- WEBBERS FALLS - It's
6 p.m. in the small town of Webbers Falls, and on this third day of disaster
recovery efforts, it is quiet and zipped up tight.
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- The television satellite trucks are parked in uneven
rows in the parking lot of a Love's Country Store. Camera crews are set
up under a canopy erected on the concrete. Print reporters and still photographers
mill about beneath the thunderous skies that postponed recovery efforts
at the collapsed bridge for some time during the afternoon.
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- Satellite trucks can't be seen on the town's streets
though. No reporters, either.
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- For the most part, the media learned its lesson from
the previous two days: Stray from the parking lot at your own risk.
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- Consider Brett Shipp. On Tuesday, Shipp -- a reporter
for a Dallas television station -- completed an interview with Mayor Jewel
Horne and accompanied her across the street to the police station. His
cameraman kept the tape rolling.
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- "As soon as we finished with her," Shipp said,
"they moved in."
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- "They" were a group of National Guardsmen and
a representative of the medical examiner's office in Tulsa. The men ordered
Shipp to leave. The newsman can be heard on tape arguing it was unconstitutional
to order him removed from a public street.
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- "I will go to jail if I have to," he says on
tape.
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- The reply came from the medical examiner.
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- "You will probably have to," he said.
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- He didn't.
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- Later, Shipp said, "We went down to the park to
shoot the river, and they threw us out of there, too."
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- The park also was where The Oklahoman's state correspondent,
Sheila Stogsdill, was handcuffed by Webbers Falls police and detained briefly.
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- Stogsdill, who was walking in a public area away from
a portion of city hall set aside for families of the victims, refused to
leave the park after John Hnath of the Tulsa medical examiner's office
ordered local police to arrest her. She said she was never told what crime
she was suspected of committing.
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- Officer Luke Morris handcuffed the reporter and took
her to the nearby police station. Moments earlier, Johnny Pollard, a city
councilman for eight years and part-time police officer, had shouted: "Arrest
her! Arrest her! Handcuff her!"
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- Stogsdill was not arrested. Horne -- who also is the
police commissioner -- chastised Morris and insisted Stogsdill be released.
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- All three public officials later apologized, Horne breaking
down in tears and asking Stogsdill to come back and visit at the mayor's
expense.
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- "This should not have happened," Horne said.
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- A Tulsa television station may have earned the most threats.
Three times Sunday, Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers attempted to evict
them from private property upon which they had set up cameras with the
landowners' permission. On Monday, they were nearly arrested a fourth time
while shooting footage on a public road in Gore.
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- Patrol Lt. Chris West said he doubted troopers actually
threatened to arrest reporters.
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- "Unless I have a name and badge number, then I don't
believe it," West said.
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- http://www.newsok.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=867716&pic=none&
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