By DEXTER DUGGAN
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The helicopter circling above us turned out not to be one of the mysterious black ones, but the evening was too dark to discern its color at the moment, especially with the police copter’s roaming searchlight glaring down into our eyes.
Police vehicles at K O’Donnell’s restaurant and sports bar in this Phoenix suburb had come to a halt outside of marked spaces, as if they had rushed to the scene, blocking a few civilians’ parked cars. Police officers took their positions by the front door, near a sign proclaiming, “KO’s welcomes Breitbart.”
The conservative Breitbart News Network was hosting its first planned “meetup” for its fans in the Phoenix area at a patio on October 21 when the gathering was ordered to disperse.
This was to be an opportunity for like-minded people to chat, eat and drink in the fresh air, and to listen to speakers. I was there to cover it for The Wanderer. A Breitbart staffer told me that 156 people RSVP’d to attend the inaugural event.
Brandon Darby, the Breitbart border editor and Texas editor, spoke of courageous Mexican journalists writing for Breitbart News who want to spread the word about border conditions, and who are published in both Spanish and English.
On October 22, Breitbart posted a story about how some of this cooperation works. Under the headline, “Spain’s citizen journalist blog: Breitbart Texas finds perfect formula for bringing down cartels,” the story began:
“A prominent blog from Spain about citizen journalism has touted the efforts of Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project as a ‘successful formula’ for demonstrating how the collaboration between professional and citizen journalists can bring down violent drug cartels.”
Speaking to the Scottsdale audience, Darby viewed the U.S.-Mexican border as “a holistic issue” and hoped to benefit people on both sides of the international line. He was ready for a question-and-answer period when his microphone sound was cut.
It seemed like a technical problem, so Darby walked away to inquire, then returned to the roofed patio area, where the event was being held, next to the main restaurant. “Someone was disturbed by what we were saying, so they turned our mic off,” he said. “Kinda strange,” he said to me at 6:54 p.m.
Although he’d pass for an ordinary guy at a baseball game, clout-heavy journalist Darby told me the Breitbart site gets 21 million hits a month. That’s an Internet home run.
When I noticed police outside the patio at 7:08 p.m., the word was spreading through the crowd that we should leave. Although there were some younger people here, the majority appeared to be middle-aged or older.
This wasn’t a free buffet. They lined up to pay the food and drink bills for their surprisingly terminated evening.
That’s the trouble with conservatives, so docile that sometimes one wonders where the revolutionary spirit ever will come from to resist big government. Other types of groups might have stormed out, saying the restaurant should pick up the tab for wrecking some of its customers’ evening.
If this had been a “gay wedding” reception ordered to shut down by hastily arriving police and a glaring helicopter, it would have become a national story overnight. Within two days, perhaps national media would have hammered the restaurant into going out of business. How dare that management commit the social offense of “refusing service” to homosexuals?
But when Second Amendment conservatives gather to munch and talk, police and their copter move in, saying to disperse. Then, crickets. Could this shutdown shape up as the basis of a popular book idea for readers worried about open-borders Barack Obama’s plans for a disarmed America?
When I inquired whether one police officer in front of the restaurant’s main entrance had been told there was some complaint of public disturbance, he replied he didn’t know about that; he was just told there was “a big event.”
We exiles walked across the parking lot without a place to go.
I asked one man what he thought. He identified himself as Mark Spiel, a Catholic vacationing here from Bucks County, Pa., and a member of the Washington Crossing Tea Party who learned of this meetup on the Internet.
Spiel was perplexed because, he said, Darby, the Breitbart editor, hadn’t been saying anything objectionable when the sound was cut off.
“It’s crazy because he wasn’t saying anything — they shut the mics off. They were talking about the border, and (the restaurant) chased us out,” Spiel said.
One audience member subsequently posted that the police wouldn’t even let him enter the main restaurant to use the lavatory.
Darby told me the Breitbart news crew had a complete record of the evening.
“I didn’t witness any unruly people,” he said. “. . . I’m glad we have audio and video of everything.”
This is a reminder of how differently conservatives and liberals act, Darby said. If a conservative doesn’t want to eat meat, he abstains from it, Darby said, but if a liberal doesn’t want to eat meat, he insists no one else can eat it, either.
