iStock/4FR(MISSOURI) — Hundreds of people who called a tip line to report their neighbors and local businesses for allegedly violating social distancing rules have found themselves exposed by Missouri’s own Sunshine Law.
The law, meant to aid the media in reporting information submitted to public agencies, has in turn shone a light on those who snitched on their fellow citizens, according to KSDK in St. Louis.
The names and addresses of those who called the tipline ended up being shared on social media, and one man, apparently named Jared Totsch, posted it to a Facebook group, KSDK reports.
“Here ya go. The gallery of snitches, busybodies, and employees who rat out their own neighbors and employers over the Panic-demic,” he reportedly wrote.
The complaints led to 29 businesses receiving citations, and now the tipsters are fearing they could pay the price for speaking up.
Missouri businesses are starting to re-open today.
“I’d call it poetic justice, instant Karma, a dose of their own medicine,” Totsch wrote. “What goes around, comes around. They are now experiencing the same pain that they themselves helped to inflict on those they filed complaints against.”
Incidentally, a similar tip line in New York City received the equivalent of a Bronx cheer when the hotline, set up by beleaguered Mayor Bill De Blasio, was flooded with images of people giving him the finger, of male genitalia, and pictures referring to the politician as Hitler, for setting up the “snitch line.”
So inundated was the text number De Blasio set up that it had to be shut down temporarily.
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