8 ms·

Capitol Police officer suffered two strokes after riot, died of natural causes

55 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

mark_l_watson 6y ago
As a life-long liberal, I am fed-up with the NYT. Yellow cake bogus story to get us to invade Iraq. Bogus story of Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan (has been refuted by US intelligence agencies). They ran with the story that Officer Brian Sicknick died from being attacked by the January 6 mob, even when the officer's family almost immediately disputed the NYT stories. Does the NYT just not care that they keep getting called out for bogus stories? I just looked at the NYT, and I saw no retraction from their previously incorrect stories on Officer Sicknick. Free advice, so obviously feel free to ignore it: Democracy Now has a liberal and honest (as far as I can tell) approach to the news. BBC News and The Guardian are good also. Don't waste your time with NYT, MSNBC, and Fox - unless you enjoy living in a little fake bubble and like having your own biases just reflected back at you.
- mgarfias 6y ago
  Libertarian/AnCap here, and I agree with you 100%
- remarkEon 6y ago
  Greenwald covers the full evolution of this story here[1]. [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-a...
  - alphabettsy 6y ago
    I used to be a huge fan of Greenwald, but it seems lately his fixation on being critical of other media often leads him to ignore the obvious. Law enforcement were the ones who initially said the officer died after engaging with protesters and video showed protestors physically engaged with officers in multiple videos so it's not like it's an unbelievable claim. The media didn’t invent that narrative. If the basis of his argument starts with an obvious falsehood, then how reliable is the rest of it? Throw it all away I guess, Greenwald too.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      > Law enforcement were the ones who initially said the officer died And does anyone know the names of those law enforcement officials? Because as far as I know they never said who it was. Greenwald is rightfully fixated on criticism of media, because there is a lot to be critical of.
    - MikeUt 6y ago
      > it's not like it's an unbelievable claim. The media didn’t invent that narrative. They were recklessly uncritical of an anonymous law enforcement source, while ignoring opposing evidence. From the 3rd paragraph of the article: Nobody on the record claimed it happened. The autopsy found no blunt trauma to the head. Sicknick's own family kept urging the press to stop spreading this story because he called them the night of January 6 and told them he was fine — obviously inconsistent with the media's claim that he died by having his skull bashed in — and his own mother kept saying that she believed he died of a stroke. The media does not show this level of credulity in unnamed law enforcement sources when told, for example, that an officer acted in self-defense when shooting a Black suspect. Their naivete comes and goes as convenient.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  I feel it's a strange consumption pattern to rely on a single news source, when Google News or Apple News is a much easier way to follow a story. It makes more sense to follow the stories you care about rather than simply the sources you trust. Even if you trusted the NYT, many of their articles aren't going to be relevance to you. It's like going back to the old school RSS model where you scroll past a bunch of articles. I would also point out Axios, which has been praised by Sarah Sanders when she was the WH press secretary, and has an interesting way of summarizing news as digestible bullet points.
  - marakv2 6y ago
    What I use to do as read through the newspaper to learn about issues and events that may not effect me personally. Then I'd look up another source to get a counter point. I'm not sure if it's because I'm older and more jaded, or news sources are becoming less information baring and more position pushing, but I am just cutting off my news now.
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      News aggregators can also just as well inform you as to whether something is bubbling into a major story. I think about any news source and whether they miss something that I want from aggregators, and the answer is often yes.
fireland 6y ago
Obviously the mainstream media will immediately publish a wave of retractions to reflect this because they botched the reporting on this incident. https://www.reddit.com/r/media_criticism/comments/mmhz7n/dc_medical_examiner_released_cause_of_death_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/media_criticism/comments/mmhz7n/dc_... For weeks they pushed the narrative that "the violent riots at the Capitol resulted in the death of five people." But this is wordplay. One died from being shot. Two died from natural causes. Another died from a drug overdose. And the last died from a stroke. So four of the five deaths were caused by unrelated reasons! https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/07/capitol-riot-deaths-cause-death-released-4-5-not-sicknick/7128040002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/07/capi...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  And the one person who was shot was an unarmed protestor/rioter who was shot by the an unnamed law enforcement officer.
