Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

FYI: 2 Clinton Campaign Workers Being Held Hostage in NH

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UPDATE 1: apparently 1 of the 2 hostages has been released.

UPDATE 2: a 2nd hostage has been released.  unclear whether there are others, but original assumption was that there were jsut two.  Hostage taker still inside.

UPDATE 3: not surprising to hear, the hostage taker is reportedly a mentally ill man.  he is locally known.  he is reported to have told his son this morning to watch the news today.  this appears to be an isolated incident.

UPDATE 4: continuing uncertainty by the press whether there are additional hostages being held. SWAT vehicle on the move.

UPDATE 5: police officers seem to be setting up some hoses or wires in front of the campaign office.  reporters not making any guesses as to what this could be for.  Assistant AG just arrived on scene.  Planned police press conference is overdue. –> wires are apparently for communication purposes.

UPDATE 6: state officials implying that there are still other hostages in the building.

UPDATE 7: putative step son reported that hostage taker is unemployed, been drinking for past 72 hrs, in middle of a divorce, and asked earlier today where he could buy roadside flares.  not a happy fellow.

UPDATE 8: Police press conference: this is still a hostage situation, although they will not confirm that hostage remain in the building.  they have a bomb squad deployed based on information received thus far.

For further UPDATES, please see comments.

Cross-posted at Pam’s House Blend.

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Comments

    • however, he has reportedly asked/demanded to speak to senator clinton.  the police is in communication with him.  i doubt we;’ll know any details until after it’s over, for obvious security reasons.  

  2. i’ve been watching the internet feed from channel 9, and i’m pleased and reassured to see that the news station is respecting the need by the police that they don’t give anything away.  for example, the news crew isn’t showing street shots taht could show the hostage taker, should he be watching, where how police are deployed.

  3. The Obama office in the same strip mall has evacuated (reasonable, I guess).  The Edwards office several streets away, subject to no creditable threat, evacuated as well.  Take from that what you will.

    • they didn’t know what kind of bomb, if any, he has/had strapped to himself.  They also didn’t know if her was working alone or part of something bigger.  Police and other campaign offices would have been negligent, imo, if they did not evacuate.  Especially if the police asked them to.

  4. Channel 9 quoting a Boston station that 2 more hostages still remain in the Rochester, NH Clinton campaign office.

  5. Another woman appears to have left the campaign office.  Whether she was also a hostage remains to be verified.

  6. “…Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

    <

    p>Channel nine says some troubled man strapped road flares to his body, got drunk and is now in the Clinton HQ slowly letting hostages walk away.  Is this high drama?  

    <

    p>The only drama I see is the media trying to work this into the biggest story since Pearl Harbor and the police trying to make it a bigger crime than the Valentine’s Day Massacre.

    <

    p>Oh!, for the old days, when a policeman could walk in, tell the drunk it was time to go home and bring him out to the wagon.  I suppose the police will have to justify all the expense with a tab of blood.  Would that the police could wait until the fellow falls asleep and just carry him off to jail.

    <

    p>  

    • don’t you think the cops would have done what you suggest if they could be sure that the guy wouldn’t hurt someone?  are you clairvoyant?  do you postulate that the cops are under contract with fox to create and exciting entertainment?  sheesh!  what tripe!

      <

      p>i don’t know how fox might be portraying this, but imo NH channel 9 is doing a great job in simply reporting the situation.

      • I haven’t heard of too many road flare deaths lately.  No, not clairvoyant, but can figure out someone with a reading for understanding disability.

        <

        p>Honey, it is all show business out there.

        <

        p>Best wishes.  

        • …just to remind you, the cops didn’t know what Herr Eisenberg had strapped to his body until they got him out of there.  Hindsight is 20-20.

  7. Another person, a young man, appears to have jogged out of the Rochester, NH Clinton campaign headquarters.

    <

    p>Apparently the hostage taker has come out also, and is prostrate on the ground.  He is being arrested.  Looks like this is safely over.

  8. Channel 9 identifying the hostage taker as Leland Eisenberg.  He was supposed to have appeared in court today to face domestic violence charges leveled at him by his wife, who is reportedly divorcing him.  