“I think what happened tonight is very symbolic of what’s happening in America now,” he told The Wanderer. “. . . Because we’re conservatives, they dehumanize us. . . . I was talking about helping people in Mexico, I was talking about women who are victimized” when they try to enter the United States.
Darby said he heard that two liberals didn’t like what was being said, and they complained.
An October 23 report by Phoenix’s KPNX-TV, Channel 12, said a “restaurant spokesperson” said “it’s really not OK to treat us less than human.” This raised the question of who “us” at the restaurant is, and why this spokesman interpreted any meetup comments as making them “less than human.”
Breitbart News Service posted a story about the incident on October 23 under the headline, “Breitbart meetup ends with police chopper overhead.”
The story said: “There was already a great sense of camaraderie among the crowd when Breitbart’s community liaison Dustin Stockton began the program by asking God to steer the conversation towards solutions that would combat the agents of greed and corruption that infest our government and media.”
Later, the story said: “The crowd refused to let the ridiculously large police presence and the helicopter dampen their spirits. If anything, the night’s events only served to strengthen the resolve of those in attendance. ‘This just goes to show what happens when you say the word God,’ Matthew Burke told Breitbart News. ‘They tried to silence us but instead they made this event a huge success and a night none of us will soon forget’.”
A Generic News Release
On October 22 The Wanderer asked a spokesman for the Scottsdale Police Department four questions about the incident, including whether the department was going to take action if someone had called in false information claiming there was a public disturbance.
Spokesman Sgt. Ben Hoster didn’t address those questions but provided the following generic news release:
“At approximately 7:15 p.m., Scottsdale patrol officers responded to a disturbance call at K O’Donnell’s. The officers learned that there was a group of 100 to 200 people refusing to leave the bar/restaurant. The group was identified as the Breitbart group (conservative) here in Arizona. The bar staff allowed the group to come to the bar because they thought the group was going to have a ‘business networking’ meeting.
“When the group was fully formed, they began to have a ‘political’ rally using a microphone,” the news release continued. “When the group began discussing immigration, the bar staff pulled the plug on the microphone and asked the group to leave. The group was upset and refused. The bar staff then called the police. Scottsdale officers stood by to keep the peace as the group paid their individual tabs and left.”
I replied to Hoster that I was present the entire time and know what was discussed about “immigration.” I added, “Does the statement suggest that even to mention ‘immigration’ is to risk being shut down by some authority?”
Hoster only replied, “Understand, that was just a summary.”
The police hadn’t been present for the majority of the time that the news release recounted, so it apparently was based on what someone opposing the Breitbart gathering told them.
I had been close to the speakers’ microphone the entire time. There was no request made from there that the crowd leave, and hence no refusal to do so. People were puzzled upon later being told to depart.
To use a microphone, under the restaurant’s control, seems reasonable when addressing a crowd of about 156 people on a patio, where speakers’ voices otherwise can drift into the open air.
To say that the middle-aged conservative audience had to be watched by police “to keep the peace” is, shall we say, amusing.
The Wanderer requested that Scottsdale provide its police records of this incident. The police agreed to make them available, but that wasn’t expected to occur until after deadline for this issue. A follow-up story will appear in a subsequent Wanderer.
Following the incident, this writer heard that a restaurant representative said someone had been assaulted, and that the meetup was full of swear words. A video showed there was no swearing by the speakers facing a polite audience. If there was an assault, why had there been no arrest or any interrogation of those present?
Finally, at the beginning of the following week, late on the evening of October 26, the restaurant posted a management letter on its Facebook page saying the Breitbart meetup was broadcast throughout the entire restaurant, and management deemed that inappropriate.
The letter may have made it sound as if Breitbart insisted on having everyone else listen in. In fact, use of the PA system was under the restaurant’s control, which simply cut off its use, leaving the meetup puzzled and unaware that its speakers were transmitted to other patrons.
Rather than management stepping to the microphone to explain, the bar staff called police, according to the police statement.
Was this a clumsy effort by a private restaurant? Well, calling in government police power against hapless patrons only served to remind the public of the potential for far greater damage when the government itself deploys its agents against a citizenry that opposes Obama’s designs.
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