A British IT consultant says his life was thrown into turmoil after police in the United Kingdom arrested him over social media posts showing him holding firearms during a visit to the United States.
According to Fox News, Jon Richelieu-Booth, owner of Phoenix Evolution Consulting, told the outlet that the ordeal began after he flew to Florida in July to celebrate both Independence Day and his 50th birthday with friends.
During the visit, he said he was invited to shoot a gun for the first time.
“They were shooting, and they offered me the opportunity to — as a Brit who’d never handled guns — to handle a gun,” he recalled.
When he returned home, he posted several photos from the trip on LinkedIn. Within days, he said police arrived at his house, informing him that someone had filed a complaint about the images and warning him to be cautious about what he posts online.
About 10 days later, things escalated. According to Richelieu-Booth, officers returned late at night, forced their way into his home around 10:30 p.m., and arrested him.
He said authorities cited the firearm photos and a separate post they claimed amounted to “stalking and harassment.” He was questioned, held overnight, and later released.
Richelieu-Booth said the accusations were tied to a long-running dispute with a former client who still owed payment.
A business partner had delivered a final demand notice and taken a photo outside the client’s property from a public space. Richelieu-Booth later used that image as a banner on his LinkedIn page.
“The arrest was based on two separate social media posts,” he said. “One was the photo of myself with the shotgun, which you can tell I’m terrified of. It’s the first time I’d held it and you can see from how I’m holding it. And the second one was my LinkedIn banner at the top of the page.”
He said he intended the banner to prompt the man to finally respond. “There was never any geolocation or evidence I’d been to that address, yet I was still arrested on it,” he said.
Weeks later, he was arrested again on allegations that he breached bail, which he says stemmed from a false complaint. The Crown Prosecution Service eventually dropped that matter, along with a later charge accusing him of posting content that could cause “harassment, fear, alarm and distress.”
The repeated arrests left him rattled. Richelieu-Booth said he shut down his LinkedIn account, lost work opportunities, withdrew from his community, and spiraled into isolation.
“I was very afraid and ashamed. I hid from everybody,” he said. “I felt ostracized by my neighbors, my community… and I contemplated killing myself.”
He is weighing legal action against West Yorkshire Police. He also questioned whether free speech still exists in the U.K.
“Free speech in the UK? That doesn’t exist,” he said. “People are getting locked up for tweets, for memes. It’s George Orwell, it’s ‘1984.’ That wasn’t an instruction manual.”
Richelieu-Booth added that after losing his parents in a fatal car crash in 2023, he has considered moving to the United States, where he says he feels safer and more protected.
“You’ve got the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, it’s the land of opportunity, and I don’t feel safe in the UK anymore,” he said. “If I moved to America and if that’s God’s plan for me, I would welcome that.”
His story spread internationally after being highlighted by the Yorkshire Post, and Elon Musk reacted on X, writing, “This is why we have the First and Second Amendments in America.”
West Yorkshire Police confirmed that Richelieu-Booth had been charged with a public order offense after a complaint about the posts, but noted the case was later discontinued by prosecutors.
“Police received a complaint of stalking involving serious alarm or distress, relating partly to social media posts, several of which included pictures of a male posing with a variety of firearms which the complainant took to be a threat,” the department said in a statement. “Police investigated and charged a man with a public order offense, but the case was then discontinued by the CPS.”
