The State Attorney's Office in Lake County will not prosecute a Clermont teenager who admitted gluing posters on light poles and other public property that depicted President Barack Obama as the Joker, Batman's villian in The Dark Knight.Politics didn't figure into the decision, Chief Assistant State Attorney Ric Ridgway said today.
"We didn't put politics into it," Ridgway said. "We looked at it as a public safety issue."
Bill Gladson, division chief for the State Attorney's Office in Lake and Sumter counties, said Clermont police presented his staff with a thorough investigation that included photographs of the poster on light poles, bridge pillars and electrical boxes.
The decision does not absolve the teen, who could be cited by the city with violating a municipal code that says it is "unlawful for any person to nail, tack, paste, paint or otherwise attach any poster, bill or other advertising material" to trees, poles and public fixtures.
Gladson said the State Attorney's Office considered Clermont's remedy to the Joker poster.
"There's an ordinance in the city that fits this issue perfectly and, on top of that, I do have limited resources that need to be focused primarily on crimes that involve public safety," Gladson said in a telephone interview with the Orlando Sentinel this afternoon.
Clermont officials could not be immediately reached.
The posters depict the president in white face with dark circles around his eyes and sloppy red lipstick around his mouth, make-up that appears similar to the villainous Joker character portrayed by Heath Ledger in the most recent film of the Batman series, "The Dark Knight."