"Twitter" charges dropped; secret affidavit to be made public Nov. 23rd
"You can beat the rap, but not the ride."
- Miami cop discussing preemptive FTAA arrests in 2003Not surprisingly, the charges against Elliot Madison and Michael Wallschlager have been droppedAllegheny County District Attorney's office. Generally, individuals employed by law enforcement agencies tend to pad the charges of the people they arrest with offenses of a much more serious nature, as a means of accumulating the "arrest points" to raise their efficiency rating, a key factor in career advancement, as well as an effort to get the unfortunate soul who has been arrested to plead guilty to lesser charges.
The arrests and detentions that precede the mass protests which are organized as a response to a gathering of the elites, such as a trade summit, like the recent G-20 in Pittsburgh, or a political convention, usually have no merit according to the laws of the US, but are a deliberate effort to remove select individuals or groups from the field, for the duration of the demonstrations. The strategy behind these kinds of detentions seems to have evolved in the past decade or so. What was once a fishing expedition to ascribe sinister purposes to common household items, such as the raids on the warehouse used to construct puppets before the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, had morphed into the provocation and entrapment of the 2008 RNC. A reflection of the increasing militarization of US law enforcement, the preemptive raids against the temporary logistical infrastructure used to resist the G-20 in Pittsburgh seemed to adhere to orthodox military doctrine.
Since Pittsburgh SWAT was nearly disbanded for incompetence, it may be a hard sell to characterize whoever was in charge of "security" (does anyone know?) as some kind of brilliant tactician, especially after their choice to launch their indiscriminate gas and LRAD/megaphone attack from the bottom of a hill, a position that has traditionally spelled defeat. The attacks on mobile kitchens, community farms, independent media, and communications betray a mindset that views any opposition to the status quo as a bona fide insurgency. Aside from the thrill of playing "operator," (to use their unfortunate appropriation of military jargon) with none of the risks associated with attacking armed, fortified positions, why else would dozens of cops armed with automatic weapons launch paramilitary raids on pacifists, widely known to be unarmed, if not to disrupt "supply lines" and "enemy communication?"
Whether these products of the centralized, top-down command structure and culture of bureaucratic agencies, armed or otherwise, simply lack the ability to understand the decentralized and horizontal nature of anarchist organizing, or they and their hand puppets in the media choose to designate certain individuals as "leaders," for their own purposes, namely more compelling storytelling. This also reflects an adherence, as well as an appeal to a basic component of the right-wing worldview, one that has long been taught in schools and forms the basis of most conspiracy theories, namely that the individual is the primary agent of historical change. 'Founding fathers' and '9/11 truth' both spring forth from the same part of the imagination that occasionally gives rise to visions of 'anarchist leaders.' A comment on the website of the NY Daily News, who were the first mainstream media outlet to report on the raid of their home is typical of this kind of "George Soros pays protesters" mindset:
The pimply faced teens can be manipulated by these jerks! Asyou can see, the scumbags are safely in the motel and running the show! They are not out fromt with the idealists who are not old enough or wise enough to realize that they are being manipulated by these despots who want to control them! If your cause is so important to you, why the masks? If you think the government has spyware to look thru the clearisil you are mistaken! Perhaps if your parents were made to pay for your fun, you wouldn't be so destructive! Why do your ilk smash the property of hard working people? Your dogma says that "the man " is bad, The only ones I see are detrimental(read bad) is you! Scumbags!
The Commonwealth formally dropped the fictitious criminal charges which safe money says they never intended to pursue, but were simply a means of preventing two people the State had designated as ringleaders from doing what many people had been doing for days before the summit; listening to an online police scanner and sharing that information via Twitter. Was their possession of physical police scanners somehow more threatening than the virtual ones? Much like their willingness to believe that graduates of Pittsburgh's psychic police program, used their x-ray vision to identify an individual as every one of the masked people (and flying rubber bullets, grenades, and beanbags) that may have damaged private property, one of the local papers, even entitled one of their articles about the charges being dropped against these members of the Tin Can Comms Collective "Case against alleged G-20 protest coordinators dropped," although the article itself lacked any details of how these two people "coordinated" the G-20 protests, which miraculously continued while they were in State custody. The residents of Tortuga House can use whatever help you can spare. Although like most recent examples of efforts to transmute dissent into "terrorism," it is likely another attempt for the FBI to justify its budget, and therefore its existence, there is a federal investigation pending, which based on the vague warrant and items seized during the 16 hour raid, it is likely another fishing expedition. There is also the matter of the grand jury and the sealed affidavit:
At a hearing today, instead of oral arguments regarding a defense motion to unseal the secret 18-page affidavit authorizing the arrests of Elliott Madison and Michael Wallschlager at a motel just outside of Pittsburgh, the prosecution immediately moved to withdraw all charges against the two before the defense had a chance to argue its case. Although clear from the beginning that these charges were absurd based on the State’s very own laws, our housemates were incarcerated for 36 hours, had their van towed and belongings confiscated, and one house member was given $30,000 in straight bail.
The District Attorney and his spokesperson were at pains to explain why the State would drop all charges against these dangerous twitterists and of course, refused to admit that these charges were unconstitutional and a heavy-handed attempt to scare anarchists and others from protesting in ways unsanctioned by the government. Instead, the prosecution says they decided that pursuing the charges “would be unwise” after consulting other law enforcement agencies and because of other pending investigations. The secret affidavit authorizing the arrests in Pennsylvania is set to become public on Nov. 23rd. We imagine the Pennsylvania State Police will seek an extension to keep this document sealed—perhaps in order to hide the flimsiness of their secret evidence? However, no matter the reason, we will fight to unseal this document and we will not let the State hide behind sealed evidence, obscure innuendo, and other traditional tactics used by secret police.
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