Arresting The Messengers: The Bush Administration's Assault On Journalism

Police fire rubber bullets at protesters at the Republican National Convention, St. Paul, Minn., September 1, 2008

They're rounding up journalists now.

Covering breaking news has always been a Constitutionally protected activity in the United States. The Bush administration, however, seems intent on changing the rules -- or at least in seeing how far the government can push its police state mentality and get away with it.

You'd think the mainstream media would be all over a story like this. But so far, the biggest media outlets have been eerily silent. Dozens of journalists, photographers, bloggers and videomakers have been arrested in an orchestrated round up of independents covering the Republican National Convention. Journalists covering protests have been pointed out by authorities, blasted with tear gas and pepper spray, and brutalized while in custody.


St. Paul Police use pepper spray on antiwar protesters at the Republican National Convention on Monday. One of those sprayed was AP photographer Matt Rourke, who took this shot. (Photo: AP | Matt Rourke)
Lest the mainstream media think this can't happen to them, and in what may be a tipping point, mainstream journalists such as photographer Matt Rourke of the Associated Press have found out that even they aren't immune to the brutal and indiscriminate tactics of the police in suppressing dissent. Rourke was doused with pepper spray, knocked down and arrested by St. Paul police.

He was shooting photos of the protesters at a parking lot at 7th and Jackson streets, in downtown St. Paul, when police converged from three directions. "We were encircled, and as I moved toward the officers in front of me in a passive manner, my legs were taken out from behind in an aggressive manner," Rourke said Tuesday after 12 hours in jail.

"When you hear about journalists getting arrested, it’s very disturbing," said Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) "I mean, the news gatherers—how can the people know, if they don’t have news gatherers to gather the news and show them? But when those folks are being intimidated and even roughed up, it’s pretty—it actually is a threat to democracy and the First Amendment."

On Monday and Tuesday, officers in riot gear fired rubber bullets, teargas, pepper spray and concussion grenades at protesters and journalists covering the story in St. Paul near the convention.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, predictably, expressed the opinion that the protesters should be arrested and left in jail. It's no surprise that Fox failed to distinguish between the great majority of peaceful, non-violent protesters and the actions of a few -- quite possibly government-planted agents provocateurs -- who broke storefront windows and engaged in other acts of vandalism. Kilmeade and his "fair and balanced" Fox colleagues ignored brutal police tactics and indiscriminate arrests directed against peaceful protesters and journalists.

According to journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, police in the Twin Cities arrested nearly 300 protesters, as well as several journalists covering the protest, on Monday. "I was arrested along with two producers from Democracy Now!: Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar," Goodman said. "Also arrested, Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke and two filmmakers from Pepperspray Productions, Lambert Rochfort and Joseph La Sac."


Marcus Washington, a producer from Tennessee who was documenting the antiwar protest, grimaces in pain after he was hit with pepper spray. (Photo: Jim Gehrz / Minneapolis Star Tribune)
On Monday night, three journalists from the Kentucky Kernel were arrested while documenting the protests outside the RNC. Photographers Ed Matthews and Britney McIntosh, along with photo advisor Jim Winn were all arrested and charged with rioting. Matthews and McIntosh were both charged with felonies, while Winn was charged with a misdemeanor.

"Nothing indicates that any of the three were actually participating in the protests, much less violating any laws that would warrant their arrest," wrote Taylor Shelton. "The police officers subdued the Kernel staff members with the use of pepper spray."

Everyday police violence seems to be the norm in Bush's America. On a weekly basis, we see shocking footage of police brutalizing ordinary Americans for no good reason. And when a security-intensive event like the RNC is held, it seems that the last vestiges of restraint are forgotten, as the police have free rein to assault, intimidate and detain peaceful, unarmed people who haven't broken any laws.

The Bush administration's Orwellian assault on the 4th Amendment is changing the political landscape. In one of the latest and most sinister manifestations of contempt for the Constitution, the right against unreasonable search and seizure is under siege by state, local, and federal police in Minnesota, as a Joint “Terrorism” Task Force has intimidated, searched, and arrested journalists for doing their job -- covering the news, along with activists, even before they'd even taken part in any protests, and seized their laptops and video cameras, all on the flimsy pretense of suspicions of “intent to riot” and even of, get this, “fire code violations.”

In the months leading up to the RNC, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. Federal agents and local law enforcement sought to preempt Constitutionally protected, lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

"St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of 9/11 -- with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations. Humvees and law enforcement officers with rifles were posted on various buildings and balconies," Salon's Glenn Greenwald wrote. "Numerous protesters and observers were tear gassed and injured.


Protesters try to avoid pepper spray during a protest at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Monday, Sept. 1, 2008. (Photo: AP | Matt Rourke)
"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protesters. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint."

