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