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Justice Alito's Upside-Down Flag Claim Dismantled by Police, Neighbors: Report (www.rollingstone.com)

submitted 2 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] 0110010001100010@lemmy.world 126 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] sepi@piefed.social 72 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 45 points 2 months ago

Yes but when they SWAT you and one of your family members dies you lose even harder.

[-] Tja@programming.dev 31 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 14 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Tja@programming.dev 17 points 2 months ago

After 10 swat teams end up in jail, they are going to be careful entering people's homes.

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 13 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 10 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Fondots@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] barsquid@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Fondots@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

The problem is that we do get a lot of actual legitimate calls through these VoIP apps, or from people calling from out of the area, on our 10 digit lines, etc.

I don't know the actual demographics, but it seems like a lot of people use these apps as their primary phones, especially in lower income communities, homeless people, etc. and of course those people have have actual emergencies too, and we wouldn't want withhold or delay appropriate resources from them in an emergency just because we don't like their phone number.

We also get people from across the country or occasionally even other countries calling our 10 digit lines because they spoke with their friend or relative either on the phone or over discord or facebook or whatever, they disclosed that they're having an emergency but are unable or unwilling to call for themselves, so their friend looks up our number and calls for them.

And a lot of these swatting type calls aren't too far-fetched, we do get murders and shootings, barricaded subjects, etc. with some regularity (not an every day occurrence by any means, but if you work here for a year or two you'll probably at least see a couple happen if not answer the call yourself.)

When it might be called for, we do send swat, they can take a while to mobilize thanks to how it's organized in our county with the SWAT teams being made up of officers from multiple different departments, so it's better to have them stage nearby and not need them than to wait until shit hits the fan and potentially take 20-30 minutes or even longer for them to make it there.

But again, they're staging, they might go as far surrounding the house, evacuating neighbors, drones in the air, etc. but unless there's a clear immediate threat they exhaust all possible options before breaking in, and so far that's paid off. YMMV, I absolutely do not trust all departments to show that much restraint.

[-] barsquid@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Thank you for the perspective on this. Maybe the ones I hear of are the more egregious departments that do not behave with restraint. If there are legitimate calls coming in that way, it does make sense to respond.

[-] Fondots@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah, we've had calls come to us in all sorts of crazy ways called in by all sorts of different people for all sorts of wild situations. We kind of have to treat all calls as if they might be real no matter how outlandish, and just make sure we notate anything weird about them. I could probably write several books about all of the crazy 3rd and 4th party calls, people calling from the emergency phone in an elevator, suicide threats called in from a bank because the person decided to bare their soul to Wells Fargo customer service, calling from deactivated phones on VoIP apps because it's the only way they could call, etc.

Of course there's a lot of room for new regulations, training, etc. on how police can/should act on the info from our calls. The cops in my area mostly seem to have a good idea how to handle it, but not all departments are created equal. And it's an ever-evolving situation with new stuff always coming up. We hd to recently explain to one of our cops about crash detection from iphones because he'd never heard of it before.

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

What do you think about my suggestion of holding the bill payer liable? Obviously this wouldn't help with pay phones, but any service where someone pays through a traceable means could work. Do you think that would help reduce the number of fraudulent calls?

[-] Fondots@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Another thought that just crossed my mind, for the most part, there's already laws in place about false police reports, misuse of 911, etc. that this kind of thing could fall under. It's probably a better use of legislative time and resources to improve the issues with how the police respond to these calls, and to make sure that the existing laws can be enforced fairly and efficiently than to try to introduce a new law that covers a pretty narrow set of circumstances that's not even particularly common.

If we wanted to introduce new laws specifically to address this, I'd probably want tighter regulations on the VoIP apps, cellular providers, etc. to make it easier for us to identify who's calling (although as someone who does value my privacy and mostly prefers anonymity when possible, I'm hesitant at best to actually support that kind of measure.)

I've worked here for almost 6 years, we've probably had about as many swatting calls (somewhat more if you count repeated calls to the same address, but after the first one we usually add a caution note to the address so that everyone from the calltakers to the officers responding are aware that it could be a false call) It's not exactly the biggest issue we face. I'd personally prefer to see something done, maybe some kind of mental health reform, so we can actually do something about the 2 or 3 repeat callers I've probably spoken to, without exaggeration, almost 100 times each over the last month or so. They're hallucinating or having delusions or something along those lines, so in their minds they're reporting an actual emergency making it difficult to make false report or misuse of 911 charges stick because their intent factors into those charges, and they also don't really present a danger to themselves or others, so we can't really get them committed either, and on top of that, even if it were possible to use the current laws, no one really wants to deal with the necessary paperwork and court dates and such to pursue those kinds of things, in the grand scheme they're still a fairly minor nuisance and we all have things we'd rather be doing than that, work-related or not.