briantakita 6y ago
A pattern of misinformation: Hype the story for months only to quietly retract it after the political gain & social damage takes effect. The government & benefiting organizations will not give up the power granted to it by "temporary" or "emergency" measures during this period of public belief in the misinformation. There may be a "fall guy" if the subsequent public outrage is strong enough. Anybody identifying broader patterns & illicit behavior by authorities & organizations will be labeled a "conspiracy theorist" & ridiculed by the usual suspects. On sites like Hacker News, the post will be flagged due to it's "politically sensitive" content & not stoking "intellectual curiosity", even though it is interesting & useful knowledge to understand markets, government behavior, where society is going, etc. I'm not saying that this pattern is being applied today...but it is a security vulnerability that could be easily exploited in our Democratic & public information systems.
disgrunt 6y ago
The establishment got what they wanted out of this lie. The truth will now be buried and go largely unexamined.
- ttt0 6y ago
  It's just as they say, "lies have short legs". The purpose of misinformation is not really to bury the truth forever, as the truth will eventually come out, but to achieve short term goals like getting a desired reaction from people, at which point you don't care anymore if the lie was exposed. Another relevant example is the Hunter story, where the media did a blackout and it was censored off Facebook and Twitter, but after the election they no longer cared and they just admitted it was true.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    No, it's long term too, because the retraction doesn't have the same effect as the original. In bayesian terms, it doesn't completely reset peoples' priors.
  - tablespoon 6y ago
    > The purpose of misinformation is not really to bury the truth forever, as the truth will eventually come out, but to achieve short term goals like getting a desired reaction from people In some cases. In others the purpose is to flood the zone with so much crap that people mistrust almost everything.
  - alphabettsy 6y ago
    Admitted it was true about Hunter Biden? What? Also I don’t understand where the lie was? Was it unreasonable to initially report that an officer who died following the chaos had injuries from the event? It’s fair to criticize the breathless coverage, but isn’t calling it a lie that served its purpose a bit much? The correction that is supposedly being buried is on the top of Apple News, WaPo and on the front of the NYT.
    - db48x 6y ago
sjg007 6y ago
Pepper spray can cause acute rise in blood pressure which can cause blood clots and stroke.
- ttt0 6y ago
  > the autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants [...] there was no evidence of internal or external injuries.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    What’s your point?
    - harpiaharpyja 6y ago
      What was your point? Yeah it can, but it didn’t.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
baybal2 6y ago
I don't understand. What I understood is that a number of protesters came armed to the teeth, but nevertheless did not shoot a single bullet even when they were storming the house. Why did they bring weapons then?
- ttt0 6y ago
  It's almost as if this entire thing was way overblown by the media and there was no plan to overthrow anything.
  - mgarfias 6y ago
    It was just a big LARP
  - plugger 6y ago
    I think it was obvious there was no plan but I'm not sure you can say it was overblown when people died.
    - db48x 6y ago
      Every statement that the riot caused five deaths is overblown, because four of those were either natural causes or self–inflicted: strokes, heart attack, drug overdose. The fifth was an unarmed protester who was shot by the police.
      - plugger 6y ago
        > because four of those were either natural causes or self–inflicted: strokes, heart attack, drug overdose. Which most likely would not have occurred if the riot hadn't occurred. > The fifth was an unarmed protester who was shot by the police. Yea, I saw the video. While what you've said is technically correct it's borderline simplistic to a fault.
        helloworld11 6y ago
        No it's not technically correct, it's just correct. If you ideologically insist on pinning the blame for these deaths on the protesters, then you'll find any logical contortion possible to keep at it, but you'd be simply wrong. Your argument that these deaths wouldn't have occurred if they hadn't shown up is also ridiculous as hell. For one ting because four of the deaths weren't even the result of the protests at at all, and for the last death, You could use the same shitty reasoning for any protest or act of resistance in which people die: "If random people of color just didn't piss off the police, they wouldn't have to get shot by them all the time." Sounds nice and reasonable used in that context too?
thinkingemote 6y ago
History will correct the, let's say, heated emotions expressed online, with enough time. Give it 20 years and you won't care that there was or wasn't an insurrection at all, but the record will correct your emotions if you keep hold of them.

