Category: EVIL MF
Whatever message he hoped to deliver, spray-painting it across the names of 9/11 victims accomplished something else entirely: It united a whole lot of Americans in disgust.
Police arrested 31-year-old Jonathan Andrew Tijerina after he allegedly sprayed the name of his gun-control website, JustStopKillingKids.com, across the bronze panels surrounding the North Pool at the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan.
The vandalism happened around 5 p.m. Monday, October 26. Red paint covered sections of the memorial containing the engraved names of people murdered during the September 11 attacks.
Tijerina apparently recorded the entire stunt himself. Videos posted to the organization’s Instagram account allegedly show him approaching the memorial, removing a spray-paint can from his bag and writing across several panels.
He then identified himself on camera and admitted what he had done.
A teenage visitor from the United Kingdom told CBS New York that officers arrested the suspect in less than a minute.
Table of contents
Arrested, Charged and Released
Tijerina was charged with criminal mischief, making graffiti and possession of graffiti instruments, according to a criminal complaint reported by the New York Post.
A memorial security officer reportedly found him carrying two cans of red spray paint matching the graffiti. Cleanup was estimated to cost $560.64.
Tijerina was released under supervision following his arraignment because the charges were not eligible for bail. His next court appearance is scheduled for January 13, 2027.
Fortunately, crews removed the paint quickly, and officials reported no permanent damage.
“The 9/11 Memorial is a sacred place of reflection,” the 9/11 Memorial & Museum said, adding that security and law enforcement restored the affected area to its commemorative condition.
The memorial honors the 2,983 people killed in the September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993, terrorist attacks.
A Gun-Control Stunt That Backfired
Tijerina’s organization describes itself as a civil-resistance movement seeking universal firearm background checks and a national gun registry.
Following the arrest, the group said the vandalism was intended to get the attention of President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. It also described Tijerina as an experienced organizer who would accept responsibility and face trial.
If the goal was to generate attention, that part worked. But the reaction was not exactly sympathetic.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., called the vandalism “horrific” and demanded that Tijerina be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., called the memorial “sacred ground” and said it takes “a special kind of evil” to use it for a political stunt.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki described the act as a “vile, disgraceful crime,” noting that families visit the memorial to mourn relatives who never came home.
The condemnation was not limited to Republicans or the Second Amendment community.
New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, a Democrat, said any defacement of the memorial was unacceptable, regardless of the claimed cause. Port Authority Police Benevolent Association President Frank Conti said the incident was not a legitimate protest but an act that disrespected the victims and their families.
Some Places Are Simply Off-Limits
Americans have the right to argue about guns, background checks, registries and public policy. They also have the right to protest peacefully.
What they do not have is the right to deface a national memorial, especially one bearing the names of nearly 3,000 murdered people, simply because their political campaign is not receiving enough attention.
This stunt did nothing to advance a conversation about violence. Instead, it attached a gun-control message to the desecration of one of America’s most solemn places.
That is why the outrage has extended far beyond gun owners. If anything, this may go down as one of the most self-defeating gun-control protests imaginable.
What do you think? Does this stunt damage the broader gun-control movement, or will its supporters simply dismiss it as the actions of one activist?
=============================================== In my humble opinion this “Man” is the lead in the Asshole of the year contest.” But that’s just me. Grumpy
US Army leadership decided the best way to protect the nation from a bioweapons attack was by attempting to poison the American people first
Aerial view of industrial areas and piers near the Embarcadero neighborhood of San Francisco, with the San Francisco Bay and Alcatraz Island visible, likely taken from Coit Tower, 1950.
Morse Collection/Gado/Getty Images
The story spoke of simulated biological attacks on San Francisco that took place over a few days in 1950. No one in the city knew the test was happening, and at least one civilian, a 75-year-old man, died after being exposed to the bacteria. The man’s name was Edward Nevin.