Greenwald described the targeting of leftists by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

The raids targeted members of "Food Not Bombs," an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group that provides free vegan meals every week in hundreds of cities all over the world. Food Not Bombs served meals to rescue workers at the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to nearly 20 communities in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.

FISA and the Fourth Amendment may seem like some lofty abstraction to some people, but what’s happening in St. Paul is very real, and very important. Those are your freedoms they’re trampling on. Those freedoms, by law, apply to every American citizen, by virtue of our Constitution. The "Get FISA Right" ads, such as the one linked below, are one way to insist that’s not OK with us.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXgMUwlwazk
"We’ve got at least 9 Get FISA Right ads scheduled to air on the cable news networks during the Republican National Convention," said Jon Pincus of privacy advocacy group Get FISA Right. "With the live documentation of journalists in handcuffs and demonstrators teargassed and pepper-sprayed in St. Paul, a prime time Fox News ad defending the Constitution for only $123 feels like money very well spent. I know it’s been said a lot recently, but SaysMe.tv’s ability to let individuals air cable ads is really a game-changer."

Gung Ho SWAT Team Kills Mayor's Dogs In Botched Pot Raid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYQD-btqhKg

Imagine you just got home from work. You see a package addressed to your wife on the front porch, and bring it inside, putting it on a table.

Suddenly, police with guns drawn kick you door down and storm in, shooting to death your two dogs and seizing the unopened package.

In the package the cops find 32 pounds of marijuana. But you have no idea why the package was delivered to you.

Mayor Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, doesn't have to imagine how that feels. Now he knows.

And after a lot of initial belligerence and bullshit, befuddled cops now say the couple appear to be innocent victims of a scheme by two men to smuggle millions of dollars worth of marijuana by having it delivered to about a half-dozen unsuspecting recipients.

Local police have actually known of the scheme for some time. Just why they went ahead with the ill-advised, militaristic raid anyway is currently under investigation.

The two men under arrest include a FedEx deliveryman; investigators said the deliveryman would drop off a package outside a home, and the other man would come by a short time later and pick it up.

The outrageous conduct and painfully obvious ineptitude of the county police force has now attracted the attention of federal authorities. The FBI is looking into how local law enforcement handled the July 29 raid. Agent Rich Wolf on Thursday said the bureau had opened a civil rights investigation into the case.

A furious Calvo said earlier Thursday that he and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, had asked the government to investigate.

"Trinity was an innocent victim and random victim," Calvo told reporters outside his two-story, red-brick house in this middle-class Washington suburb of about 3,000 people. "We were harmed by the very people who took an oath to protect us."

"It was a horrible, horrible incident," Calvo told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith Friday, "but I think it's also the kind of thing that happens, and I don't think we would have realized that until it happened to us."

"What's really troubling," Calvo continued, "is they didn't have a proper warrant to do what they did. They actually didn't give us a warrant at all until 71 hours after it happened. And that's really what's disturbing -- despite all the mistakes that were made, they're holding to their guns, saying they did nothing wrong.

"This happened to us. We can't get our dogs back, and we know that. But the reason we asked for federal authorities to investigate this is because this is a systemic problem, and we want to make sure that, while it happened to us and that's a tragedy, we don't want it to happen to anyone else."

Calvo insisted the couple's two black Labradors were gentle creatures and said police apparently killed the pets "for sport," actually gunning down one of them as it was running away.

"Our dogs were our children," said the 37-year-old Calvo. "They were the reason we bought this house because it had a big yard for them to run in."

The mayor, who was changing his clothes when police burst in, also complained that he was handcuffed in his boxer shorts for about two hours along with his mother-in-law, and said the officers didn't believe him when he told them he was the mayor. No charges were brought against Calvo or his wife, who came home in the middle of the raid.

Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were "most likely ... innocent victims," but he's still not ruling out their involvement, and he actually defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened. We all know how scary dogs can be while they're running away from you.

The FBI will monitor how "effective, fair and professional" the law enforcement agency's conduct was during the incident, Wolf said. A police spokesman declined comment Thursday on the FBI investigation.

Police announced Wednesday they had arrested two men suspected in a plot to smuggle 417 pounds of marijuana, and seized a total of $3.6 million in pot. Investigators said the package that arrived on Calvo's porch had been sent from Los Angeles via FedEx, and they had been tracking it ever since it drew the attention of a drug-sniffing dog in Arizona.

Police intercepted it in Maryland, and an undercover detective posing as a deliveryman took it to the Calvo home.

Calvo's defenders - including the Berwyn Heights police chief, who said his department should have been alerted ahead of time - said police had no right to enter the home without knocking.

