photo by: Screenshot/Lawrence Police Twitter

This tweet from the Lawrence Police Department, posted at 2:48 p.m. on May 15, 2020, shows Capt. Troy Squire in the parking lot of Dillons, 1740 Massachusetts St., following an arrest on the night of May 14. The accordion belonged to a Lawrence man who was arrested at the scene. The tweet was deleted Thursday afternoon, June 18, 2020.

Updated at 7:56 p.m. Thursday:

The Lawrence Police Department has deleted but is defending a tweet showing a police captain laughing with the property of an arrested man, saying that “By no means was it intended to make fun of anyone other than ourselves.”

The post featured an image of Capt. Troy Squire, a nearly 25-year veteran of the department and a current contender for undersheriff, laughing as he held an accordion. The image was captioned “The scheduled concert with Capt. Squire and (Weird Al Yankovic) is unfortunately cancelled. Troy ‘the sausage king of Chicago’ Squire will try again when the lockdown is over.”

The “sausage king” is an apparent reference to the 1986 teen comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

The post was more than a month old, but it had gained new traction on social media in recent days after some people started commenting about the accordion it featured: The instrument belonged to a transient street performer who, at the time, had just been arrested.

Jeremy E. McClain, 47, was arrested on suspicion of criminal trespassing and interference with law enforcement on May 14 near Dillons at 17th and Massachusetts streets, according to the Douglas County Jail booking log.

McClain said he has played at the store before and it hasn’t been a problem, but he “started getting political,” putting up flyers calling for Lawrence to better fund social services. He was officially banned from Dillons for foul language, he explained, but he didn’t think being on the sidewalk near the property would be an issue.

photo by: Journal-World file photo

Jeremy McClain is pictured playing accordion near the intersection of Ninth and Massachusetts streets.

McClain said when police arrived, he started walking away and kept playing his accordion — a little louder.

“They don’t like that, when I play over them — people in power,” he said.

He said he was “probably being a little foolish,” but he didn’t understand why he wasn’t just cited for trespassing and was instead arrested. He said he was put in a hold during his arrest, and he hasn’t had feeling in his hand since.

“I have a history of trauma. It’s hard to prove that that incident was what caused the nerve damage,” McClain said. He explained that he had a brain injury about six years ago, and during treatment for that, he found out that he has Lyme disease. He started busking to help pay his medical bills.

Squire, who is a candidate for undersheriff alongside Douglas County sheriff candidate and current Capt. Doug Woods, said Thursday the tweet wasn’t meant to make fun of anyone but Squire.

“Nobody was making fun of any transients or anybody of that nature,” Squire said. “The picture was poking fun at me and the fact that I was carrying a man’s accordion to a police car so that we could safeguard it, which is an unusual scene.”

Another officer hollered his name, and when Squire turned, the officer snapped his picture, Squire said.

Asked whether, given the context of the photo, he could understand why people might be upset, Squire said, “I’d have to try to get my mind around who knew that (accordion) was that subject’s,” and he thought the general population would probably just see Squire’s name and the joke that Squire was going to tour with Weird Al Yankovic.

“I feel terrible that we’re having to have this discussion,” Squire said. “I want to be very clear that at no point in time was I or anybody on that call making fun of anybody, particularly somebody who has (an illness) or is a transient. That’s not what was happening.”

McClain said he was disappointed when he found out about the tweet, and especially when he saw that Squire was the one in the photo.

“I found out about (the tweet) because I was busking and someone said, ‘Look, they’re making a joke out of you,'” McClain said.

“… He was actually the one who showed up and defused the situation,” McClain said of Squire, also describing him as “the voice of reason” during the arrest.

In LPD’s initial response to the Journal-World’s email inquiry, Sgt. Amy Rhoads, public information officer, hadn’t addressed the tweet.

“I’m not surprised,” McClain said of the lack of response. “I don’t trust our police officers.”

About an hour later, Rhoads responded to a follow-up email asking again for comment about the tweet.

“A department member who was not on the call thought seeing a picture of an officer holding an accordion was a funny image and so it was tweeted,” Rhoads said via email Thursday. The department tweeted a similar message and deleted the original tweet and photo.

It’s not clear who the department member was or who has access to the department’s Twitter account.

The popular account has gotten attention in recent years for making jokes, particularly tweets that poke fun at people, though not by name, who have committed crimes or whom the department sees as potential lawbreakers.

Squire said he was sorry if the tweet “rubbed anybody the wrong way.”

McClain said his accordion was returned to him after his arrest. However, he said he had temporarily stashed it somewhere a couple of weeks ago, and it was stolen. He said he’s reported it stolen.

Patrick Compton, a spokesperson for the department, said he inadvertently deleted the tweet when he was attempting to post the explanation.

“It was purely accidental, which is why we reposted the original image,” he said. “It was not an attempt to hide it or erase it from the public record. We don’t delete tweets.”