The Lies of Mope-rah

Does she even bother to check anything she writes? Or anything that other people write about the same incident she does? From Mope-rah's latest article:

• By late Tuesday, 7,967 people had responded to the Chicago Sun-Times Web site poll question: Should cops have Tasered an 82-year-old?

• Sixty-three percent responded no.

  But 37 percent, or 2,940 people voted yes -- Lillian Fletcher, the elderly and mentally-ill grandmother who was Tasered by police who burst into her home, should have been Tasered because she was wielding a hammer.

First up, it's a typical loaded polling question. The poll doesn't say that the 82-year-old was wielding a hammer - that might sway some of the readers a different direction if all the facts were known. Second, the choice was limited to two picks and we've already pointed out that by Use of Force guidelines AND State law, killing granny was a third (and authorized) option.

For the record, we checked that poll numerous times last night, and never once did it show a majority responding no, and certainly nowhere the ridiculous 63-37% spread Mope-rah claims. She says 2,940 people say it was OK to TASE granny, meaning 5,027 say no. Since that time and as of 1700 hours tonight, the results are 6,171 supporting the police and 5,868 saying the police were out of line. How did the votes suddenly go 3,200 to 800 in our favor? Mope-rah appears to be making up bullshit and hoping people who read that rag don't go online and check her numbers.

Here are a few more quotes:

• In fact, she didn't grab the hammer until officers forced their way into her garden apartment.
• After the Tasering, Fletcher, who suffers from dementia and schizophrenia, was hospitalized for five days and may have to undergo surgery for fluid on the brain.

From the channel 7 website, we gather the following:

• Workers with the city's Department on Aging were making what is called a "well being check" at Fletcher's home on the city's southwest side the afternoon of Oct. 29, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said.

  "The woman was seen at the window with a hammer in her hand, swinging it back and forth," Bond said.

  The social workers called police.

So evidently, the police did not (as Mope-rah alleges) refuse to take no for an answer - they responded to a call of a known mental observed swing a hammer. Perhaps someone ought to investigate? Or is Mope-rah going to demand police stop taking calls from the Department of Aging and checking on the elderly? We'd actually support that decision - we're police, we're not supposed to be doing social work. But that isn't the most blatant contradiction:

• A landlord opened the door with a key and when the officers stepped inside, the woman was swinging the hammer

Oops. So the police didn't violate any one's living space. Strike two against accuracy by Mope-rah. And we'd love to see the TASER study that list "fluid on the brain" as any sort of a side effect of being shocked. Here's a clue though - it doesn't exist. And the reason that she didn't have a hammer when Mope-rah came to visit is probably the police, the Department of Aging or granddaughter finally took the damn thing away and hid it so granny didn't get killed next time the family left her alone long enough to get into trouble.

This is priceless:

• "She can be belligerent," Traci Taylor told the newspaper, adding that her grandmother is 5-foot-1 inches tall and weighs no more than 160 pounds.

So it's a belligerent mental with a hammer. Nice.

Any Sun Times editors want to weigh in? Do your columnist routinely falsify poll data to back up bullshit conclusions? Isn't that a "Dan Rather School of Journalism" trick?

UPDATE: FOP noticed the flawed polling data, too.