The City of Madison’s online mail system experienced delayed and blocked emails following an influx of messages Tuesday from an online petition to remove a Madison police officer from duty for his involvement in the Nov. 9 shooting of resident Paul Heenan, according to a press release.
In addition to sending letters to the Madison Police Department, community members created an online petition, which has received more than 90,000 signatures as of Tuesday night, to permanently remove officer Stephen Heimsness.
Madison’s Technical Services Manager Rich Beadles said due to the way the social reform website Change.org allows its users to share petitions with their Facebook and email contacts, the number of messages sent to the city increased exponentially throughout Tuesday morning.
“In one case we were able to identify one person who submitted a petition from the site and that generated 500 more petition emails,” Beadles said.
According to Beadles, the city’s information technology department created a separate gmail account to compensate for the flood of messages and said the authors of the petition cooperated when asked to reroute all Change.org emails to the new address.
