I’m kind of like Scully on The X-Files; I’m not going to swallow a conspiracy theory on faith alone or mistrust in the government, but if you bring me hard evidence to support your theory I’ll look at it objectively. I have had people toss all sorts of government, media and other conspiracies at me and for the most part they have been bunk. In isolated and random instances there are things that might be part of a conspiracy of one or of a small handful, but nothing makes me worry about some John Grisham Firm type thing.

A few weeks ago, covering Jesse Jackson at Occupy Phoenix, one of the people there told me a story about how the local sheriff, Sheriff Joe, had told the media they shouldn’t cover the Occupy movement here, if they wanted access to him. The claim was the sheriff told the occupy people this after they had turned off their recorders while interviewing him. It seemed a little far fetched until I saw some of the coverage the next day, which in the case of the local Fox News station was a complete misrepresentation of what happened at the event. I went so far as to show video proof they misrepresented the truth. Other stations were less than accurate in what they covered but it wasn’t something you could easily say was a grand conspiracy. With Fox News as the only blatant culprit, and it being Fox News, the claim of a news blackout was intriguing, and maybe for someone willing to believe the worst in the news it was enough proof, but I remained cautiously skeptical.

A few days ago, just after the US Justice Department sent out a stinging investigation report about discrimination with the MCSO, Ernest Atencio was arrest and booked in County jail. He was said to have been uncooperative and had to be restrained then placed in a quiet cell. Ten minutes later he was checked on, was unresponsive and taken to the hospital. Later his family took him off live support.

According to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his deputies and MCSO agents did nothing wrong and he promised the video would support this. Local news stations received the DVD, with 89 different cameras and over 90 minutes of the incident as one local station reported. Just to set the scene, there are five local news stations in Phoenix; affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and an independent station called AZ Family. Obviously, each has their own video editors and reporters looking at the footage to find the best shots for the newscast. Each station has a news director who will review the final cuts of the edits before broadcast.

Logic would suggest, with five stations working independently with so much footage, there would be some variation to what was picked. Even if there are scenes that might be compelling over all others, you would figure there would be some variety in the shots. When I watched what was posted on line of the reports from the five local stations, it was eerie how similar the footage was. They weren’t exactly the same, but the footage used to illustrate and to objectively show what occurred that night, which these stations did from hours of footage, picked similar time frames to show how difficult it was to prove that the deputies and MCSO did anything wrong. In the reporters voice overs, words like ‘unable to see clearly what happened’ or ‘inconclusive from this angle’ were used a lot.

I have to say, at the time, I was a bit skeptical about what was being reported because the words were similar, given the footage and the footage, from five different places, seemed to focus on the same parts to prove the point. It also must be pointed out most of the news segments were from 2-3 minutes long, so I understood editing had to be done, but like the Rodney King incident, I really wanted to know what happened before the camera rolled and what the raw footage would show with the officers.

Thankfully, Humanleague002 posted seven minutes of raw footage of the video on YouTube, which happened to be section where most newscasts focused on. It showed Atencio from the time he was in the last part of the booking area until he was moved from there to the quiet cell. I watched in horror and disgust those seven minutes, because what all the news stations put on the air, what they supposedly did independent of one another, conveniently cut out key elements that supported the claim the deputies and MCSO roughed up Atencio. At one point, when  he was supposedly resisting the officers, this was because an officer had him in a choke hold and he couldn't breath. While some reporters claimed it was unclear if he was tasered, there is a shot clearly showing an officer pulling out the taser, sticking it to Atencio’s body and hitting him with volts. You know it is happening because he shakes from the shock and the officer gets pushed aside by Atencio because of the action. How much of a threat was Atencio? When they first subdue him, about six officers actively work to restrain him while two stand by. At one point I counted close to 16 officers actively hold him down, this was during the time the officer tasers him, and near the end there are close to 20 people in the room.

The part that really disgusted me, and it is unclear if what I saw was really correct, but while Atencio is restrained by four officers, one who has his knee on his back for at least three minutes in the clip, an officer appears to take a cellphone photo of the face of the restrained man just before they pick up his limp body to the quiet cell.

I'm not a conspiracy person by nature, but seeing what I saw in the raw video and what was shown my all the local media it has me wondering if they are misleading the public intentionally. For what aim would this be done, while I can speculate I have no concrete proof, but the possibilities makes me question hard news delivered in this area.

View for yourself the raw footage on Humanleague002 YouTube page.

PS: The local news station AZ Family just this morning aired an updated news account about the incident, using part of the police choking part of the video. While it is clear the officer is choking and hurting Atencio, the reporter, who was live on set during the morning news show and it was aired, as far as I saw, three times, each time the reporter said it was 'a restraining hold' and not a choke hold. The reporter also made sure to make it seem Atencio was the aggressor, even though it was clear from the footage shown it was not.


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Media Manipulation on the Death of Eugene Atencio - December 24, 2011
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