Documents released Monday by the Texas Department of Public Safety’s provided no new evidence that officers found one jar of urine and 18 containers of feces at the Capitol before a July 12 debate on a controversial abortion bill.
DPS released a press statement the day of the debate that said officers had discovered one jar suspected of containing urine and 18 jars suspected to contain feces. After initially resisting requests for additional information about the reported discoveries, DPS on Monday released 144 pages of documents about the alleged incident. But the documents contain no official reports of the findings, and several DPS officers said they had not seen any of the suspected items.
The documents included photos that show a bottle of acrylic paint and a small jar — reportedly collected at the Senate gallery entrance — that DPS Commander Jose Ortiz said he was “trying to getting clarification on.” There was also a photo of three bricks collected in the Capitol extension.
In a text message exchange three days after the debate, one DPS employee asked others if they were aware of “urine or feces taken during our shakedowns.” Three employees responded that they had not seen any discoveries of excrement.
DPS director Steve McCraw indicated he was frustrated about media reporting on the incident, and in a July 14 email he asked DPS officers to give the media photos of the suspected items.
“I’m tired of reading that we made this stuff up,” Steven McCraw wrote in an email. “Let’s get the photos we have to members and the media. Does anyone realistically believe we would fabricate evidence to support a political agenda. Amazing.”
Well, Steve, the evidence, or rather the lack of any evidence to back up that ridiculous, irresponsible, and inflammatory press release you put out on July 13 (scroll down here to see it), would suggest that’s exactly what you did. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but you have a past history of dirty tricks, so you get zero benefit of the doubt from me. Cry me a river if you don’t like it.
The Observer was first out with the story of DPS’ document dump, which came after several weeks of stonewalling on their part. I refer you to this remarkable exchange at the end:
A DPS spokesman responded to questions from the Observer. Here are the question we posed and the agency’s response in its entirety.
1) What advantage did closely monitoring social media accounts provide DPS?
We do not discuss security measures or methods.
2) How did DPS gather intelligence on the meetings of activist groups? Were there undercover law enforcement personnel present at the meetings?
We do not discuss security measures or methods.
3) The documents still do not show any evidence of those “suspected” jars of feces and urine despite Director McCraw’s requests to produce any photos showing potential disruptive objects. Was DPS definitively unable to locate any photographic (or other) of these items?
We have no additional information to provide you.
4) Is it routine for DPS to monitor the social media accounts of private citizens?
We do not discuss security measures or methods.
Transparency, y’all. I didn’t blog about this before because there was just too much else going on at the time, but needless to say the wild and unsubstantiated claims by DPS, based on little more than rumor and fearmongering on Twitter by anti-choice activists got wide play, egged on by shameless political opportunists like David Dewhurst. The truth will likely never dislodge the belief that any of this really happened, but at least now we know the truth. BOR, nonsequiteuse, PDiddie, and Juanita have more, and I have a special musical dedication to Steve McCraw and his poop-seeking cronies:
It’s a little gross in places, but could hardly be more fitting.
I will be the first to say it looks like at best they over reacted to what they thought was going to happen and scrambled to cover up the over reaction, at worst someone tried to use their authority to crack down on protesters. Just being honest, you called it right before Charles.
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