an act of radical empathy” that would “reach the Senator on a level where he hasn’t been reached before,” when it comes to immigrant families. 

While he said he was aware of criticism of how his question was phrased, “My only regret right now honestly is that the focus has been on me and the question I asked. And the substance of the conversation has taken a sort of back seat.”

“I believe we’re slipping into fascism,” he added, noting President Donald Trump’s threat to eliminate executive-branch protections for immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children. “That is really scary because [thsoe immigrants] have submitted information to the government, which is now a few months away from rounding them up. We’re in an incredibly dangerous period, and it’s imperative that people speak up and do something.”

Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University constitutional scholar, said of the incident: "In a free society, there's no such thing as a wrong question.”

"To be fair, the question the guy asked was so strange that it could have been interpreted as a threat," he added. "But this is exactly the opposite of disrupting a proceeding. Disrupting is when I interrupt someone who has the right to ask a question — I have no First Amendment right there. But they gave him the right to ask a question."

Mike Dillon, who teaches journalism at Duquesne University, said he thought the charges, if filed, would be thrown out. “It’s a public forum, you’re talking to an elected official,” he said. “Did he ask a stupid question? Yes. But I don’t think that constitutes disorderly conduct.”

But Mr. Dillon said that in the Trump era, “everybody seems to be at a high alert” when it comes to challenging public officials.

In a 1988 presidential debate, moderator Bernard Shaw asked Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, “[I]f [your wife] were raped and murdered would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” The question drew fire at the time — Ms. Dukakis called it “outrageous” — but Mr. Dillon said the response today would likely be much harsher.

While “I think reporters have always been unpopular,” he said, in recent months there has been “a real effort to make people believe they are the enemy.”

Mr. Walczak, for his part, cited a West Virginia reporter arrested after aggressively questioning Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in May. More common, he said, were cases of politicians “trying to suppress dissent on social media,” by deleting comments and blocking critics online. He said the ACLU would likely file a case challenging that practice in Pennsylvania by the end of the month.

Mr. Fallon said “Bernard Shaw phrased his question as a hypothetical. … Had [Mr. Radecki] phrased it as a hypothetical, I’m 99 percent sure we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

Mr. Fallon said the station’s vetting consisted of asking Capitol Police to review a list of audience members “to make sure no one had threatened the senator or his family. No one showed up on the list.”

Chris Potter: cpotter@post-gazette.com.

First Published: September 6, 2017, 9:54 a.m.
Updated: September 6, 2017, 12:26 p.m.

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Northampton County resident Simon Radecki posed a deeply uncomfortable, and some say threatening, query about immigration to Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey at a Thursday-night town hall televised on Bethlehem public TV station PBS39.  (Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer)
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