Annapolis Capital Gazette Mass Shooting

City of Annapolis First Responders Drilled For Event June 22

National news media today are proving wall-to-wall coverage of an apparent mass shooting event at the offices of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis Maryland.

NBC’s Washington DC affiliate station reports:

Five people have died and several others are “gravely injured” after a shooting Thursday at the Capital Gazette newspaper building in Annapolis, Maryland, local and federal officials say.

The names of the dead were not released immediately.

The suspected shooter is 38-year-old Jarrod Ramos, three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the matter told NBC News. Anne Arundel County police declined to provide the suspect’s name.

The suspect threatened the community newspaper on social media, police department spokesman Lt. Ryan Frashure said in a briefing Thursay night.

“This individual had some type of vendetta against the Capital newspaper, and they were specifically targeted,” he said.

The suspect is in custody, and authorities are interrogating him, officials said.

The suspect obscured his fingerprints, making it difficult to identify him, two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News. But officials were able to identify him using facial recognition software, multiple officials said. County police declined to comment on any use of those methods.

Mainstream news media employees are blaming President Trump’s criticism of “fake news media” for the event, according to the Washington Examiner,

The shooting today in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland cannot reasonably be separated from the President's mission to villainize the press as "the enemy of the American people."

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) June 28, 2018

Journalism has never been this needed and it’s never been so threatened. Attacks on journalists from every angle: from Trump rallies to the ICE protest in PDX. And now a shooting ⁦at @capitalgazette⁩ Don’t let up Journalists. Keep doing your jobs https://t.co/xKUcTh4taB

— Angelica Thornton (@AngelicaKATU) June 28, 2018

When is it time to take violence against journalists seriously? pic.twitter.com/dKNblLWKWp

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) June 28, 2018

Along these lines there are attempts to link the event to recent remarks made by political provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

https://www.facebook.com/myiannopoulos/posts/1194490660688827

Of course, these same corporate media outlets and personnel will keep from their readers the fact that, perhaps coincidentally, an active shooter drill took place in at St. Mary’s High School in Annapolis less than one week ago, as the Capital Gazette itself reported on its website June 22.

As MHB has repeatedly observed, in the fake news era the everyday spectator watching such a drill unfold on national television would be hard pressed to be able to distinguish between such a readiness exercise and a “real” event.

In a video posted with the above report, for example, Annapolis fireman Ken White narrates the active shooter drill that took place just last week on St. Mary’s campus.

“With the increase of active shooter incidents we’re seeing we–the city has determined that it is important for us to hold this training,” White explains, “so that in the event that something may happen we’ll be well-prepared.”

A drill being held by local law enforcement and emergency response agencies has been a repeated occurrence at Annapolis and numerous mass shooting events over the past several years, indeed ever since the number of such incidents exploded under the Obama administration.

H/t Tony Mead