    • The stepson of one Troy Stanley said that his stepdad was the guy, and Faux ran with it.  Foster’s Daily Democrat, the local paper, appears to have had the right ID first and has file pictures of him from other events (see below).

  9. Speculation:

    <

    p>It’s reported that the hostage-taker’s name is Leland Eisenberg. A “Leeland Eisenberg” (two e’s) has been in trouble in Massachusetts.  Apparently this Leeland Eisenberg was trying to charge other inmates at MCI Bridgewater, which is a mental facility, a finder’s fee for lawyer’s referrals.

    <

    p>http://www.mass.gov/obcbbo/bd0…

    <

    p>Maybe a different guy, but how many Leland Eisenbergs are in MA & NH?

  10. ROCHESTER – Police have stopped placing fliers in unlocked cars warning residents about motor vehicle thefts after one resident complained his constitutional rights were violated.

    Leeland Eisenberg of Gonic is questioning the new police strategy that had officers checking for unlocked vehicles, opening the doors and placing fliers on the driver’s seat urging residents to lock their doors.

    <

    p>http://www.fosters.com/apps/pb…

  12. …right wing media has tried to suggest that this was a sympathy stunt orchestrated by the Clinton campaign?  

    <

    p>I wouldn’t put it past the right wing media to try to do so.

    • to renew the discussion about the fact that since reagan, our country has turned many mentally ill people out onto the streets when instead many of them should be receiving treatment.  i hope the candidates use this as an opportunity to address the sorry state of community mental health care in this country.  especially with all the veterans returning from iraq and other places, we need to get serious about rejuvenating our mental health care system.

      • …deinstutionalization, but it really did begin long before Reagan.

        <

        p>Reagan had his faults (I could go on and on) but deinstitutionalization began before him.  I don’t recall precisely, but a confluence of issues from the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations, plus the federal courts (holding people against their will, without having been convicted of a crime).

        • what precipitated deinstitutionalization in MA? were the institutions thought to be doing more harm than good, or was it simply a budgetary thing?  or something else?

            • I don’t understand your reply.  Are you saying that money was diverted to the schools from the mental health services budget?

              • 1966     The Comprehensive Mental Health and Retardation Services Act called for the department to establish a comprehensive community-based program of mental health and mental retardation services including state hospitals,  state schools, clinics, comprehensive centers, and other facilities. This legislation mandated programmatic movement toward deinstitutionalization and the development of community mental health centers, following closely the federal Community Mental Health and Retardation Centers Act of 1963. The department was decentralized by dividing the Commonwealth into seven administrative regions each consisting of five to eight “catchment” or service areas with area directors and citizens advisory boards. Emphasis was thus shifted away from the large state mental hospitals. In addition to area boards, a thirty-member State Advisory Council on Mental Health and Retardation (more commonly known as the Advisory Council on Mental Health and Mental Retardation) was established to advise the commissioner of mental health on policy, program development, and departmental priorities.

                1970     The Mental Health Reform Act, chapter 888, imposed limits on new admissions to state mental hospitals, encouraging the transition to a community-based system.

                <

                p>What the legislation did was allow those who would have been institutionalized automatically to remain in public schools with waivers.  But, it also failed to create those ‘mandated’ community centers for those now denied hospitalization, too.

                • …”mainstreaming” than deinstitutionalization.

                  <

                  p>As far a I can tell, “deinstitutionalization” is usually used to refer to what is pejoratively referred to as “throwing people out onto the streets” although it is far more complex than that.

                • this is a sad story you tell.  one of good intentions that went unimplemented.  however, there is the matter of federal funding also.  in short, it was cut most severely during under reagan’s watch.  

                • entertain your apparently willful ignorance.  ronald reagan was not the first president to address mental health funding, but he was the most recent to have a real impact.  and for the worse.

  13. In future, it’s going to be HELL trying to rent a storefront to be a political headquarters.  Because the next ‘concerned voter’ may really HAVE a bomb.

  14. emotion whenever she mentioned her young campaign volunteers.  She does not usually betray much emotion and I thought her statement was touching,  

      • really moved.  When she spoke she was her usual poised self – except when she mentioned her young workers.  That little sound bite moment raised her in my estimation much more than a statement on issues or policy.  They can lie about their stances on issues.  

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