The justice’s wife allegedly spat at her neighbors’ car and traded insults, prompting the young couple to call the police
After reports that an upside-down American flag had flown outside the Virginia residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito during the period surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, the conservative justice blamed the flag’s placement on his wife, Martha-Ann — claiming her actions were a result of a clash over a neighbor’s anti-Trump yard sign and a verbal insult.
Now, the Alitos’ neighbors — Emily Baden and her then-boyfriend, now husband — are disputing the Alitos’ version of events, according to the The New York Times, which reviewed text messages and a police call to corroborate the claims. According to the Badens, Martha-Ann instigated the weekslong conflict and, at one point, spat at their car as they drove by the Alito’s home.
Per the Times, the couple had placed signs on their yard that read “Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit” shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Emily told the publication that the second sign was not directed at the justice and his wife, but at Republicans in general. The signs were soon taken down by Emily’s mother out of safety concerns.
My wife pushes back but this right here is the reason I don’t have certain signs/flags on my property. If it was just me, fuck the fascists I would fly so much shit all the time. I just can’t in good conscious put my wife and kids lives in danger because of the rabid right-wing cultists out there. I understand that’s by design and exactly what they want but their safety is far superior to mine.
When you conform and shut up, they win. This fear for your family is what they want you to feel and how they’ve silenced entire nations in the past.
Yes but when they SWAT you and one of your family members dies you lose even harder.
The lack of accountability of the police in the US is astounding. People talk about swatting like and avalanche or something. Yeah, it’s just going to kill you, nothing you can do about it.
Even if we had accountability, accountability happens after the fact. It’s a small consolation that a swat team got charged after they killed your wife or kids. Your loved ones are still dead.
Not that we don’t need it, don’t get me wrong, but we need procedural overhauls even more, to stop people from getting killed in the first place.
After 10 swat teams end up in jail, they are going to be careful entering people’s homes.
They also need to address the false calls. I think the phone bill payer should automatically be liable for the deployment costs of a false call, unless they point the finger at the person who actually made the call. That wouldn’t quite be justice, as it wouldn’t necessarily make them liable for the false report, but it would go a long way to stopping them.
I’d even go a step further and charge them with something criminal. Reckless endangerment if nothing else. The cost of the call itself is only a small part of it; the intent is to cause fear or harm to the individual being targeted, and they should be liable for that.
Absolutely, but proving all of that is a tall order. Turning it into a civil offense where the bill payer is automatically liable sets a much lower bar, where successful prosecution is far more likely.
I work in 911 dispatch, the area I work in has gotten a few attempted swatting calls, and they usually tend to come from various free calling apps, or burner phones, and I think even a handful of times from payphones (yes, there’s still a few out there) which can make it really damn hard to tie them back to an actual person the way we can with most regular phone numbers. They also tend to call our 10-digit non-emergency numbers instead of 911, so we don’t get an address or location info for the caller like we would on a 911 line.
For what it’s worth, the cops in my area have done a really good job of not going nuts when they respond to these calls, and not to toot my own horn too hard, but I think a lot of that has to do with the quality of the dispatchers at my center, every time we’ve gotten one, whoever took the call pretty much immediately caught on that something was fucky and notated the hell out of every strange thing about the call to make sure the cops knew something may be up. One of the first swatting calls I remember seeing back when they started taking off a few years ago was answered by a somewhat older dude who had never even heard of swatting at that point, and he still caught on pretty quick that something was fishy. There’s other dispatch centers I’ve dealt with where I absolutely would not trust them to catch on or handle it well.
It’s even more egregious that SWAT is sent out on some anonymous VoIP shit originating from a VPN. That is not probable cause. In a just society everyone breaking and entering on zero evidence would be civilly and criminally liable.
Except that isn’t going to happen unless there is drastic change.
Sounds like change we can believe in.
The Some More News podcast is doing a week of reporting on police training, misconduct/murder, and specifically “How they’re trained to kill you in your homes”- episode title. I’ll be following it and start to look at the topic myself since it’s an area I know nothing about but massively affects everyone. Other than experiencing the disgusting nature of dealing with cops and navigating the legal system with and against them, I don’t know how they function as a national system or how departments work. There is so much pro police or detective propaganda on TV and everywhere that the lines have become blurred on the reality of their actual jobs and role in society.
They don’t appear to have actual jobs. I’m sure they have job descriptions on paper, but SCOTUS has been quite clear that they can’t be legally compelled to do their jobs, and sure enough, every time I’ve ever called the police, they’ve simply refused to enforce the law. The last time was when a police sergeant literally told me that boat theft wasn’t a criminal matter.
What? I’m curious what the rationale was. Theft is classified as a crime, so how can any tangible item followed by theft not be a crime?!
No rationale given, they just told me to sue in civil court instead.
Damn. That’s just nuts. Thanks for sharing this experience as I’ve never heard of this. I don’t own a boat, but they can apply that to anything unless I am rich.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, one of my experiences with them is getting hit by a car while cycling breaking some important bones, they showed up and gave me a business card to call them while I was laying on the ground bleeding from everywhere offering no help other than asking if I could walk to the hospital several blocks away. The EMTs chased them away thankfully. Then 8 months later they finally finished typing their whole one paragraph “police report” for my insurance claim, getting every detail wrong. A random shooter guy shot at me and missed this past November while I was out in my neighborhood walking my dog, in a different City, I found his name and all details about him to give the police. They still haven’t arrested him because he didn’t actually hit me while shooting at my head and can’t be bothered to “do their jobs”
My boat was very cheap, so a lawsuit would lose me money, but you might be able to win a lot more over attempted murder. Maybe worth the cost of paying a lawyer to hear you out?
The reason to fear low-life creatures is because they will attack irrationally with little cause. There will come a time when good people must stand their ground, and it is not far - be prepared.
I am sitting here contemplating the wording for a sign that says something along the lines of “This house’s guns are for dealing with fascists.” Should still fall under free speach and not fighting words or threats since it is devoid of specific intent and specific targeting words.
They seem to think they are the only ones who have means for aggression, they are direly mistaken.
Same exact reasoning here, but I have another. Why paint a target on myself when the fascists are doing so voluntarily? A Trump flag says, “You are my enemy.” Why should I give them the same intelligence on me?
They’re already making lists. Between apps like these and the kinda surveillance the US totally doesn’t do on US citizens, you’re probably already on a conservative’s hit list.
We live in a bellwether county, meaning the vote (almost) always goes to the winner of the presidential election, so there’s a decent mix, but I still don’t put political signs on my lawn because I don’t want to deal with shit from people. We put up a sign on our lawn once that said that everyone was welcome in our home in multiple languages and my librarian wife had us put up a “We [heart] Our Library” sign, but that’s as political as I want people to think we are in this neighborhood because the last thing I need is to get into a nasty argument with a guy a couple of houses down with a Trump sign.
We do have a United Federation of Planets flag on the flag pole that came with the house though.
Loving the library is a political sign nowadays, unfortunately. Let alone welcoming ESL speakers into your home.
I realize that, but it’s not going to get my neighbor to come over to me and start yelling at me about voting for Biden.
(Also, this is a college town, so if they don’t like ESL people, they’re out of luck.)
That is an excellent lesson to teach your kids /s
Jk, kinda. I don’t have kids (so totally easy for me to say) but I know of that one poem/saying that goes, I taught my daughter not to stand out and be obedient so she wouldn’t struggle against the fascists. Now, I realize I should’ve taught her to be herself and stand out, as that is what this world needs now more than ever… don’t remember exactly but it was something like that, I also don’t remember where I heard it