Mother of fallen police officer denies accusations from Twitter that she made hateful tweets
MESA, Ariz. (FOX 10) -- A Mesa mom claims Twitter is censoring her, and that she's been banned from the site.
Mary Ann Mendoza lost her police officer son, Brandon, in a crash with a wrong-way drunk driver who was in the country illegally. Since her son's death, Mendoza has been outspoken when it comes to the country's immigration issues. She is very active on Twitter, but Twitter officials say she used hate speech in six tweets, and will not unlock her account until she deletes them.
"I just got a notification from Twitter that I had to remove six posts, that it was against community standards, it was hateful, it was threatening," said Mendoza.
The tweets were all directed at lawmakers, and made reference to her displeasure of the way they were handling issues at the border. Mendoza said she doesn't believe the tweets were threatening or hateful. but according to a Twitter spokesperson, that's what they were. Officials with the social networking site responded to a request for comment by saying in part:
"Whenever we determine that a tweet breaks our rules, we require the account owner to remove it before continuing to Twitter."
Mendoza says she's not backing down.
"I refuse to remove those posts," said Mendoza.
President Trump even weighed in on the issue, tweeting his support for Mendoza.
Mendoza also says she may take legal action against Twitter.