Nashville Protester Sues Scientology For $6 Mill [video]

Latest Video From WSMV News4

Nashille: A college student is suing the Nashville Church of Scientology, a security company and three off-duty Spring Hill police officers for $6 million. Thomas Parker said he was knocked to the ground, handcuffed and arrested, for nothing more than attempting to peacefully protest.

The Church of Scientology's grand opening turned into a grand mess when hired security arrested protesters. It would have been a he-said, she-said -- except that it was all caught on tape.

Parker was on his way to protest the grand opening. He was still blocks away when security guards cut off him and his group. Three off-duty officers working for Hayes Security and hired by the church took down Parker, handcuffed and arrested him.

The church had taken out permits to block the street for the wrong day.

Parker, through his attorney, Nathaniel Koenig, is suing all of the above-mentioned parties.

"I'm just hoping that right will be done," Parker said.

Brian Fesler, a Church of Scientology representative, said the group had threatened the church in the past.

WSMV: Protester Sues Church Of Scientology [video report WSMV site]
WSMV News4 broadcast October 30th 2009 ~ College Student Says Peaceful Protest Intent Led To Arrest. Also, audio commentary from Elby 'chuckles' Nonamous can be heard in the background.



Some Other Points Not Mentioned:
Over at WWP, a thread entry lists a lot of what went wrong that day:

The degree of *uckup by Hayes guards and Scientology in this case is staggering.

• wrong day on permit, thus closing down a state highway without proper permit
• place of arrest outside permit area
• abysmal conflict handling skills
• arresting when 44 trying to leave
• excessive force
• lying to public works
• lying in the police
• off duty officers not checked in with Nashville police
• guards/officers not properly identified
• interrogating the arrested person in an improper fashion, in public view
• arrest happening in full view of both CoS executives and Hayes executives
• high possibility that the CoS gave Hayes hysterical information about Anonymous that they knew was misleading
• lying to the press for a while, before lawyers told them to shut up

Even one of these things on its own is bad enough. Taken together, you have the biggest cluster*uck I've ever seen made of a protest, except for those where people actually got killed. This is easily worse than that bike activist who got tackled in New York, and that was national news for months.

Raw Footage Of Protester's Arrest/Assault
See video's more info [right column] for complete story and links to documents.



Edit: Also, be sure and Digg.

Nashville Protester Sues Scientology For $6 Mill [archive video]

Scientology's Week Of Bad News Continues...
[Update: WSMV News4 will be broadcasting an updated report available here.]

Nashville: A Murfreesboro man has filed a $6 million lawsuit against the Church of Scientology's Nashville celebrity center claiming that guards hired by the church assaulted him while he was staging a protest.

Thomas A. Parker and other members of an anti-Scientology group called Anonymous planned to protest the center's grand opening on April 25.

Parker and others were walking down Eighth Avenue South, when two off-duty Spring Hill police officers, hired as security guards by the church, confronted them, the suit alleges. Parker claims he was pushed to the ground. He claims to have suffered injuries to his left shoulder, elbows and knees.
Charges dropped.

According to the suit, Parker was arrested for aggravated criminal trespass. The charge was later dismissed. Brian Fesler, spokesman for the Church of Scientology, said he was unaware of the lawsuit and had no comment.

The incident occurred on a sidewalk about 450 yards away and across the street from the Scientology center at 1130 Eighth Ave. S., said Nathaniel Koenig, Parker's lawyer.

Koenig said his client had every right to peacefully protest the Scientology event.

"I didn't know that walking down a public street in Nashville was a crime," said Koenig. "I have nothing against the Church of Scientology. I don't care. This is not attacking them as a religion. This is all about their attack on my client and his constitutional rights."

Also added by an anon protester involved "Scientology is listed on the lawsuit because of the master-servant clause. They are responsible for Hayes' action in this case. Otherwise, it would have been just Hayes. Hayes is listed as well, along with the individual officers", and don't expect this to get settled out-of-court, "...I told him that if he agreed to any kind of NDA, he'd feel the wrath of his fiance. I don't think he wants to deal with that... [also, see comments below]".

