Cops say Elon Musk claims a “crazy stalker” followed his son but didn’t report it to the LAPD

After Twitter suspended an account that was providing publicly available flight data for Elon Musk’s private jet, the social media platform’s new owner and CEO suggested the page put him and his family at risk.

in Three tweetsMusk said that any account that provides “real-time” location information to anyone will be suspended because it is “a violation of physical integrity.” The billionaire also claimed that on Tuesday night, a “crazy stalker” followed and climbed the hood of a car carrying Musk’s son.

Musk promised legal action against the college student who ran the flight-tracking account, which was posted by @ElonJet, and any “organizations that supported harming my family.”

The Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that no police report has been filed regarding the incident that concerned Musk.

“The Los Angeles Police Department’s Threat Management Unit is aware of the situation and a tweet from Elon Musk and is in contact with his representatives and security team,” the department said in a statement. “No crime reports have been filed yet.”

The police statement comes as Twitter and Musk face increasing scrutiny over a wave of suspensions, including from several journalists covering Musk.

Among those suspended Thursday night were The New York Times’ Ryan Mack, CNN’s Donnie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Bender, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, and political analyst Keith Olbermann and Steve Hermann of the government-funded Voice of Government. America.

Harwell’s last post before she was suspended was about Twitter removing the account of one of its competitors, Mastodon, for posting a link to its own version of the @ElonJet account that tracked Musk’s plane, According to the tweet From NBC News correspondent Ben Collins.

O’Sullivan and Binder’s accounts were suspended after the LAPD statement was shared.

Bender said Thursday that he was immediately suspended after sharing a screenshot of the statement from O’Sullivan.

I have not shared any location data, per Twitter’s new terms. Nor have I shared any links to ElonJet or other location tracking accounts. “I have been very critical of Musk but have not broken any of the listed Twitter policies.”

Musk, who has described himself as a supporter of free speech, has vowed to make sweeping changes to the social media platform once he ends his control of the company, though last month, he tweeted that his “commitment to freedom of expression extends even to not banning the account that follows my plane, even though doing so poses an immediate risk to personal safety.”

Twitter announced on Wednesday Policy update Prohibit sharing of “live location information, including information shared to Twitter directly or links to third-party URLs for travel itineraries.”

“We do not make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts,” Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, told The Verge via email.

On Thursday evening, Musk posted several tweets in response to the suspension of the journalists’ accounts.

“Slamming me all day is totally fine, but polling my location in real time and putting my family in danger is not,” One tweet read.

“They posted my exact real-time location, assassination coordinates essentially, in direct (clear) violation of Twitter’s terms of service,” he said. else.

Musk also briefly joined the Twitter Spaces audio chatroom where several banned journalists were discussing the news.

“You show a link to real-time information, block evasion,” Musk said. “You goblin, you get suspended, end of story, that’s it.”

Harwell, an embargoed Washington Post technology reporter who was also in the chatroom, responded, “This is reporting… There is reporting value in public data.”

Times staff writer Jamie Ding contributed to this report.