Thursday, October 22, 2009

The Official Explanation



You are now on jury duty. You are assigned to sort out the guilt or innocence of ACORN vs O'Keefe and Giles.
According to video and audio shot on location at the ACORN Philly office, the "pimp sting" went rather well. No, the ACORN people didn't advise them on how to cheat the IRS or Immigration. But they didn't recoil in horror when asked to help find housing for a prostitution business.
O'Keefe says they arrived at ACORN at approximately 9:30 am and stayed for 32 minutes. They were invited to a housing seminar and offered the business card of Ms. Conway. The closest thing to being "thrown out" or "shown the door" came in the form of reminders from Conway that she had another meeting and needed to cut the meeting short.
Now, ACORN's official explanation, per the video on Media Matters of Katherine Conway Russell's encounter with O'Keefe. (It is curious that at no time in the video does Conway say anything about Hannah Giles.)
Here's what she said in the video, presented several weeks after the encounter.
"We refused to help him and called police and filed this report."
"I called Ian Phillips from ACORN (Phillips is the legislative director for Pennsylvania ACORN) and asked why he had referred them to me. He said that he didn't and that I shouldn't let them in the office. Ian Phillips told me that they had gotten strange calls from these people and that is when we decided to call the police."
"Keith Crosby from our office called the police because he had the phone number that James O'Keefe had called us on."
Here's a translation of the police report from cop to English:
Time of arrival: 10:44. Time back in the car: 11:05

Time of occurrence: 10:40
Text of police report (edited to add names and complete abbreviations)
“The above complainant (Keith Crosby) called police after the below male (James O’Keefe) had come to the above location to apply for low income housing and was causing a verbal disturbance with employees of ACORN. The below man (James O’Keefe) was not on location and the complainant was advised.”

Some questions:
Why did ACORN delay in calling the police?
What was the nature of the “verbal disturbance”?
Why did Keith Crosby call the police and not Katherine Conway Russell?
Why didn’t ACORN tell the police about the prostitution or human sex trafficking mentioned in the video?
Why doesn’t the police report contain O’Keefe’s phone number?
Did the police make any effort to contact O’Keefe?
Why isn’t Katherine Conway Russell named on the police report?
How could the police have concluded that the complaint was “founded”?
Why did it take a phone call to Ian Phillips to determine there was a "verbal disturbance" and the police needed to be called?

Some things are clear here:
1) Media Matters is more interested in defending the actions of the left than in the truth.
2) ACORN did much more than just show them the door.
3) Contrary to the comments of Katherine Conway, they did discuss prostitution and sex trafficking of minors.
4) There was a gap of between 8 and 38 minutes from the time Giles and O'Keefe left the ACORN office and the time the police were called. A phone consultation with Ian Phillips took place during that gap, at which time they decided to call the police.
5) Despite the success of the pimp stings, major media outlets either refuse to cover the story or simply take ACORN's word for what happened.
6) ACORN's track record ain't lookin' good right now.

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