Seems as if the "basement dwelling, internet terrorists are all grown up now and filing their very own lawsuits". Earlier ODIT reports archived here for original assault in April and the follow-up report in May.

Protester Assaulted by Scientology Rent-a-Cops in Nashville
Part 1 [WSMV News4 broadcast May 6th 2009]



Protester Assaulted by Scientology Rent-a-Cops in Nashville
Part 2 [WSMV News4 broadcast]

DA Drops Charges Against Scientology Protester

Nashville College Student Says Officers Attacked Him
WSMV News4: The district attorney has dropped the citations against a man arrested during a scuffle outside the Church of Scientology. Protesters were walking down the sidewalk last month when security guards hired by the church went after them. Those guards were off-duty Spring Hill police officers. A college student said the officers attacked him. He received three citations, but the district attorney just dismissed them.

Strange. When somebody is found innocent of something, it's just not news. No film. No news report. Just a blog entry. More discussion on this latest event can be found over at WWP.

If you're not familiar with the story, see the recap below:

WSMV News4: Nashville: There are problems with how security for a Nashville Scientology event was handled, and laws appear to have been broken.

• Public Works pulled all of the permits taken out for the Scientology event. The permits -- all of them for sidewalk closing and lane blocking -- are for the wrong day. They're for the day before the event and expire before the scuffle occurred.

• Three of the five security guards were off-duty Spring Hill police officers working in Nashville, which can only be done if local police are notified and officers are wearing uniforms clearly identifying them as off-duty police officers.

"The armed people from the other county are not identified police officers," said John M. L. Brown. "You're looking for a problem." Brown, a Fraternal Order of Police attorney, has been defending police officers for 32 years. He said he finds the officers' actions hard to defend. He also added. "Nashville's a capital city, and there are protests in Nashville with some frequency, I don't think that mentioning a bologna sandwich is a recognized law enforcement tactic." Watch Part2 below:




• The Church of Scientology said it told security these were dangerous people and to do what they needed to do.
• The assistant police chief of the Spring Hill Police Department, Jon Roberts, said from the video it looked like to him that the protesters were looking for trouble. Roberts said he feels that the officers did not do anything wrong, and the home video does not tell the whole story.
• The security firm hired by the Church of Scientology was Hayes Security on Gallatin Road. A representative of the firm said that the matter is being turned over to its attorneys.

Hacker Pleads Guilty to '08 Scientology Attack

CNN reported FBI didn't expect charges to be filed in alleged bomb/death threats

According to a news release from the Justice Department's Los Angeles office, Dmitriy Guzner of Verona, N.J., pleaded guilty to computer hacking charges related to the 2008 distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) on Scientology websites. That's where hackers get so many zombie computers to visit a site that the server overload becomes crippling and the site crashes.

Big Whoop. Old News. Anonymous based websites get DDOSed all the time.And more often. I don't see the FBI to concerned about that.

What is odd though, Scientology, on just about every press release, regarding Anonymous includes their now famous tag-line, "...there were instances in which the church reported bomb threats against it, and even white powder mailed to one or more of its locations. At the time, the FBI said it was investigating those allegations as well."

And the news agencies just do a copypasta of the press release without any fact checking.

Say What? Isn't that the news reporter's job - to CHECK FACTS BEFORE REPORTING?

Well, it seems in this day and age of fancy graphics and plastic-faced news, that's just too time consuming and would cut into the all important hair-styling time. It's now up to the reader/viewer to inform the news agency that they mis-reported an item. The top story is a prime example:

The following update was added to that story: "Updated, 7:03 p.m.: Commenters point to this May 2008 video (minute 1:20) where a CNN anchor reported that the FBI did not expect that charges would be filed regarding alleged bomb or death threats."

It's not too tough. Took 2 minutes to search the FBI's website for information about Scientology. Anything about bomb threats? Nope. How about death threats or white powder. Nadda. Zippo.

