Man acts "jittery" in restaurant, SWAT team is called in

[PopHistorian]

This is a truly bizarre local story. On Friday (Nov. 2), a quiet Boston suburb experienced its first murder in two decades. It was committed against a homeowner by a contractor working in the man's yard. There was wall-to-wall special live TV coverage for hours, because police decided to lock down all the schools in town, too, until they caught the guy, which was pretty soon after.

However, bizarrely, during the TV coverage, there were pictures of a downtown location with police swarming around and sharpshooters on rooftops, etc. The rumor was that there was a second crime scene, in which perhaps someone had attempted a robbery and was holed-up in a restaurant. Well, the real story behind that second, separate incident has come out, but buried inside the headline story about the murder.

_http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/11/bat_used_as_wea.html

A manhunt for Dunn [the murder suspect] was complicated Friday when employees of a pizzeria in Needham Square reported that a jittery man who may be armed had entered the restaurant. That report led town and State Police to essentially shut down the town center and deploy SWAT teams to rooftops.

Police arrested Hillel Neuer at gunpoint and charged him with disorderly conduct. Neuer is the executive director of Geneva-based UN Watch and was in Boston to deliver a speech.

In another courtroom this morning, Clerk Magistrate Salvatore Paterna dismissed the charges against Neuer, saying he reviewed police reports and found no probable cause.

After charges were dropped, attorney David G. Eisenstadt read a statement to reporters that said Neuer was "victimized" and "traumatized" by his arrest and that his reputation had been tarnished.

I was told by someone who read other coverage of this story that employees of the pizza place didn't like the jittery and non-American look of Neuer and called 911 on him. He was unarmed and there was no reason to believe he was armed. When the SWAT team arrived, the employees ran out the back and Neuer dove under a table because he suddenly had police with guns trained on him. Perhaps he wasn't even sure that he was the reason for their presence. I was surprised to learn that he even had to go to court -- that there were charges. "Disorderly conduct" sounds trumped up to save face for the police.

No probable cause and yet the SWAT team was called in! Just who was it that was "jittery?"

Further coincidences. UN Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee. Needham has a large Jewish population.

Man Needham Police Arrested was Exec. Director of UN Watchdog Group

-http://home.wickedlocal.com/2007/11/04/man-needham-police-arrested-was-executive-director-of-un-watchdog-group/
includes link to a YouTube video of one of Hillel's speeches

More:
_http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/7741.html

Needham police received information that there was a man with a gun in downtown Needham this afternoon. Police placed all schools in Needham, as well as the public library, under lockdown.

Police approached Stone Hearth Pizza on Great Plain and Dedham avenues, with guns drawn. Chris Robbins, co-owner of Stone Hearth Pizza, said the manager told him a man came into the restaurant, “very agitated.” “He used the bathroom and actually came out dressed in something different,” Robbins said. The manager called the police and told employees and three or four customers in the pizzeria to leave, according to Robbins.

 

[QueenVee]

Mmmm, my first thought on reading this was: Who did Neuer piss off in the course of his work as executive director of UN Watch; and what was the nature of the speech he was to deliver while in Boston? But, on the other hand, that could just be my paranoia kicking in, and his job/political views are probably not related to the incident at all.

After a bit of searching on the internet, I discovered this clip of Neuer delivering a speech to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, a speech that greeted with annoyance by the Commission, and subsequently striken from the record. In it, he accuses the Commission of being corrupt, and for picking on Israel. So he's a pro-Israel Zionist....

 

[Azur]

This is exactly what Bruce Schneier was talking about when he wrote this piece: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/142886-The-War-on-the-Unexpected

The CYA and automatic fear parts seem to be very apropos here.

 

[PopHistorian]

Azur, the article you linked seems to nail it, saying, "If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats." We've talked elsewhere on this forum about Homeland Security efforts to develop a network of citizen informants, overtly and perhaps quietly, and also about the militarization of police forces, which has been going on for years and years.

However, QueenVee's "paranoic" first thought doesn't seem so out of place when you consider that this guy is someone unusual and, in fact, there was simply "no cause" found to call the police. The police reaction is in alignment with the quote above, but it presupposes that the pizza manager was telling the truth. Maybe there was someone who wanted to put a scare into this guy for political reasons.

And yes, of course he's pro-Israel since his organization is affiliated with the AJC (source of horribly biased pro-Israel propagandist commercials that I hear on the AM radio almost every morning).