But officials insisted they acted within the law, saying the operation was compromised when Calvo's mother-in-law saw officers approaching the house and screamed. That could have given someone time to grab a gun or destroy evidence, authorities said.

Neighbors in Berwyn Heights, which Calvo described as "Mayberry inside the Capital Beltway," have rallied around the couple. On Sunday night, supporters gathered on a ballfield to pay tribute to the family and the dogs. A banner on the wooden fence around Calvo's yard read, "Cheye and Trinity, We support you, Friends and Citizens of Berwyn Heights." Around it were dozens of handwritten messages from supporters.

In addition to being the part-time mayor, Calvo works at a nonprofit foundation that runs boarding schools. His wife is a state finance officer.

"When all of this happened I was flabbergasted," said next-door neighbor Edward Alexander. "I was completely stunned because those dogs didn't hurt anybody. They barely bark."

The case is just the latest in a scandalous series of embarrassments for Prince George's County officials. A former police officer was sentenced in May to 45 years in prison for shooting two furniture deliverymen at his home last year, one of them fatally. He claimed that they attacked him. In June, a suspect jailed in the death of a police officer was found strangled in his cell.

Calvo said he was astonished that police have not only failed to apologize, but declined to clear the couple's names.

His wife spoke through tears as she described an encounter with a girl who used to see the couple walking their dogs.

"She gave me a big hug and she said, `If the police shot your dogs dead and did this to you, how can I trust them?'" Tomsic said. "I don't want people to feel like that. I just want them to be proud of our police and proud to live in Prince George's County."

You'd have to be really, really determined to stay proud of the police if you can still convince yourself to feel proud of these homicidal clowns.

The Original Story

Deputy Finally Arrested For Dumping Man From Wheelchair

It's about time!

Deputy Arrested in Wheelchair Dump Video

Feb 16, 10:41 AM (ET)

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - A deputy who was videotaped dumping a paralyzed man out of his wheelchair onto a Tampa jailhouse floor turned herself in.

Jail records show Charlette Marshall-Jones was booked into the Orient Road Jail early Saturday morning.

It is the same jail where Marshall-Jones worked. She is accused of tipping 32-year-old Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair. A videotape of the incident has been widely circulated.

The Hillsborough County deputy was charged with one count of felony abuse of a disabled person and released after posting $3,500 bail. An attorney for Marshall-Jones listed in jail records did not immediately return a phone message.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080216/D8URG9Q80.html



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9nrFoUFsO8

Reality Catcher

Our Heroic Law Enforcement Officials

Deputy Dumps Man From Wheelchair



Deputy suspended after dumping man from wheelchair

By: Mike Deeson

Tampa, Florida - The Hillsborough Co. Sheriff's Office held a press conference at 10:30am regarding the deputy who can be seen on video dumping a man in a wheelchair onto the ground.

They've announced that Deputy Charlette Jones has been relieved of her duties without pay pending the outcome of an investigation. She has not officially been terminated.

Jones has been employed by the Hillsborough Co. Sheriff's Office since 1996.

Chief Deputy Joe Docobo watched the video for the first time last night and said he found himself in "disgust" and was "appalled at every level."

Docobo also announced that two corporals and a sergeant involved are now on administrative leave with pay, and the jail supervisor on duty did not have knowledge of the incident.

Brian Sterner broke his neck almost 14 years ago and is a quadriplegic.

Sterner, who can drive, was arrested on a traffic violation. When he was booked into the Orient Road Jail last month, Sterner couldn't believe what happened.

He says a deputy looked at him and didn't believe he was a quadriplegic. She walked behind him, took the handles on the back of the hospital-grade wheel chair and dumped it forward.

Sterner says he tried to roll as he was going down, but hit so hard he thought he had broken two ribs. Then, while he was on the floor, deputies frisked him and tried to get him back into the chair.

Sterner says he told them how to pick him up and put him back into the chair, but because he can't feel anything from his breastbone down, he says he was injured and didn't know it. Sterner thought he had broken two ribs, but jail x-rays showed that wasn't true.

The Hillsborough Sheriff's Office didn't know anything about the incident until we showed them their own tape. Now an investigation is underway.

J.D. Calloway, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, says this has all come to light today, so this review is very active.

While we tried to get a written report about the incident, the major who runs the Orient Road Jail told us there is no incident report, because as far as they are concerned, they didn't have a problem with, or cause a problem to, an inmate in a wheelchair.

But don't tell that to Brian Sterner.

Sterner says it's incredibly degrading and it's an example of how poorly trained the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office is. He adds, if they're trying to figure out if somebody needs to be in a wheelchair or not, there are many other ways to do it than to dump somebody on their face.

Chief Deputy Joe Docobo added at the press conference this morning, the sheriff's office will now try to "make things right for this gentleman."

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=73747