A series of false alarms that put emergency services on high alert and led to raids on homes and premises linked to TV Republika journalists have become the subject of interest for additional newsrooms. Journalists’ findings point to a number of irregularities, including those concerning the circumstances of officers entering the apartment of Tomasz Sakiewicz.
Journalists from “Rzeczpospolita”, based on reports about the false alarms, presented their own findings in this highly controversial case. They assessed that TV Republika, as well as its journalists, became victims of these events.
“The alarms vary, but they all have the same goal – to disrupt the operations of the newsroom of a right-wing station that a few days earlier announced that Zbigniew Ziobro would be its correspondent in the United States,” according to rp.pl.
Further on, it is reported that the coordinated action was not carried out by an ordinary “prankster”. “This is evidenced, among other things, by the case of a TV Republika collaborator who was singled out by the authors of the false reports for attack – it turns out they had knowledge of her 13-year-old son,” the authors of the article reported.
Poor explanations from the police
Journalists paid particular attention to the situation in which police were called twice to the apartment of Tomasz Sakiewicz, where the station’s office is also located. Each time, the false report concerned a threat to the life of a minor. During the second intervention, the officers’ actions were recorded by the station’s editor-in-chief on his phone. The behaviour of the police sparked significant controversy.
The recordings show that the officers were not in full uniform – they were missing caps and identifying insignia. “There were no name tags on the pocket with the surname and first initial. There was also no ‘shield’, meaning the patch with the unit’s name and number or designation. The badges are attached with Velcro, so they could not have fallen off on their own, but were detached. – In such condition, they should not have been cleared for duty after briefing,” one officer is quoted as saying in the text.
According to the newspaper, after the intervention, when the case gained public attention, “the officers were said to have explained that their IDs were on their vests, but they had removed them before entering the apartment”.
“Experienced police officers point to another fact. Two days earlier, there had been 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 this – 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 if dealing with criminals, and taken her down to the patrol car, which was also incomprehensible, because shortly afterwards she was uncuffed,” the authors of the text noted.
They do not intend to back down
The station’s CEO, when asked about further steps in the case, assured that the newsroom would 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 keep digging into this case until the last person behind it ends up in prison,” Tomasz Sakiewicz said in an interview with “Rzeczpospolita”.