Twitter suspended conservative radio host Lars Larson for 'hateful conduct' — after his defense of police

Twitter handed down a 12-hour suspension to Portland conservative talk radio host Lars Larson for "hateful conduct" last week after he criticized a former mayoral candidate who called police a "deadly paramilitary force."

What happened?

Sarah Iannarone — a 2016 Democratic candidate for Portland mayor — tweeted her disapproval of police after they fatally shot a man Jan. 6:

"The headline kinda says it all, doesn't it?" she wrote in response to the Oregonian story. "We know the police kill. Question is whether we will ever stop funding this deadly paramilitary force and start funding things that actually keep the people of Portland safe."

Larson criticized Iannarone for her comments in a tweet the same day, which stated, "Gee @sarahforpdx you think the cops make PDX dangerous? Read the story and you find the dead man was 1) paranoid schizophrenic 2) invaded a stranger's home 3) fought with the officer 4) pulled a knife. What's your millennial snowflake solution to THAT situation w/o the cops?"

And the whip comes down

Larson's tweet was flagged as "hateful content" and got him banned from the platform for 12 hours on Thursday, Willamette Week reported.

Here's what Larson tweeted after his ban was lifted:

The host maintained in his subsequent tweet that his criticism of Iannarone was "politely" rendered.

Iannarone told Willamette Week that Larson's reply to her "may not seem like much on the surface" but "whenever that account retweets me, it brings commenters into my sphere who hurl insult and innuendo my direction. I reported three other accounts resulting from the retweet that day that Twitter admins agreed were abusive or harmful."

More from the outlet:

According to Twitter's enforcement guidelines, repeated violations by the @LarsLarsonShow account are likely what led to it being banned.

"We take action at the account level if we determine that a person has violated the Twitter Rules in a particularly egregious way, or has repeatedly violated them even after receiving notifications from us," the guidelines read.

'Right-wing Twitter'

Iannarone added to Willamette Week that she stands by her decision to report Larson's account. "Right-wing Twitter is a platform predicated on inaccurate, misleading, and hateful speech, right up to the highest levels of government with our Tweeter-in-chief," she said.

What else do we know about Iannarone?

According to a profile linked on her Twitter page, Iannarone's "areas of expertise include social equity, urban placemaking, climate action planning, and sustainable development" — and one of the things that keeps her "up at night worrying" is "black people being killed by police."

In 2016, Iannarone told an audience, "I want us to have the first actively anti-racist police force in the United States of America. Because not being racist is not enough." The man Portland police fatally shot Jan. 6 was black.

(H/T: NewsBusters)