NOLA Radio: Warrant For Seth Dunlap Refused

Seth Dunlap (screenshot)

A New Orleans police detective went to a judge on Wednesday and applied for a warrant to arrest former WWL Radio sports-talk show host Seth Dunlap on a count of extortion, multiple criminal justice sources say.

According to nola.com citing one of the sources with knowledge of the application, the detective presented evidence to back up his central allegation: that the openly gay radio personality used his phone to launch a homophobic insult at himself via the radio station’s Twitter account before demanding nearly $2 million to settle complaints about a hostile workplace.

But Magistrate Commissioner Robert Blackburn rejected the warrant. The sources said Blackburn didn’t find the evidence backed up a charge of extortion, which is defined as making threats to a person “with the intention (to) obtain anything of value.”

The extent of the threat that Dunlap is accused of making — he allegedly pledged to go “scorched earth” on the station if it didn’t accede to his settlement demands — didn’t justify the felony charge, Blackburn determined.

NOPD officials on Friday said that the case remained “active and ongoing.”

Dunlap used his Twitter account Sept. 10 to promote his analysis of the Saints’ win against Houston the previous day. Shortly thereafter, WWL Radio’s official Twitter account retweeted Dunlap while referring to him as “a fag.”

Though the tweet was quickly deleted, screenshots of it circulated just as rapidly. Many condemned the station while expressing support for Dunlap, who days earlier had published a lengthy post on his personal Facebook page about his challenges as a gay man working in sports media.

Within days, Dunlap announced that he was going on leave to ponder his next steps, including the possibility of filing a suit alleging a hostile workplace.

In the meantime, WWL Radio and its corporate parent, Pennsylvania-based Entercom, hired a digital forensic specialist to identify whoever had sent the insult to Dunlap from the station’s Twitter account, which several people could access.

WWL later announced that forensic probe showed the tweet came from an IP address — a unique number given to cellphones and other pieces of hardware — associated with Dunlap’s phone.