That article was how the Nevin family, scattered across the Bay Area, learned about what actually killed their beloved patriarch decades earlier. And although largely forgotten today, the story set off a firestorm of anger and fear about the U.S. government treating its citizens like a laboratory full of guinea pigs.
The American government has done many evil things in the name of national security, but few were as nefarious as its human experiments during the Cold War. Ordinary people were drugged with LSD, subjected to psychological abuse and pushed to the breaking point and beyond. With paranoia about the Soviet Union at a fever pitch in the 1950s, the government was obsessed with the threat of attack.
In 1950, U.S. Army leadership decided the best way to protect the nation from a Soviet bioweapons attack was by attempting to poison the American people first.
They identified eight cities across the country that were possible targets, among them San Francisco. To see how far deadly particles could spread through the air, scientists suggested the Army use a bacteria called Serratia marcescens.
Serratia first caught the attention of scientists in the early 1800s, when the people of Padua, Italy, saw something unusual: Their polenta kept turning red. Paranoid villagers brought in priests, fearful of a devilish influence on their dinner, but scientists discovered the organisms weren’t satanic. They were bacterial.
A Serratia marcescens colony is seen in a lab. The bacteria is known for its distinctive red color.
Sinhyu/Getty Images
In a healthy individual, Serratia marcescens exposure normally isn’t a problem, but for people who are immunocompromised, and especially those hospitalized, a seemingly harmless infection can become fatal.
Those infected can develop pneumonia, heart inflammation called endocarditis, meningitis or blood poisoning. Serratia marcescens is also largely resistant to antibiotics even today, making successful treatment difficult. But none of this was known to the military officials about to dose San Francisco with the bacteria.
In late September 1950, a warship normally used as a minesweeper was outfitted with commercial spraying equipment. Inside the sprayers was a slurry of Serratia bacteria. As the minesweeper sat a few miles offshore, the sprayers sent the bacteria wafting onto the wind into the city.
On Sept. 27, the final day of the test, like so many mornings in San Francisco, clouds drifted low over the water. A cool wind blew off the ocean, ruffling the hair of bankers hurrying to work in the Financial District, families grocery shopping in the Mission, and tourists taking in the view at Fisherman’s Wharf.
According to a declassified Army report, almost every person in San Francisco that day inhaled 5,000 or more particles per minute over the course of several hours. “San Francisco residents were inhaling millions of bacteria and particles every day during the week of testing,” Leonard Cole wrote in his book “Clouds of Secrecy.”
Government records would later show the bacteria dispersed much farther than the city of San Francisco. Clouds reached Army monitoring stations in Colma, Daly City, Sausalito and across the bay in Albany, Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro.
‘The scientific method gone mad’
Within days, Stanford University Hospital in San Francisco began seeing a spike in unusual cases: Illnesses caused by exposure to Serratia marcescens. In the history of the hospital, they’d never had a single case. Now, they had 11.
Among them was a 75-year-old retired PG&E employee named Edward Nevin. He’d recently had a procedure for a prostate condition, but there had been no complications and he’d returned home.
Suddenly, though, he took a turn for the worse, experiencing what his son called “intense pain and suffering.” Nevin was rushed back to the hospital. Whatever ailed him didn’t respond to antibiotics, and Nevin languished for three weeks before dying.
A view of the urban skyline of downtown San Francisco on a sunny day, likely taken from Coit Tower, 1950.
Morse Collection/Gado/Getty Images
“The doctors insisted on an autopsy,” his son Edward Nevin Jr. said. “They apparently were as perplexed as we were.”
The autopsy found Nevin had died of a heart infection caused by Serratia marcescens. The San Francisco outbreak was so sudden and mysterious that a group of Stanford physicians wrote up the event for a medical journal.
But although the Army now knew their experiment had likely killed a man, the tests continued for another 16 years in cities across the nation. One so-called “vulnerability test” involved secretly dropping a light bulb filled with bacteria from a New York City subway train. Samples found traces of the bacteria in tunnels spread from 14th to 58th Street.
