- Jessica Prim was arrested on Wednesday after behaving "erratically" while driving down a service road on pier 86 in Manhattan.
- The 37-year-old live-streamed her interaction with New York police officers in which she said thought she was the coronavirus and that Donald Trump had been speaking directly to her in recent press conferences.
- In the days and hours leading up to her
arrest , Prim had posted Facebook statuses and videos in which she sharedQAnon conspiracy theories and said that Hillary Clinton andJoe Biden needed to be "taken out." - The situation with Prim is not the first time that a QAnon believer has run into trouble with the law.
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An Illinois woman who frequently shared QAnon conspiracy theories online was arrested on Wednesday after driving to New York with a stash of a dozen knives and threatening to "take out" Joe Biden, according to police reports and videos posted to her social media.
In the hours preceding her arrest, 37-year-old Jessica Prim live-streamed her travel, ranting at her Facebook audience and referencing conspiracy theories while driving to New York City. In one post, she mentioned "Frazzledrip," a fictitious video that QAnon devotees insist exists on the dark web and reveals Hillary Clinton and her former aide Huma Abedin assaulting and murdering a child.
The same day, Prim posted a Facebook status reading, "Hillary Clinton and her assistant, Joe Biden and Tony Podesta need to be taken out in the name of Babylon! I can't be set free without them gone. Wake me up!!!!!"
Later that day, police officers approached Prim after she was seen behaving "erratically" and driving her Toyota Tundra down a service road on pier 86 in Manhattan, The New York Daily
In a distressing live video shared on Facebook, Prim can be seen hyperventilating and tearing up in her car before getting arrested by New York police officers.
"I need help," she says to an officer standing outside her car. "I think I'm the coronavirus."
She continued to stream the incident, telling viewers that she was "at the Comfort," referencing the US Navy Hospital Ship that was sent to New York City to support the region's COVID-19 treatment efforts (some QAnon devotees have circulated theories that the ship is being used to rescue "mole children" abused by pedophile democrats). At the time of her arrest, Prim was actually parked near the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier-turned museum.
At one point in the 15-minute video, Prim told officers that she "was watching the press conferences with Donald Trump on TV" and she "felt like he was talking to [her]."
As officers interacted with a distraught Prim, they were notified that the Secret Service had put out an alert 37-year-old after she posted threatening comments on Facebook, the New York Daily News reported.
Prim was taken in for questioning before being released to Mount Sinai West for treatment. Her most recent posts on social media feature a photo of Mount Sinai paperwork and a status update reading "help me."
She was later charged with 18 counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
The publicly-accessible video had hundreds of commenters concerned for Prim's mental health, many remarking that she needed "serious psychological help" and the situation was "sad."
Prim's arrest is not the first time a QAnon devotee has run into trouble with the law.
Since QAnon, a far-right conspiracy detailing an alleged plot by the "deep state" to overthrow Donald Trump, emerged on the imageboard 4chan in 2017, two supporters have been charged with felonies allegedly inspired by its rhetoric. The lawyer for Anthony Comello, who was charged with the murder of New York mafia boss Francesco Cali in 2019, said the 24-year-old was radicalized by right-wing conspiracy sites and ideas stemming from QAnon.
In 2018, another QAnon supporter pleaded guilty to a terrorist incident at the Hoover Dam.
Facebook has made an effort to battle the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories and has specific policies dedicated to mitigating "offline harm" caused by online content. But the incident with Prim suggests that the platform still struggles to monitor content.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook has voiced a commitment to combatting misinformation, with a dedicated portion of community guidelines specifying that content spreading "misinformation that contributes to the risk of imminent violence or physical harm" will be removed. The policies surrounding conspiracy theories are less clear— and conspiracy theories do not appear to be a searchable category in the community standards section of the site.
Facebook's community standards regarding "violence and incitement" says that online threats deemed to be "credible" will be removed from the platform.
"We remove language that incites or facilitates serious violence. We remove content, disable accounts, and work with law enforcement when we believe there is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threats to public safety," the policy reads. "We also try to consider the language and context in order to distinguish casual statements from content that constitutes a credible threat to public or personal safety."
As of this writing, Prim's posts containing the original threat and video remain on Facebook.
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