AK-Sen: Joe Miller’s Private Guards Handcuff Editor (?!?)

All I can say is, WTF?

Alaska Dispatch founder and editor Tony Hopfinger was grabbed and handcuffed by a private security detail working for U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller on Sunday while trying to ask the Fairbanks Republican questions following a town hall meeting at Central Middle School in Anchorage on Sunday.

Hopfinger was reportedly pressing Miller on whether the candidate had ever been reprimanded for politicking while working at the Fairbanks North Star Borough in 2008. Alaska Dispatch and other media have sued for the release of records related Miller’s time at the borough. Various accounts of what happened next generally agree on this course of events:

  • Two or three bodyguards told Hopfinger to stop asking questions and to leave the building.
  • Hopfinger continued to ask questions while apparently videotaping the candidate.
  • Bodyguards told him that if he persisted they would arrest him for trespassing, but refused to identify themselves to Hopfinger.
  • Hopfinger asked why he was trespassing, as the event was at a public school. Seconds later, he was then put in arm-bar and later handcuffed and sequestered at one end of a hallway for at least 30 minutes. He was told, “You’re under arrest.”
  • Anchorage Police arrived on the scene shortly after.

A later update says that Hopfinger was released after police arrived. Seriously, this is the kind of freaky Mad Max-style shit that is what we can expect in Joe Miller’s America.

UPDATE: More here from the ADN.

LATER UPDATE: Joe Miller has his version of events. See also the HQ of Miller’s security firm – particularly the poster they feature in the window.

56 thoughts on “AK-Sen: Joe Miller’s Private Guards Handcuff Editor (?!?)”

  2. …that a horrible economy will persuade masses of people to put screwballs like Miller, Angle, Paul, and Allen West into power. It’s kind of depressing really.

  6. Really, this can’t be a “WTF!?!” moment.  To be one of those, this would have to be surprising.  I am surprised by very little that comes out of the tea party, and Joe The Miller is no exception.  Hell, I’d have been surprised if he’d made it through his campaign without another bizarre incident.

  9. I’m guessing Miller is going to try to pass this off as a citizens’ arrest. Public school locale aside, would that argument hold any water? Or are they just royally screwed?

  10. I’m still in fear that he could win. As long as 34% or more Alaskans are either low-information party line GOP voters or people who have no problem with electing a tyrant, he could still win.

    Is there much of a chance that this could be the straw that breaks Miller’s electoral back? Or the smoking gun? Or the canary in his coal mine? (I’m getting my metaphors mixed up, please forgive me.)

  12. someone will be looking into this “Drop Zone” private security firm some more.  They seem to be very big on Second Amendment rights, but not so much when it comes to First Amendment rights.

  13. I have a somewhat different take on this – and that is that these ‘citizen journalists’ are getting way out of hand.  More and more we see these guys getting way up into candidates faces in order to provoke them and get a ‘Youtube moment.’  I have no problem with reporters chasing after candidates to ask them questions, but more and more they are invading personal space when doing it.  And when they are ignored, they just keep on and on.  Everyone wants to be a star and get their five minutes of fame.  I saw Rahm Emanuel a few days ago trying to greet some voters and answer a few questions to the local press and he was being harassed by a ‘reporter’ who kept shoving a microphone in his face.  Cong. Etheridge in NC finding himself in hot water putting his hands on some trackers.  I don’t know what happened here and I think Joe Miller is a bit of an AH, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this guy was trying to provoke something.

    There need to be rules.  If you ask politician so-and-so a question and they refuse to answer, I don’t think that this gives you the right to keep shoving your mic in their face and asking the same question over and over.  You need to respect personal space – before shoving a mic in anybody’s face, you should have to ask if it’s okay to do so.  Some of what these reporters are doing is bordering on ass ult.  And it’s not like they are asking anything but gotcha questions and ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ sort of things.

    This is not an ideological point – both sides are doing it and I find it equally obnoxious.  Nor do I mean to suggest that all incidents are the same.  The confrontation between Crazy Carl and that reporter is very different from the one between Etheridge and his young stalkers.  But it’s out of hand and someone is really going to get hurt at one point.  Keep in mind that if all a crazy person has to do it put on a Press badge and say they are with the some blog that they made up and get close enough to kill someone.  I just think it’s all way out of hand, regardless of what happened here.

  16. is more of an online newspaper, and the blogger in question used to work for Newsweek.  

    Also at the “townhall” Miller was asked about how can America really expect to keep all the immigrants out and he said “The East Germans did it”.  

    “The East Germans did it” – I’m not kidding, there is video of him saying that.

    And then he has his thugs arrest a journalist in a public place in a public school because he didn’t want to answer questions about his firing for trying to rig an election?

  17. Hopfinger is moderating a debate between Lisa Murkowski and Scott McAdams tonight at a local brewpub in Anchorage. Joe Miller has not confirmed that he will be attending, but is still invited to drop in. This kind of undercuts the Miller narrative that this guy is some kind of crazy local blogger and not a serious journalist.

  20. I found this:

    http://www.ktuu.com/news/ktuu-…

    There’s also a poll out from the Club for Growth, a Washington, D.C.-based anti-tax group that’s backing Miller. It puts Miller at 33 percent support, Murkowski at 31 percent and McAdams at 27 percent.

    That’s even closer than the last poll we saw.  Though I have no more info about how it was conducted.

  21. People who weren’t Police Officers “arrested” a reported and violated the 1st amendment.  There should be a full investigation as to the legality of this action

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