The organized surveillance and harassment programs I wrote about in CHAMELEO (OR Books, 2015) are becoming so overt that even mainstream newspapers like THE WASHINGTON POST and THE DAILY MAIL are beginning to write about the phenomenon. Inevitably, the reporters don't seem to be aware that these incidents are part of a much larger pattern. Or, if they are aware of it, they aren't reporting on that fact... not yet at least.
Here's an excerpt from Arelis R. Hernández and Paul Farhi's 6-28-22 WASHINGTON POST article entitled "Journalists in Uvalde Are Stonewalled, Hassled, Threatened with Arrest":
Journalists had been threatened with arrest for getting too close to the mourners, so Houston Chronicle reporter Julian Gill stayed in the designated media area when he reported on funerals the week after the massacre at Robb Elementary School.
Nevertheless, a phalanx of uniformed bikers confronted Gill outside the cemetery gates. They called themselves “Guardians of the Children” and claimed to be working with police officers who stood watch.
“I’m not trying to disturb anyone, guys,” Gill told the bikers, in a video he posted online. “I’m not trying to ask anybody any questions. I just wanted to watch. That’s all we can do, right?”
But the bikers followed and harassed journalists anyway, Gill wrote in the Chronicle. When he accidentally bumped into a Guardian who claimed to be a paramedic, the bikers accused him of assault and battery. “As a public servant, that’s kind of a felony,” the biker-paramedic said in the video.
A month after 19 children and two educators were killed at Robb Elementary School, a picture is emerging of a disastrous police response, in which officers from several law enforcement agencies waited for an hour outside an unlocked classroom where children were trapped with the attacker. But journalists who have flocked to Uvalde, Tex., from across the country to tell that story have faced near-constant interference, intimidation and stonewalling from some of the same authorities — and not only bikers claiming to have police sanction.
Journalists have been threatened with arrest for “trespassing” outside public buildings. They have been barred from public meetings and refused basic information about what police did during the May 24 attack. After several early, error-filled news conferences, officials have routinely turned down interview requests and refused to hold news briefings. The situation has been made even more fraught by the spider’s web of local and state agencies involved in responding to and investigating the shooting, some of which now blame each other for the chaos.
“Our reporters have covered [the 2017 massacre in] Sutherland Springs, the Fort Hood shooting, and some are very experienced, having been embedded with military in Afghanistan, covered revolutions in Latin American, and none of them could remember an experience like this,” said Marc Duvoisin, editor in chief of the San Antonio Express-News. “The interference was so intense and without an identifiable public safety purpose.” [...]
It is not unusual for public information to be lacking in the aftermath of a catastrophe, or for locals to be rankled when hordes of reporters converge on a small town. But the pattern of miscommunication, stonewalling and intimidation in Uvalde has surprised even journalists with decades of experience, and led some to suspect it is intentional.
To read the entire article, click HERE.
Here's an excerpt from Chris Matthews' 6-27-22 DAILY MAIL article entitled "Mom Who Was Cuffed by Cops Before She Managed to Jump the Fence and Save Her Son and His Friends from Uvalde Gunman Claims She Is Now Being Harassed by Officers Who 'Park Outside Her Home and Flicker Their Headlights'":
A
mom who was cuffed by cops at Uvalde before she was able to save her
two sons from the gunman at Robb Elementary has claimed officers have
been harassing her since the massacre.
The Texas elementary school shooting on May 24 left 19 children and two teachers dead.
On the day of the shooting, Angeli Rose Gomez rushed to the school and saved her kids even though officers tried to stop her.
A total of 77 minutes elapsed between police arriving at the scene and their confrontation with the gunman.
In that time, Angeli Rose Gomez rushed to the school and was cuffed outside it as she tried to rescue her children.
She convinced a Uvalde officer she knew to ask a US Marshal to let her out of the cuffs.
As
soon as she was free she ran to the school, saving her kids, all while
police were still allowing shooter Salvador Rolando Ramos, 18, to roam
with an assault rifle.
Uvalde
School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo in particular faces
stinging criticism over his response to the mass shooting and was put on
administrative leave after last week.
Since the shooting, Gomez said she has faced 'harassment' from officers.
While the family was exercising one evening, a cop had 'parked at the corner, flickering us with his headlights', she told Fox 29.
She's
separated from her children because of the alleged harassment and is
considering filing a lawsuit in the wake of the shooting.
Her
lawyer, Mark Di Carlo, a criminal defense lawyer from Corpus Christi
who is representing around 15 Uvalde parents, said because Arredondo
'wasn't fired immediately' there was an 'indication of corruption or
wrong-doing.'
Gomez
also previously slammed officers for warning her with a probation
violation for obstruction of justice after she spoke to the media.
Gomez
said she was called by an officer who warned she would be hit with
legal trouble over a charge against her from over a decade ago.
She
insisted she wouldn't be cowed and would continue sharing her story
after the judge presiding her previous case said she would be fined.
To read the entire story, click HERE.