Regardless of what the truth is, the overkill local TV coverage certainly worked to send a message around here about reaction to be expected from police. I was just reading about company security policies on our company's internal website and saw that just driving through the garage, passing open parking spaces is considered behavior "suspicious" enough to warrant a call to security. So is walking through the garage if you're "not recognized." Sheesh.

 

[PopHistorian]

I heard on a radio talk show today, a thread developed about people noticing extreme police overreactions. Overkill such as three cruisers and six officers on a routine traffic stop, ten cruisers and twenty officers to subdue two teenaged shoplifters (and all the police with bullet-proof vests, guns, billy clubs, mace, and tasers in their belts), similar large numbers of cruisers and officers plus two helicopters in the sky for a stolen car in a small town, etc. One caller claimed that Triple Canopy, another mercenary outfit (which is based in Herndon VA, home of the CIA) that is alongside Blackwater in Iraq is specializing in training both special military forces and police forces, further blurring the line between military and police. Just another name to remember, I guess.

from Wikipedia entry on Triple Canopy:

Wordwide Presence

Iraq

Roadside bombing in September, 2005

On September 7, 2005, four security professionals contracted by Triple Canopy were killed while in protective security operations for the U.S. Department of State in Basra.

Whistleblowing lawsuit

A lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of Fairfax County by two former Triple Canopy employees in July 2006 claims that their shift leader (an unnamed former U.S serviceman) deliberately fired at vehicles and civilians in two incidents, saying it was his last day in Iraq and he was determined to kill, and that the company later fired the two employees for reporting what happened to the company's senior supervisor in Iraq, and blacklisted them from working in the industry.

Security Contractor Cleared in Two Firings

Triple Canopy fired two employees who reported seeing their supervisor randomly shoot into two Iraqi civilian vehicles in Baghdad in 2006, because they had waited two days to inform their firm. A Fairfax County jury ruled on August 1, 2007 that the firm was correct in firing them. The jury forewoman Lea C. Overby wrote that "we strongly feel that [Triple Canopy]'s poor conduct, lack of standard reporting procedures, bad investigation methods and unfair double standards amongst employees should not be condoned."

Honduras

La Tribuna revealed in its headlines on September 18, 2005 that the Lepaterique base in Honduras was being used as a training center for mercenaries employed by Your Solutions, a Triple Canopy subsidiary. Other investigative efforts focused on Triple Canopy's Peru-based affiliates 3D Global Solutions and Gesecur SAC, which it contracted to search for mercenaries in South America.

Following these revelations, the Honduran authorities excluded, in September 2005, 105 Chilean mercenaries, who had entered the countries as tourists or businessmen and attended a training camp led by US and Chilean personnel in Lepaterique, 16 miles away from Tegucigalpa. The Honduran government had previously supported Triple Canopy, naming the Vice-minister of Labour Áfrico Madrid as intermediary between the administration and the firm. The Lepaterique camp was set up in the 1980s by the CIA and Argentine intelligence officers; the Batallon de Inteligencia 601 from the Argentine Army trained the Contras there. According to La Tribuna, in one day in November, Your Solutions shipped 108 Hondurans, 88 Chileans and 16 Nicaraguans to Iraq. Approximatively 700 Peruvians, 250 Chileans and 320 Hondurans work in Baghdad’s Green Zone. La Tribuna also confirmed that the monthly pay was $1,000, with an additional $500 for English-speaking men.. The media revelation lifted a scandal, in particular concerning illegal entrance on territory and the high wage differences between South American mercenaries and US mercenaries working for Triple Canopy. US employees are paid between 400 to 700 USD a day. Furthermore, while Chilean and Hondurans contracted for a full year, US employees contract for three-months duration, after which Triple Canopy pay them back a trip home, and then they choose if they want to re-new their contract. The revelations also lifted scandal in Chile, when it became known that retired military Marina Óscar Aspe worked for Triple Canopy. The latter had taken part to the assassination of Marcelo Barrios Andrade, a 21 years-old member of the FPMR, who is on the list of victims of the Rettig Report — while Marina Óscar Aspe is on the list of the 2001 Comisión Ética contra la Tortura (2001 Ethical Commission Against Torture).

The charge is that these mercenaries are teaching the same tactics that the military uses in Iraq to police to be used in small-town America. They are also part of the massive trend of outsourcing government operations.