And how often does Scientology churn out these now year old lies? Every chance they get. Below is an excerpt from the WSMV News4 report in Nashville, inquiring Brian Fesler, a Scientology spokesman, why the church's hired security team tackled a protester and had him arrested. (Note: As of yesterday, it's been reported that all charges have been dropped against said protester)



You'd think they've taken a page out of the Bush/Cheney playbook under fear-mongering (remember no WMD's found in Iraq?) Nope. Hubbard already had a policy set-up back in 1960's to deal with enemies of Scientology. It's called Fair Game.
"If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace." ~ L. Ron Hubbard, "Dept of Govt Affairs", HCO Policy Letter of 15 August 1960.

If major news agencies continue on their corporate mouthpiece trend, they'll soon be going the way of the newspaper, and readers/viewers will continue to go to bloggers for their news. Sure, bloggers, like me, sometime have an agenda. But we also try to back-up our opinions with facts. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a hair-styling appointment, lol.

Brian Fesler, Member of Anonymous?

Scientology Spokesperson Yucking It Up With Alleged Cyber-Terrorists

Here we have smiling Brian Fesler, spokesperson for the Church of Scientology in Nashville, Tn. What's he smiling about? Why he's having fun joking around with Minneapolis Anonymous protesters on 2/14/09. Does this look like a man that is in fear for his life from bomb or death threat?

No, I didn't think so.

Funny, that's how he is describes the same protesters in this recent statement he gave to WSMV News4 after an attack on protesters by Scientology hired guards:

"This group has made threats against us. They made bomb threats and death threats, so we had to take it seriously, so we hired some professional security that day, we just trusted what, you know, trusted their judgment."

Below, see more pictures of this man quaking in his boots while being surrounded by anonymous protesters. Or follow this link to Flicker to see all the full size photos.

Trouble for Security Team in Nashville Arrest [2 videos]

Scientology and rent-a-cops Offer Bologna, but may Eat Crow

WSMV News4 Part 1: A protest at the Church of Scientology in Nashville led to pushing, shoving, an arrest and the whole thing was caught on tape. The tape, protesters said, proves they were assaulted and bullied by security guards for no reason.

As the group walked up Eighth Avenue looking for a place to set up a protest, they were approached by a group of off-duty Spring Hill security guards. "As we start turning around, I feel somebody, you know, grabbed me," said the student. "Then, all I remember is I'm on the ground, you know, and I've got, like, three people piled on top of me. Luckily, we had cameras rolling".

"But basically I got tackled from behind while I was trying to leave." The student added, " it was the three off-duty security guards who assaulted him on public property, 400 yards from church property on the other side of the street". Watch part1 below:



WSMV News4: Part 2: There are problems with how security for a Nashville Scientology event was handled, and laws appear to have been broken.

• Public Works pulled all of the permits taken out for the Scientology event. The permits -- all of them for sidewalk closing and lane blocking -- are for the wrong day. They're for the day before the event and expire before the scuffle occurred.

• Three of the five security guards were off-duty Spring Hill police officers working in Nashville, which can only be done if local police are notified and officers are wearing uniforms clearly identifying them as off-duty police officers.

"The armed people from the other county are not identified police officers," said John M. L. Brown. "You're looking for a problem." Brown, a Fraternal Order of Police attorney, has been defending police officers for 32 years. He said he finds the officers' actions hard to defend. He also added. "Nashville's a capital city, and there are protests in Nashville with some frequency, I don't think that mentioning a bologna sandwich is a recognized law enforcement tactic." Watch Part2 below:



And now let the finger-pointing commence.
• The Church of Scientology said it told security these were dangerous people and to do what they needed to do.
• The assistant police chief of the Spring Hill Police Department, Jon Roberts, said from the video it looked like to him that the protesters were looking for trouble. Roberts said he feels that the officers did not do anything wrong, and the home video does not tell the whole story.
• The security firm hired by the Church of Scientology was Hayes Security on Gallatin Road. A representative of the firm said that the matter is being turned over to its attorneys.
Looks like all this isn't going to get settled before lunch, who brought the sandwiches?