Since the story came out I have devoted a significant amount of time researching the topic and have come up with …nothing. There seems to be no public corroboration or denial of the story other than what’s in Department of Justice press releases, statements, and court filings. That doesn’t mean that the DoJ is lying; it just means there’s neither a public corroboration or denial.
Isn’t this an important story? I don’t think that either the Journalists who support Democrats or those who support Republicans are interested in reporting it. Are they afraid of what they might discover? It would interfere with their preconceived notions? Is such down-and-dirty reporting beneath them? Do they know how?
I want to know. I don’t need context or explanations. I don’t want to know what to think about the facts. I need the facts.
This is why I don’t generally believe anything I read or even see anymore. If it’s something I’m actually interested in discovering whether it’s true or not, I might spend time researching. But there is too much BS out there to do that with everything, so mostly I just log stuff as unverified claims.
I’m not sure which claims Dave is talking about, but there was a criminal complaint filed a few weeks ago that the Latin Kings had offered $10k for a hit on a member of the Border Patrol.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/alleged-member-chicago-street-gang-charged-soliciting-murder-senior-law-enforcement
Nothing unusual about the claims in the affidavit stands out to me as unusual other than the medium of the solicitation was SnapChat, but maybe I haven’t explored the app. enough. I’m also not sure how a private party could investigate these type of allegations. The government presumably already seized the defendant’s electronic devices and subpoenaed Snapchat and others for records. The defendant is advised to remain silent. Innocent until proven guilty, but the charges are sufficient to hold him pending trial and perhaps subject him to other non-punitive consequences.
It’s one reason why now that I am retired and have the time I often actually read the articles to check the claims people make. If interested I follow up. I like data/numbers and not just feelings on issues. I keep finding a lack of data in the claims made by the immigration people and the Trump admin. I even have my doubts about the example PD supplies. Some guy would publish on a public forum a bounty using his own name or at least traceable? If they were that dumb we would have caught them all already. At best, this was one guy posting while drunk. What we dont have is any evidence is that this is gang policy and we have lots of these.
Is it normal for these kind of press releases about an arrest to devote most of the release to what is basically a justification for everything hey want to do? It reads like a campaign speech. Again, it comes across like “we found (or made up) one case that proves what we want you to believe.”
Here’s another one I have been pursuing. How many federal officers or police have been injured at the Broadview site where so much violence is supposed to be occurring. I cant find any reports of any being injured. I can find reports of protestors being injured but none on the officers. Nothing on Google or Chat-GPT. So either I am asking the questions wrong, those numbers are not being reported, which seems odd since they are reported elsewhere, or no one/very few have been injured and nothing of significance. IOW, maybe they dont really need troops there after all.
Steve
I guess it depends on how you define “injury”. There was a case, for example, of an agent being dragged by a car and sustaining minor injuries. I know of no cases in which agents have sustained life-threatening injuries there.
I posted a video of an agent being struck by a thrown object. Did he sustain a minor injury? I don’t know. IMO that’s assault—a felony.
So apparently you cant find any reports of injuries either. So why do we need to deploy federal troops to a site where no one, apparently, has sustained any injuries? If someone throws something then arrest them. Again, at existing levels what we actually see reported are multiple injuries sustained by the protestors. PD poo-pooed this concern but based upon historical evidence that is the most likely outcome of any evidence which ought to at least make you think it might be due to excessive actions by the federal officers. Remember that these are largely new officers with 8 weeks of training, far less than most police or what you get in the military.
Steve
Federal charges dropped against 3 protesters arrested outside ICE facility in Broadview last month
Five Individuals Charged in Federal Court in Chicago with Assaulting or Resisting Federal Agents Engaged in Immigration Enforcement Operations
As I said there were published reports of minor injuries.
Yet in the reports on injuries to protestors they often note more serious injuries that require a trip to the hospital. Given that if it bleeds it leads I find it unlikely that media are omitting those kinds of details. Makes me wonder what the justification is for needing military troops for protection. Note that those kinds of details were pretty easy to obtain during the Floyd protests in Chicago where if memory serves over 200 police reported injuries, some requiring hospital treatment.
Steve