Yvonne Rosales' Humiliating Meeting Requirements

If you recall recently some abortion rights advocates staged a sit-in in the lobby of the District Attorney's Office to get a meeting with Rosales to ask her if she was going to prosecute women who seek abortions under the new Texas law. 

Apparently there was a chance meeting on the 3rd floor that continued in an elevator that is the reason the meeting even happened in the first place. The group, Texas Rising, first reached out to Rosales as early as June to urge her to follow the lead of another Texas DA that was going to exercise his prosecutorial discretion to not prosecute the new crime. 

A group of community members meeting with an elected official is a pretty pedestrian thing. Its typically not very noteworthy. 

But as pretty much anything goes with the District Attorney's Office, what should have been routine ended up being anything but. 

So strap in y'all because we are about to take a ride on the crazy train. 

Rosales eventually met with the local leader of the group Ivonne Diaz. Diaz is the Regional Field Coordinator for the organization and the group had made repeated attempts to visit with the DA and either weren't answered or when they were answered Paul Ferris was trying to pawn them off on the Sheriff and Chief of Police. 

If the Ferris name sounds familiar, he's been running the train wreck that has been her PR strategy since she's been elected and his sister, Lauren Ferris, is running for El Paso City Council for District 1. She previously ran unsuccessfully for a municipal judge seat and her campaign was run by Jeremy Jordan. 

Rosales would only meet with the Diaz and no one else. The DA had Paul Ferris - her communications guy - and three of other staffers. 

It was what happened right before the meeting that was really weird - and quite frankly, infuriating if you're a constituent. 

I'm gonna venture that most of you have at some point in the last decade or so, have ventured into the County Courthouse downtown, which is where the DA's office is located. If you have, then you already know this, but if you haven't - you have to pass through security when you enter the building. The SO's have you put your belongings on a conveyor belt that goes through a scan and you have to remove everything in your pockets and walk through a metal detector. If you ding, then you'll get wanded, or if necessary you'll get a pat down. 

Every member of the public has to go through this process. Only badged courthouse personnel are able to get through. 

Well before the meeting with Rosales, Diaz, who had already passed through security, was subjected to  ANOTHER search and more invasive search. Mind you, she'd already been cleared through security to get into the building. Three, count them, three deputies came to conduct the search.

Oh it gets worse...

She was even given the TSA treatment. She was asked to remove her footwear! And to shake her shoes after she removed her footwear, presumably to ensure she wasn't hiding a weapon in what I can only assume were sensible shoes. 

That isn't even something you have to do to get in the building. But apparently to get a meeting with the DA you have to go through the same treatment they have to make sure you're not a terrorist trying to take down a plane!

Its absolutely inexcusable that someone who campaigned on being accessible and transparent is a) only available to the public if she's cornered in an elevator and b) only take sweetheart media interviews and requires TSA level clearance to have a sit down. 

Oh it gets worse still...

She was not only forced to go through the humiliation of a secondary search, and an enhanced search, but she was instructed to leave all of her belongings behind, and was not allowed to have any devices with her for the meeting. I've been doing this a long time. I've met with a lot of elected officials and sat in on a lot of meetings between the public and elected officials. 

I can't think of any other time when this kind of thing has happened. I can't think of a single elected official, not even Anthony Cobos, any of the electeds involved in the public corruption scandal or even any of the Gandaras treating a member of the public like that. 

At no point was Diaz given a reason for an additional search or for an enhanced search of that nature in the presence of three uniformed sheriff deputies. 

Lets pull over real quick and ask a fundamental question. Why would an elected official have such requirements for a meeting with a community member who was alone and who's group was peaceful and non-obstructive to the workflow of the office while trying to get a meeting with the DA?

Typically the media doesn't have access to the DA, unless its sweetheart interviews with one particular news station or pre-approved questions. This demonstrates a very disturbing lack of accessibility and transparency from the DA's office. 

Since she wasn't allowed to take anything into the meeting, despite the fact that the 5 individuals in the room had their phones and materials to take notes, Diaz had to ask if she could have paper and pen to take notes. Notes she says were actually edited to a degree by the DA and her communications guy and Rosales. 

If you notice, one page appears to be regular copy machine paper. When she first asked for paper, she wasn't even given paper with lines on it - they straight grabbed copy paper!

Anywho...I actually acquired a copy of the notes. Pun intended, Exhibit A is the lined paper. If you notice on line 1, Diaz actually had to strike through the last portion of what she had written because Ferris didn't like that it said that the meeting came after they held a sit-in in the DA's office. 

But Diaz said her organization had been calling, visiting, and emailing the office in an attempt to get a meeting with Rosales. The organization had collected letters signed by members of the community asking the DA to exercise prosecutorial discretion. 

They turned those letters in to the DA's office weeks ago. Here's a picture of Diaz the day she turned them in, back in mid-August. 

So since they hadn't heard back, the did their demonstration on a Friday. They spent the day there and NOTHING from the DA's office. 

Diaz did what any organizer would do and made a plan for escalation. She decided she was going to attend the County Commissioner's Court meeting the following Monday and speak during public comment and ask the Commissioner's Court if they could arrange a meeting with her office. 

Thats why Diaz happened to be on the 3rd floor of the Courthouse when the DA happened to arrive. So she walked up to her and asked for the meeting and rode the elevator to the 2nd floor with Rosales. Rosales told her a staffer would be out shortly. So Diaz ran back upstairs to remove her name from public comment and shortly thereafter the call came in from Ferris. So any attempt to make it sound like the meeting happened because they DA's office was being responsive to the community is absolute bullshit. 

It was pressure and accountability that made the meeting happen. 

As for the actual meeting that consisted of the DA and 4 staffers for a total of 5 people on one side of the room, to the lone Diaz, it doesn't appear to have been to fruitful. According to Diaz, Rosales repeated the same talking points Ferris did earlier when he suggested they speak to Wiles and Allen. 

Toward the end of the meeting Diaz asked why the DA's office doesn't release a statement. Ferris whined about the media coverage. But toward the end of the meeting Rosales actually dictated a quote to Diaz because Diaz said she needed something to report back to her organization from the meeting. That is Exhibit B below:

Diaz said that she shared her personal experience with them. She said that despite the fact that there were three other women in the meeting, she felt no empathy from anyone. 

This is the office were victims of crime go to relive and recount terrible experiences. I'm sure the actual DA's that handle cases empathize with the victims, but you wouldn't know it from Rosales team in the meeting from what it sounds like. 

In fact Diaz says that the only ray of humanity she felt in the meeting came from one of the men in the meeting that recounted a personal situation to her as she was being escorted out of the meeting. 

"That was the only humanity that I felt in the whole situation," said Diaz.

Diaz says that Ferris tried to frame her message to her organization toward the end of the meeting. Ferris said to tell the organization about her experience with their office, how she was treated, and how she was able to get a meeting with the DA. 

Its pretty clear that Ferris doesn't have a clue about public communications (in my opinion), but that sentiment also shows me he is tone deaf to how that meeting was received. Who in their right mind would encourage her to tell her organization about her experience with the office after being searched like she was being booked, not being able to take anything into the meeting, and having to ask for scraps of paper to at least take notes on. 

I cannot underscore how terrible the optics of this situation are to the public. I know every day you think it can't possibly get worse, but ever day it somehow manages to. 

And now Rosales is using Theresa Caballero and Eddie Holguin and Lily Limón's business partner Martin Paredes to try to intimidate coverage of her office be inventing wide-ranging conspiracy theories. This is becoming a terribly written novela.