In 1976, the experiments burst onto the national consciousness as some reports were declassified. The impacts, doctors and scientists feared, were long-ranging.
At San Francisco General Hospital, two dozen patients since 1969 had been diagnosed with endocarditis caused by Serratia marcescens; 13 of them died. A staff physician at the hospital told the Chronicle the cluster was 5 to 10 times the national average, and it was possible the uptick was linked, even years later, to that Army test.
The Embarcadero is seen from a photo taken near Coit Tower in 1950.
Morse Collection/Gado/Getty Images
After learning about the likely cause of his grandfather’s death, Edward Nevin III spoke with the Chronicle. “It is just incredible — the scientific method gone mad — Dr. Strangelove, but it is not fiction,” he said. “The Department of the Army completely disregarded the dignity of the individual.”
Nevin III, who worked as a lawyer, sued the U.S. government on behalf of his family. By then, many of the leaders of the experiment were retired, aging but unrepentant about what they’d done.
The technical director of the government’s biological warfare program during the 1950s testified that “the Bay Area populace should be pleased” that they’d been unknowingly sprayed with bacteria in the name of Cold War safety. Another scientist said if he was put in the same position, with the knowledge he now had, he’d still run the test.
A jet plane from the Naval Air Reserve flies directly above the huge Oakland Naval Supply Center in 1950.
Bettmann Archive
With some government documents still classified — and the only contemporaneous account of Nevin’s death coming from Stanford’s medical journal article — there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the test had definitively caused his death.
A judge ruled against the Nevins, ending their legal quest for justice. But in the court of public opinion, history has joined their side. Nevin is regularly cited as a victim of the test, a death that the government apparently chalked up as a necessary evil to win the Cold War. When his son, Edward Jr., died in 2017, his obituary called it “one of the government’s darkest secrets.”
The long-term impacts
Then, there are the test’s ripples through the 21st century.
In 2001, a Bay Area UPS driver with chronic back pain went to his healthcare provider for a cortisone shot. Two days later, he died of bacterial meningitis. Within weeks, three deaths had been linked to contaminated cortisone shots prepared in a Walnut Creek pharmacy; the shots had all been tainted by Serratia bacteria, which can cause meningitis if injected near the spinal cord.
Much like the 1969 outbreak of Serratia-caused endocarditis cases, scientists wondered whether the 1950 experiment had done something fundamental to the Bay Area ecosystem. An infectious diseases professor at UC Berkeley said scientists could not dispel the theory that pumping millions of bacteria into the air had permanently changed the Bay Area’s microbial ecology.
To prove it one way or another, scientists needed samples of the Army’s 1950 strain of Serratia to compare with modern-day outbreaks. The government has never handed those over, if they were preserved at all.
Although Edward Nevin’s death devastated his close-knit family, his life has reverberated across the generations. He immigrated from Ireland, raised seven children in the Mission with his wife Mary and watched their children and grandchildren become nurses, teachers, police officers, lawyers and even the mayor of Daly City. His life was cut short, but his legacy remains.
Nevin is buried among family in the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma. On summer days, soft fog rolls through the graveyard in waves. But now, it carries only the cool mist from the sea, fresh and clean.
Yeah I know! There have always been evil and crazy folks out there, Also there has never been in short supply of them especially in my former state of California.
BUT
The “woman / mother” freely admitted in court under oath. ” Yeah I killed them with my bare hands” and these folks are basically cheering her for offing her small children?
Of course if it had been a man or an animal. Hopefully the mob would be forming for the “Necktie” Party outside the cell. Also the guards would go out on an extended coffee break.
