By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — A caller provided misleading and inaccurate information to a 911 emergency line when seeking to have police come out and remove a social gathering of the international Breitbart News Network at a suburban Phoenix restaurant patio.
A female 911 caller to the suburban Scottsdale Police Department referred to the troublesome “conservatives” there.
In these days of silencing people who don’t practice “political correctness,” one can wonder if restaurant workers were drawing the line at an unwelcome political opinion being expressed.
The November 5 issue of The Wanderer reported the October 21 evening incident at K O’Donnell’s restaurant and sports bar in Scottsdale, under the headline on page 3, “After ‘immigration’ was mentioned, restaurant calls police, conservatives kicked out.”
The police provided a news release on the event to The Wanderer on October 22. Its full text was included in that story, but our request to obtain a recording of the emergency call to police had to await processing.
The original police news release, drawing on statements the restaurant provided, said: “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.”
As it turned out, there were two phone calls to 911 on October 21. The police also provided this newspaper with the 911 operator’s notes and an incident report by Scottsdale Officer J. Owens.
The major conservative online news service Breitbart.com planned its first-ever “meetup” for its fans in the Phoenix area at K O’Donnell’s so they could network on the patio, buy themselves food and drink, and listen to speakers over a microphone provided by the restaurant. I attended in hopes of a story.
A Breitbart community-liaison representative told me 156 people RSVP’d to attend. Although some younger people were there, the majority appeared middle-aged or older.
A sign near the front door that evening proclaimed, “KO’s welcomes Breitbart,” with an arrow pointing left to the patio.
About 20 minutes after speakers began, Breitbart’s Texas editor and border editor, Brandon Darby, had just offered to take audience questions when the microphone sound was cut off.
It seemed to be a technical problem, so Darby walked away to inquire, while those on the patio continued socializing and enjoying their refreshments. He soon returned and said, “Someone was disturbed by what we were saying, so they turned our mic off.”
“Kinda strange,” he said to me at 6:54 p.m.
The 911 operator’s notes began at 6:59 p.m. with, “Wants about 200 people kicked out.”
In the shorter of the two 911 calls, a female voice said, “We have a large rally of what we believed was a business network, but they’re a bunch of conservatives, and they’re screaming at my manager.”
She added, “There’s just a large crowd here and we’re scared it’s going to get violent. . . .
“We shut off their mic after they were screaming that Mexicans were bastards,” she claimed.
The woman said one of “these conservatives” followed a man out to his car.
The 911 operator said just to leave them alone while police responded, but to call again if the situation worsened.
There was little coverage of the incident in news media. However, an October 23 story by Phoenix’s KPNX-TV, Channel 12, said a “restaurant spokesperson” said “it’s really not OK to treat us less than human.”
Based on what the three Breitbart speakers had said that evening, the remark by the restaurant spokesman didn’t make any sense about being treated “less than human” — unless some worker there actually erroneously believed Mexicans were screamingly being called “bastards” on the microphone.
A female voice on a longer 911 call also stated the point that the restaurant thought the Breitbart meetup was to be a business networking meeting, but it was a political group. “I had no idea. I didn’t know it was political,” she said.
This raises the question of whether the restaurant was trying to censor speech based on content. Although a private business might hope to provide or deny space to whomever it pleases, does this restaurant routinely refuse to welcome Republican, Democratic, libertarian, or other political-party guests?
This 911 caller said, “I have a group that is getting confrontational with some of my other guests.”
Asked by the operator if the group was intoxicated, the caller replied no, estimating there were “less than 100” of them.
Although this caller was less misleading than the female on the briefer call, she also gave the impression of simmering trouble.
She said the group was upset because their microphone was turned off, and they were “just arguing. I don’t want it to escalate. . . .
“The (restaurant) owner is speaking with a couple of them right now,” but they weren’t listening, she said. “They’re yelling.”
When the 911 operator asked if the people were breaking dishes or furniture, the caller replied in the negative but said they didn’t want to pay their bills “because we turned off their microphone.”
Later, with people leaving the premises, the caller apparently referred to speaking with a Breitbart representative just then: “That was the main guy that I planned the party with….Yeah, he said he’s trying to round everybody up” to depart.
The two 911 callers gave their names, which were bleeped out on the DVD recording that The Wanderer received.
Apparently based on radio traffic about potential dangers, the Phoenix Police Department sent a helicopter with a glaring searchlight to neighboring Scottsdale, although the Scottsdale officers didn’t request one.
Identification on one of the Scottsdale vehicles parked near the restaurant entrance marked it as a police supervisor’s.
In his incident report, Scottsdale Officer J. Owens didn’t note any unruly behavior. He wrote:
“Upon arrival, I observed numerous individuals on the east outdoor patio of K O’Donnell’s. I estimated approximately 100 individuals who were socializing on this patio. Aside from being loud, this crowd was not unruly.”
Owens wrote that restaurant official Jennifer O’Donnell “stated patrons inside the restaurant had begun complaining about the large gathering on the patio. . . .
“Jennifer requested SPD’s assistance in having the associates of Breitbart be removed from the premises. The patrons on the patio associated to Breitbart were then requested to leave, and they complied,” he wrote.
“Although these patrons disliked our presence and being requested to leave, they all remained calm, polite, and ensured they promptly paid their outstanding bills,” Owens wrote.
Mentioning the Phoenix police helicopter, Owens wrote that Scottsdale officers hadn’t requested its presence and “quickly” asked it to leave, “as their assistance was not needed due to the group’s overall cooperation.”
The incident report demonstrates that none of the meetup people were detained or arrested for any reason.
Two Breitbart representatives didn’t respond to The Wanderer’s email requests for comment after this newspaper obtained the police records.
Part Of Our Humanity
The evening of October 21, after the meetup was removed from the restaurant, Breitbart editor Darby told me his news crew had a complete record of the evening. “I didn’t witness any unruly people. . . . I’m glad we have audio and video of everything.”
The first speaker that evening was Breitbart community liaison Dustin Stockton, who asked God to steer the conversation toward solutions against greed and corruption in government and media.
Breitbart writer AWR Hawkins spoke about the importance of the Second Amendment, citing Thomas Jefferson as saying that if a person is denied the right to bear arms, he is denied part of his humanity.
“The right to keep and bear arms . . . is part of our humanity,” Hawkins said. “. . . We have to go for people (candidates) who are conservative in their principle.”
The third speaker, Darby, spoke about courageous Mexican journalists writing for Breitbart who want to spread the word about border conditions. He also mentioned women crossing into the United States who are victimized by rapists.
Darby viewed the U.S.-Mexican border as “a holistic issue” and hoped to benefit people on both sides of the international line.
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