Patterico's Pontifications

11/8/2012

Political SWATtings in the L.A. Weekly

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:29 am



The L.A. Weekly has a story about politically motivated swattings. They focus primarily on mine, but also mention the swattings of Mike Stack, Erick Erickson, and Aaron Walker. The story is titled SWATting, a Deadly Political Game. The deck headline reads: “DA Patrick Frey’s enemies called 911, saying he’d shot his wife.” Here is an excerpt:

The deputy DA believes his widely followed revelations about Weiner’s online escapades made Frey the target of a dangerous, unnerving hoax: a false 911 call that put Frey, his wife, Christi —a high-end sex-crimes prosecutor for the District Attorney — and his two young children in the crosshairs of armed officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

On July 1, 2011, Frey, in his nighttime blogger role, was talking to a source over his cellphone just after 12:30 a.m. — his wife and kids fast asleep upstairs in their Rancho Palos Verdes home — when he heard a thunderous pounding at his front door.

“I was sitting right here in this chair,” he says, re-enacting the haunting experience as he sits at his kitchen table, the South Bay harbor gleaming up through hot glass.

“I jumped up to the counter … and peeked around the corner,” he says. Five or six armed deputies on his porch were barking, “Come out with your hands up!”

As he opened the door, Frey, afraid to set down his cellphone — any quick move could be deadly — prayed they wouldn’t mistake the device for a gun.

But the cops were cautious, and no shots were fired. Deputies handcuffed the longtime deputy DA and hustled him into a patrol vehicle. His stunned wife, Christi, was patted down against the garage wall. The couple’s two young children tell L.A. Weekly that police burst into their bedrooms with flashlights to make sure they were safe. The Freys’ neighbors, awakened by the spectacle, watched the dramatic midnight raid play out.

“People can turn other people’s lives upside down just sitting in front of a keyboard,” Frey says. “There’s just something strange and disquieting about that.”

The reporter, Simone Wilson, came to my home and spent a good amount of time talking to me about what happened. I showed her where I was sitting (the same place I am sitting now) and where my wife was frisked by police.

I might not have phrased everything the same way Wilson did, and I might quibble with a minor point here and there, but the story is generally quite well done. Probably none of it will be news to the people who have followed the story on this blog. However, it’s a decent summary of the four politically motivated swattings that happened over the last 16 months.

You might think that the attempts to harass and intimidate me have stopped, just because I hardly ever talk about them these days. You would be wrong. The harassment is a daily occurrence, as it has been for at least 16 months. Defamation, workplace complaints, false reports to police, crazy conspiracy theories, twisting of facts, incitement of bad actors — literally every day a malevolent Internet presence continues to try to disrupt my life and that of my family.

The good news is that the bad actors appear to be worried and desperate. The bad news is that the bad actors appear to be worried and desperate.

My harassers have been thoroughly discredited, and that brings a certain peace of mind. It is not necessary to respond to every twisted allegation. My friends know it’s nonsense without even asking.

The experience has been very clarifying. I know who my friends are. Those who have truly stood with me have my everlasting appreciation.

I’m still facing a frivolous lawsuit — a form of harassment that most of you are already familiar with. Neal Rauhauser has boasted that he was “instrumental in this coming to pass” and fantasizes that it “may put an end to Frey’s career in the DA’s office.” So the lawsuit was instigated at the behest of a Brett Kimberlin associate, and the plaintiff has discussed her intention to use it to out a conservative blogger who has been targeted by Kimberlin and Rauhauser. It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The lawsuit is mentioned in the article, which provides further evidence that the suit is politically motivated harassment.

My lawyers would like me to keep comments closed on posts such as these, for the time being.

My plan is to keep on keeping on.

Thanks again to you readers for all your support. And, again, a huge shout-out to Ron Coleman of Likelihood of Confusion and Kenneth P. White of Popehat for being the sort of people who stand up — so that people like me can speak out.

Comments are closed.


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0565 secs.