55 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

As a life-long liberal, I am fed-up with the NYT. Yellow cake bogus story to get us to invade Iraq. Bogus story of Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan (has been refuted by US intelligence agencies). They ran with the story that Officer Brian Sicknick died from being attacked by the January 6 mob, even when the officer's family almost immediately disputed the NYT stories. Does the NYT just not care that they keep getting called out for bogus stories? I just looked at the NYT, and I saw no retraction from their previously incorrect stories on Officer Sicknick. Free advice, so obviously feel free to ignore it: Democracy Now has a liberal and honest (as far as I can tell) approach to the news. BBC News and The Guardian are good also. Don't waste your time with NYT, MSNBC, and Fox - unless you enjoy living in a little fake bubble and like having your own biases just reflected back at you.

mgarfias 6y ago
Libertarian/AnCap here, and I agree with you 100%
remarkEon 6y ago
Greenwald covers the full evolution of this story here[1]. [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-a...
- alphabettsy 6y ago
  I used to be a huge fan of Greenwald, but it seems lately his fixation on being critical of other media often leads him to ignore the obvious. Law enforcement were the ones who initially said the officer died after engaging with protesters and video showed protestors physically engaged with officers in multiple videos so it's not like it's an unbelievable claim. The media didn’t invent that narrative. If the basis of his argument starts with an obvious falsehood, then how reliable is the rest of it? Throw it all away I guess, Greenwald too.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    > Law enforcement were the ones who initially said the officer died And does anyone know the names of those law enforcement officials? Because as far as I know they never said who it was. Greenwald is rightfully fixated on criticism of media, because there is a lot to be critical of.
  - MikeUt 6y ago
    > it's not like it's an unbelievable claim. The media didn’t invent that narrative. They were recklessly uncritical of an anonymous law enforcement source, while ignoring opposing evidence. From the 3rd paragraph of the article: Nobody on the record claimed it happened. The autopsy found no blunt trauma to the head. Sicknick's own family kept urging the press to stop spreading this story because he called them the night of January 6 and told them he was fine — obviously inconsistent with the media's claim that he died by having his skull bashed in — and his own mother kept saying that she believed he died of a stroke. The media does not show this level of credulity in unnamed law enforcement sources when told, for example, that an officer acted in self-defense when shooting a Black suspect. Their naivete comes and goes as convenient.
threatofrain 6y ago
I feel it's a strange consumption pattern to rely on a single news source, when Google News or Apple News is a much easier way to follow a story. It makes more sense to follow the stories you care about rather than simply the sources you trust. Even if you trusted the NYT, many of their articles aren't going to be relevance to you. It's like going back to the old school RSS model where you scroll past a bunch of articles. I would also point out Axios, which has been praised by Sarah Sanders when she was the WH press secretary, and has an interesting way of summarizing news as digestible bullet points.
- marakv2 6y ago
  What I use to do as read through the newspaper to learn about issues and events that may not effect me personally. Then I'd look up another source to get a counter point. I'm not sure if it's because I'm older and more jaded, or news sources are becoming less information baring and more position pushing, but I am just cutting off my news now.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    News aggregators can also just as well inform you as to whether something is bubbling into a major story. I think about any news source and whether they miss something that I want from aggregators, and the answer is often yes.

fireland 6y ago

Obviously the mainstream media will immediately publish a wave of retractions to reflect this because they botched the reporting on this incident. https://www.reddit.com/r/media_criticism/comments/mmhz7n/dc_medical_examiner_released_cause_of_death_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/media_criticism/comments/mmhz7n/dc_... For weeks they pushed the narrative that "the violent riots at the Capitol resulted in the death of five people." But this is wordplay. One died from being shot. Two died from natural causes. Another died from a drug overdose. And the last died from a stroke. So four of the five deaths were caused by unrelated reasons! https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/07/capitol-riot-deaths-cause-death-released-4-5-not-sicknick/7128040002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/07/capi...