BUT because she’s an “oppressed and has some mental problems” woman. Well she gets a get out of jail card.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Anybody out there want to bet that she gets off in the next trial. If the DA has the balls to try again. As I am willing to bet a nickel or two that
A. Will be no trial
B. If there is a trial she will get off and She is then named Mother of the Year by Planned Parenthood.
C. She shows up on the TV Show “The View” as the brave woman who took a hands on position to her problems.
Grumpy
PS It’s a bad day to quit drinking! Also how about this little nugget of info?
Lindsay Clancy supporters donating to her parents’ fundraiser have raised more than $1 million with contributions rolling in almost every minute amid a newly increased target.
On Friday, the fundraiser shared an update after Clancy’s trial collapsed stating that its new goal is $3 million. They are supporting a woman who has confessed to killing her own children. That should shake you to your core.
“Why didn’t the cops shoot her in the leg? Or shoot the knives out of her hand? Why did they have to kill her?”
Whenever a widely publicized police shooting takes place, the internet is instantly alive with armchair experts who want you to know how poorly the involved officers handled it and how easily the situation could have been resolved if only the officers had followed the recommendations the armchair expert has arrived at after watching the video at least twenty times. My old friend, the charming and talented writer Amy Alkon, refers to these people as those who got their Ph.D.s in policing at “Starsky and Hutch University.”
The latest eruption of faux expertise comes in the wake of Monday’s NYPD shooting of Pamela Cisneros, 49, who had just stabbed two people in Times Square, one of them fatally. “[The shooting was] legally justified and the cop probably won’t even get docked vacation days,” wrote one keyboard tactics expert, “but there were multiple officers, they could have disarmed her with a few scratches at worst from those tiny little blades. Why didn’t one circle behind her? They could have kept her contained, talked her down. Legally justified, morally cowardly and reprehensible.”
Where to start with this?
First of all, those “tiny little blades” had already been stained with the blood of two victims, one of whom, a young mother, died as a result.
One might envision a scenario in which the officers disarmed Cisneros while suffering only “a few scratches,” but no police officer is legally or morally obligated to risk death or dismemberment so as to satisfy the utopian visions of people offering their critiques from the safety of their homes.
As set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Graham v. Connor (1989), and reaffirmed many times since then, the test of any use of force by the police is whether the officer’s actions were “objectively reasonable” under the circumstances.
The Court further ruled that “[t]he ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” and that “[t]he calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situationAlso
Read: Willful Blindness at the Los Angeles Times
So consider those officers on duty Monday in Times Square. Most of them appeared to be assigned to foot posts intended to deter crime and protect the tourist trade on which the area depends. Their days are for the most part spent giving directions to and posing for pictures with tourists and occasionally dealing with petty crimes. Suddenly they are confronted by a woman wielding two knives that only moments earlier she had used to stab two random passersby. Keep in mind that the body armor an officer wears offers little protection against a knife attack, even assuming the assailant stabs the officer in the chest or back and not in the head or neck. A few scratches? Think again.
And unlike a situation involving a barricaded suspect, which allows police ample time to formulate a plan and assemble the necessary personnel and weapons, those officers faced a situation that was the very definition of “tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving.” Yes, a beanbag shotgun or 40mm launcher would have been valuable in confronting Cisneros, but officers on foot posts have no access to such weapons. (Two officers in a squad car can be seen arriving just before Cisneros is shot, but we don’t know if they had any type of less-lethal munitions.)
As Cisneros began advancing toward the officers, two of them discharged Tasers at her, but with no apparent effect (as is often the case). In short, the officers were out of options. Two of them fired a total of three rounds at Cisneros, killing her.
Yes, an unfortunate outcome, but less for the death of Cisneros than that of the woman she killed. Cisneros was one of the thousands of dangerous mentally ill people allowed to roam the streets of America despite having exhibited behavior that in an earlier time would have resulted in their being confined to some type of facility. If you live or work in a big city you see them every day, and every week there are news stories telling of how one of them has assaulted or killed someone.
So to the Keyboard Kops out there, you’re entitled to your opinions, but the rest of us can be thankful you don’t make the rules.