A British IT consultant has been placed through a four-month “Orwellian nightmare” by police after posting a photograph on LinkedIn that showed him legally holding firearms while on a holiday in the United States.
The man, 50-year-old Jon Richelieu-Booth, was arrested by West Yorkshire Police (WYP) after sharing what he described as a “light-hearted holiday photo” taken at a private homestead in Florida. The image featured him posing with several weapons, including a shotgun and an AR-15, legally used while celebrating his 50th birthday.
The subsequent investigation, which stretched over 13 weeks and involved multiple police visits, has caused Mr. Richelieu-Booth to state he no longer feels “welcome” or “safe in this country anymore.”
The ordeal began in August when police officers visited Richelieu-Booth’s home to issue a caution, telling him to “be careful what I say online and I need to understand how it makes people feel.”
The situation quickly escalated. Officers returned shortly after 10 p.m. on August 24 and arrested the consultant on suspicion of serious offenses, including possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and stalking related to an unrelated photo of a property posted online.
Richelieu-Booth insisted he immediately offered to provide officers with geolocation data proving the firearms were held legally in the United States, but officers deemed the evidence “not necessary.” He highlighted the disproportionate response, musing, “If they really believed I had a shotgun, surely they would have kicked my door in at 3am with armed officers.”
The more serious firearms and stalking allegations were eventually dropped, but police proceeded to charge him with a public order offense related to a different social media post, citing the display of “any writing/sign/visible representation with intent to cause harassment/alarm or distress.”
The single remaining public order charge, which carried a potential prison sentence of up to six months, was finally discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on November 18, just days before the scheduled court hearing. The CPS cited a lack of evidence for a “realistic prospect of conviction.”
The four-month investigation has highlighted a broader pattern of what critics call “massive overreach” by British police forces in regulating online speech. Recent figures show that police nationally are making 30 arrests a day over “offensive” social media posts, with West Yorkshire Police being the second-highest arresting force in the country.
Significantly, the discontinuance came just one day before new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood made a public statement to senior police officers on November 19, where she spoke of “egregious examples of disproportionate arrests” over social media content, raising “questions around police decision-making.”
Calling the entire ordeal “absolutely Orwellian,” Richelieu-Booth stated his faith in British law enforcement has been entirely eroded. He intends to file a formal complaint against West Yorkshire Police and seek “quite a lot of damages” for the “13 weeks of hell” he endured.
