A series of false alarms that mobilized emergency services and led to raids on the homes and offices linked to journalists from TV Republika has become the subject of interest for additional media outlets. Findings by journalists from “Rzeczpospolita” indicate a number of irregularities, including those concerning the entry of officers into the apartment of Tomasz Sakiewicz. The newsroom also obtained the content of the email that triggered the alert to the services.
Journalists from “Rzeczpospolita”, based on reports about false alarms, presented their own findings in this highly controversial case. They assessed that both TV Republika and its journalists became victims of these events.
“The alerts vary, but they all share the same goal – to disrupt the newsroom of a right-wing station, which just days earlier announced that its correspondent in the United States would be Zbigniew Ziobro,” the publication wrote on rp.pl.
It further states that the large-scale operation was not carried out by an ordinary “prankster”. “This is evidenced, among other things, by the case of a TV Republika associate, who was specifically targeted by the perpetrators of the false reports – it turns out they had knowledge about her 13-year-old son,” the authors of the article reported.
Weak explanations from the police
Journalists paid particular attention to the situation in which police were called twice to the apartment of Tomasz Sakiewicz, where an office is also located. Each time, the false report referred to a threat to the life of a minor.
“I am at Wiktorska … I am committing suicide, I have a shahid belt on me, I will f… everything up” – such an email, according to Rzeczpospolita, triggered the controversial police intervention at the apartment of Tomasz Sakiewicz, CEO of TV Republika,” the newspaper reported.
During the second intervention, the service action was recorded by the station’s CEO on his phone. The behavior of the officers raised significant controversy.
The recordings show that they were not wearing full uniforms – they were missing caps and identifying insignia. “There were no name patches with the surname and initial of the first name on the pocket. There was also no ‘shield’, meaning a patch with the unit name and number or its designation. The patches are attached with Velcro, so they could not have fallen off on their own, but were removed. – In such condition, they should not have been cleared for duty after briefing,” one police officer is quoted as saying in the article.
According to the newspaper, after the intervention, once the case gained public attention, “the officers were said to have explained that their identifiers were on their vests, but they removed them before entering the apartment”.
“Experienced police officers point to another fact. Two days earlier there was a similar report, which turned out to be a false alarm concerning an apartment on Wiktorska Street – and this fact should have been recorded in the Police Command Support System (SWD). The duty officer who sent young officers to Wiktorska should have informed them about it – perhaps with more tact and sensitivity they would have carried out the intervention differently – and would not have hastily handcuffed the woman from behind, as criminals are treated, or taken her downstairs to the patrol car, which was also incomprehensible, because she was uncuffed shortly after,” they noted.
They do not intend to back down
The CEO of the station, when asked about further steps in the case, assured that the editors will not be intimidated.
“The effect will be the opposite of what was intended. This will not scare us, it will not silence us. I will dig into this case until the last person responsible is in prison,” Tomasz Sakiewicz said in an interview with “Rzeczpospolita.”