Providencejournal.com readers may have noticed that the "most active" story on our website today and Monday is from May 30, 2012: "Lincoln officer who kicked woman will fight termination."
It's not a technical glitch.
This story is about former Lincoln Police Officer Edward Krawetz, who was convicted in January 2012 of felony battery with a dangerous weapon -- his foot -- after a 2009 incident at Twin River during which he kicked a handcuffed, seated woman in the head outside the slot parlor.
Officer Krawetz's story traditionally has drawn a strong audience on our website. Our videos have been embedded or linked to on various law enforcement websites, whose readers consistently click through to our coverage well after these stories and videos were published.
But that doesn't seem to be where the traffic is coming from this week.
During the trial, a Rhode Island State Police expert testified that Krawetz reacted with "excessive" force that was "well out of proportion" when he kicked Donna Levesque, 44, of Uxbridge, Mass., after she kicked at him in 2009.
We did notice several of the recent comments posted on this story are not in English: Google Translate says these comments are in Turkish.
At least as translated by Google, the comments don't make much sense in and of themselves, but a there's certainly a possible clue there.
Could the sudden interest be from people who are following or affected by the massive demonstrations in Turkey, sparked by the use of excessive force by police in that country last week?
NYT 6.4.2013: Turkish Official Apologizes for Force Used at Start of Riots
AP 6.5.2013: Activists present list of demands in Turkey
Providencejournal.com readers, what can you tell us about why this story is drawing an audience again, so many months after it was published?
This initial version of this report was published at 11:38 a.m.
UPDATE: We can see after digging into the numbers a little that 75 percent of the interest in this story originates on Facebook and 73 percent of that is people on Facebook in Turkey.
Updated June 5, 2013 3:51 PM