{"id":383051,"date":"2025-11-16T13:38:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T13:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/383051\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T13:38:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T13:38:20","slug":"charges-filed-for-alleged-online-threat-against-tempe-city-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/383051\/","title":{"rendered":"Charges filed for alleged online threat against Tempe City Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

TEMPE, AZ (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 New police documents are providing more details about what led to the evacuation of the Tempe City Council<\/a> chambers in August.<\/p>\n

At the time, the incident led to the arrest of a Tucson woman<\/a> who was accused of posting a threat on social media. But Arizona\u2019s Family obtained the police report detailing the incident. It raises questions about whether the post really was a threat.<\/p>\n

One post on social media may have cost a Tucson woman more than her reputation. Kathleen Tierney was originally accused of posting a Game of Thrones<\/a> GIF that showed a picture of an explosion. <\/p>\n

The report says this all started when Tempe City Council member Randy Keating virtually joined a meeting on a city parks ordinance back in August. He got a notification that someone posted on his public Facebook page, that was reported to be the GIF Tierney posted.<\/p>\n

The report says he didn\u2019t think much of it because he\u2019s a fan of the TV show, but he decided to report it anyway.<\/p>\n

In the report, Keating told police he needed to share it, stating, \u201cBecause of the political culture we live in and these are pretty trying times, and you see something like that and you don\u2019t want to overreact or underreact.\u201d<\/p>\n

The council meeting was canceled, and the chambers were evacuated. This came as Tempe leaders were debating about repealing a controversial ordinance that affected where nonprofits could feed the homeless.<\/p>\n

Tierney told police she once met councilman Keating at a fundraiser and only posted the GIF because Keating named his dog after one of the characters in Game of Thrones.<\/p>\n

The nearly 50-page report also says that former Tempe city manager Andrew Ching has known Tierney since college. He told police he asked Tierney to take down the post when he caught wind of it and that Tierney is a peaceful person.<\/p>\n

Ching told detectives that \u201cSocial media can be interpreted in different ways and what happened to her could happen to anyone if something is interpreted a certain way.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the police report, Tierney has no listed criminal history.<\/p>\n

Tempe police say charges against Tierney were filed with the Maricopa County Attorney\u2019s Office last week. Authorities added that the threat \u201cwas not made against any one council member.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note: Initial reports indicated that no charges were filed against Tierney. This has since been corrected from information provided by the Tempe Police Department. <\/p>\n

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2025 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEMPE, AZ (AZFamily) \u2014 New police documents are providing more details about what led to the evacuation of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":383052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,183128,5643,12424,1587,7182,39357,183126,1589,7183,183127,183125,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-383051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-andrew-ching","10":"tag-arizona","11":"tag-arrest","12":"tag-az","13":"tag-azfamily","14":"tag-game-of-thrones","15":"tag-kathleen-tierney","16":"tag-phoenix","17":"tag-phoenix-news","18":"tag-randy-keating","19":"tag-tempe-city-council","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115559655331937292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}