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
And the one person who was shot was an unarmed protestor/rioter who was shot by the an unnamed law enforcement officer.

briantakita 6y ago

A pattern of misinformation: Hype the story for months only to quietly retract it after the political gain & social damage takes effect. The government & benefiting organizations will not give up the power granted to it by "temporary" or "emergency" measures during this period of public belief in the misinformation. There may be a "fall guy" if the subsequent public outrage is strong enough. Anybody identifying broader patterns & illicit behavior by authorities & organizations will be labeled a "conspiracy theorist" & ridiculed by the usual suspects. On sites like Hacker News, the post will be flagged due to it's "politically sensitive" content & not stoking "intellectual curiosity", even though it is interesting & useful knowledge to understand markets, government behavior, where society is going, etc. I'm not saying that this pattern is being applied today...but it is a security vulnerability that could be easily exploited in our Democratic & public information systems.

disgrunt 6y ago

The establishment got what they wanted out of this lie. The truth will now be buried and go largely unexamined.

ttt0 6y ago
It's just as they say, "lies have short legs". The purpose of misinformation is not really to bury the truth forever, as the truth will eventually come out, but to achieve short term goals like getting a desired reaction from people, at which point you don't care anymore if the lie was exposed. Another relevant example is the Hunter story, where the media did a blackout and it was censored off Facebook and Twitter, but after the election they no longer cared and they just admitted it was true.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  No, it's long term too, because the retraction doesn't have the same effect as the original. In bayesian terms, it doesn't completely reset peoples' priors.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > The purpose of misinformation is not really to bury the truth forever, as the truth will eventually come out, but to achieve short term goals like getting a desired reaction from people In some cases. In others the purpose is to flood the zone with so much crap that people mistrust almost everything.
- alphabettsy 6y ago
  Admitted it was true about Hunter Biden? What? Also I don’t understand where the lie was? Was it unreasonable to initially report that an officer who died following the chaos had injuries from the event? It’s fair to criticize the breathless coverage, but isn’t calling it a lie that served its purpose a bit much? The correction that is supposedly being buried is on the top of Apple News, WaPo and on the front of the NYT.
  - db48x 6y ago

sjg007 6y ago

Pepper spray can cause acute rise in blood pressure which can cause blood clots and stroke.

ttt0 6y ago
> the autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants [...] there was no evidence of internal or external injuries.
- sjg007 6y ago
  What’s your point?
  - harpiaharpyja 6y ago
    What was your point? Yeah it can, but it didn’t.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

baybal2 6y ago

I don't understand. What I understood is that a number of protesters came armed to the teeth, but nevertheless did not shoot a single bullet even when they were storming the house. Why did they bring weapons then?

ttt0 6y ago
It's almost as if this entire thing was way overblown by the media and there was no plan to overthrow anything.
- mgarfias 6y ago
  It was just a big LARP
- plugger 6y ago
  I think it was obvious there was no plan but I'm not sure you can say it was overblown when people died.
  - db48x 6y ago
    Every statement that the riot caused five deaths is overblown, because four of those were either natural causes or self–inflicted: strokes, heart attack, drug overdose. The fifth was an unarmed protester who was shot by the police.
    - plugger 6y ago
      > because four of those were either natural causes or self–inflicted: strokes, heart attack, drug overdose. Which most likely would not have occurred if the riot hadn't occurred. > The fifth was an unarmed protester who was shot by the police. Yea, I saw the video. While what you've said is technically correct it's borderline simplistic to a fault.
      - helloworld11 6y ago
        No it's not technically correct, it's just correct. If you ideologically insist on pinning the blame for these deaths on the protesters, then you'll find any logical contortion possible to keep at it, but you'd be simply wrong. Your argument that these deaths wouldn't have occurred if they hadn't shown up is also ridiculous as hell. For one ting because four of the deaths weren't even the result of the protests at at all, and for the last death, You could use the same shitty reasoning for any protest or act of resistance in which people die: "If random people of color just didn't piss off the police, they wouldn't have to get shot by them all the time." Sounds nice and reasonable used in that context too?

thinkingemote 6y ago

History will correct the, let's say, heated emotions expressed online, with enough time. Give it 20 years and you won't care that there was or wasn't an insurrection at all, but the record will correct your emotions if you keep hold of them.