Also general public education, and other kinds of conflict resolution solutions, or other sort of social programs (some of which fall under the ~~defend~~ EDIT: defund the police banner) could go a long way. We get a lot of calls for things that are in no way shape or form police issues, and a lot of situations that probably could have been headed off before they became police issues if people had access to other sorts of of counseling, mediators, and safety nets to fall back on. If people had access to better ways to manage and express their anger at someone and to address whatever issues there may be, maybe they wouldn't try to escalate things to SWATing. Maybe a guidance counselor took note of your anger issues in school and helped you learn to handle those feelings before you decided to SWAT the guy who beat you in fortnight (or whatever the big multiplayer game is these days, I'm out of the loop on that.) Maybe if we had UBI it wouldn't be such a big deal that your ex kicked you out of their house and you wouldn't feel a need to start a years-long vendetta against them. Or maybe if there was an easier way to get some sort of third party involved in your dispute to act as a mediator/arbiter, you wouldn't have as much animosity towards the person you have beef with. Lots of other potential avenues to investigate to prevent these things from happening in the first place instead of trying to deal with them after the fact.

[-] Fondots@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Since, like I said, most of these aren't coming in through traceable means, I think it's of pretty limited utility.

There's also a lot of cases out there, where a lot of people are on the same phone plan who may not even live together, I'm still on my parents phone plan as a married man in my 30s who lives an hour away from them, the way the contracts and such have worked out it's cheaper for us and there's no sense of changing it if it's working fine for all of us. But if I tried to swat someone, it'd be kind of a dick move to hold my parents responsible for it.

[-] rayyy@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Except that isn't going to happen unless there is drastic change.

[-] Triasha@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Sounds like change we can believe in.

[-] CatOnTheChainWax@lemmy.today 10 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago

their actual jobs

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.

[-] WindyRebel@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

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?!

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago

No rationale given, they just told me to sue in civil court instead.

[-] WindyRebel@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] CatOnTheChainWax@lemmy.today 2 points 2 months ago

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"

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

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?

[-] rayyy@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago

This fear for your family is what they want you to feel

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.

[-] Adalast@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 37 points 2 months ago

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?

[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 22 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] barsquid@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago

Loving the library is a political sign nowadays, unfortunately. Let alone welcoming ESL speakers into your home.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.)

[-] Psychodelic@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

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

[-] PorradaVFR@lemmy.world 83 points 2 months ago

If Roberts had any principles or just a spine he'd set an example, instead the SCOTUS legacy is beclowned daily and he does not care. What a failure of a once vaunted institution.

[-] Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 31 points 2 months ago

He is setting an example. He is an example that you can stack the supreme court with people who will do the bidding of their party, law be damned, and there is little to nothing to be done about it, at least not before it is too late. He is finally in a position where he doesn't have to keep up with the act so much anymore.

[-] eran_morad@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago

Roberts engineered all of this shit with Citizens United. He is putin’s man.

[-] slickgoat@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

Not defending Roberts, but he hasn't the power to do shit about any other Supreme. It's not like he's the boss of the others.

[-] PorradaVFR@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

The Chief Justice calling on him to recuse would be one. Even better - advocating for a binding code of ethics.

At the very least, meeting with Congress.

He refuses to even do symbolic gestures.

[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

What could Roberts do?

[-] PorradaVFR@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Legally I'm not sure - symbolically he could do a lot. Call out the ethical judgement of Thomas and Alito for one. Recommend recusal. Hell, suggest resignations - if he were a principled Chief Justice that is, but alas….

[-] BertramDitore@lemmy.world 47 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Hoo boy the Alitos do not come off well. If the justice were true to his oath and had any respect left for his office, instead of staying silent he would have interjected and said something like, “thanks for the chat, you are completely entitled to your opinion. Isn’t our show on Martha-Ann? You folks have a good evening.” Not too hard, really.

Also, anyone else notice this subtle dig at the Post for burying their story?

When speaking to a Washington Post reporter (per a story published last week), that same day, Martha-Ann shouted that the flag was “an international signal of distress.”

[-] eran_morad@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

The Post had this story 3 years ago and didn’t publish because dolla dolla bill. They’re in the bag for the fascist traitors.

[-] snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago

I'm going to teach my neighbor a lesson by flying my flag upside down. That'll show em. 😂🤣🤣😂

[-] HubertManne@kbin.social 26 points 2 months ago

Its just so funny how we literally have the most insider folks that are the most responsible for the state of the country walking around like they are oppressed and need to rebel against the repression. The repression they speak of is of course enforcement of laws around corruption or fighting said corruption.

[-] OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

The signs were soon taken down by Emily’s mother out of safety concerns.

The last phrase in the article really irritates me. I drive through rural areas where everyone flies their pro-trump flags and their “kill Brandon” signs and no one balks. Heck, I live in a semi-urban blue city, and one neighbor on my block had a trump sign with no worries.

But post any anti-trump signs or anti-fascism / anti-insurrection signs and you WILL get a rock through your window, at the very least.

The neighbor next to the trump supporter on my street had a “SETTLE FOR BIDEN” sign. I don’t know if they got flak for that.

I hate the era we live in.

[-] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 2 months ago

I am shocked, shocked, that the guy hand picked by right wing extremist lobby groups to represent their views on the Supreme Court is a hard right wing extremist.

Shocked.

[-] tearsintherain@leminal.space 2 points 2 months ago

living in crazy times. like full throttle over a cliff.

[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Just flip it agajn

this post was submitted on 30 May 2024

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