On October 29, 2006, Sunday evening around 8 pm, the employees of the Spirit of the Northwoods store in downtown Shawano twice heard gunshots, one after the other.  They were scared, hiding themselves away and finally called the police.  They saw that someone had shot a hole in the 8 ft high by 7 ft wide front window display, and shattered glass lay everywhere.

After two police officers arrived at the scene, they began to look for the bullet or bullet fragments on the sidewalk outside the store. While searching, one officer found a tiny, soft, yellow, plastic ball between the cement sidewalk cracks outside the store. A little later the same officer suddenly “discovered” a tiny, soft, green plastic ball identical to the first one on the sidewalk 10 feet away.  Both officers began making statements that these tiny plastic balls must have hit the window.  Then one of them made the comment that he thought it was just a random shooting by some kids or vandals.

After the second plastic ball “appeared” it became obvious that the officers had brought them to the scene and were “finding” them, in the dark, in strategic places in front of the window with the big bullet hole—something like the police searching the trunk of your car and suddenly “finding” a bag of marijuana, just to set you up.

As the “investigation” progressed, both officers in tandem were obviously acting dumb, reminiscent of old-time Laurel and Hardy or Keystone Cops movies, trying to downplay the whole thing and make a circus out of the performance.  It became apparent the Lorna had primed these boys well on how to act. They suddenly “invented” a new theory that someone walking by the store with a pistol that shoots these small plastic balls could have held the pistol barrel point blank against the window and shot twice. The first one, the yellow ball, hit the window and bounced off, and the second one went through the hole and somehow bounced back outside and rested in the sidewalk crack—a brilliant Laurel and Hardy Theory.

I commented to him that this was not a random shot at a random store window, but one of SIST’s businesses had obviously been targeted again because that is the pattern in Shawano. The officer just ignored that comment and went on postulating his kid vandal-plastic ball, Annie Oakley story.

Random vandalism?  Who are they kidding?!  Anybody with a little common sense can reason that these tiny, soft plastic balls could not cause a hole the size of a .22 to .25 caliber bullet in 1/4” thick plate glass.  And how many non-SIST businesses in downtown Shawano have had storefront windows shot out in the past few years?

And this is not the first time.  SIST has had large store windows shot out or smashed or beer bottles thrown through them at least a dozen times in the last few years, costing SIST thousands of dollars to replace them.  This particular window will not be any cheaper to replace.  And every time we hear the same vague stories about a “random” occurrence of vandalism.  And somehow, the Keystone Cops of Shawano can never seem to find the culprits—for starters, try looking in City Hall.

Here again is new evidence that Lorna Marquardt, Mayor of Shawano, and the Evil Leader are promoting hate toward SIST so that people become so bold and brazen to damage SIST properties.  This is her strategy to run up the expenses and run SIST out of town.  Everyone knows that she inspires and condones these crimes against SIST and that, because she controls the Shawano Police Department, nothing will ever be done to apprehend the perpetrators.  Not only that, but Lorna has schooled her people well on how to cover up and ignore incidents against SIST.

In Shawano, “freedom of the press,” the concept of fair and accurate coverage, is a joke.  Try freedom to oppress.  Damage to SIST properties is never newsworthy, nor does it ever appear in the Evil Leader. But the minute the slightest thing happens not in favor of SIST, then all the Shawano authorities and the Evil Leader staff, Rod Christensen, Kent Tempus, and Tim Ryan, descend on SIST like vultures, and the story is plastered on the front page of the Evil Leader the next day.  And of course, this window being shot out at the Spirit of the Northwoods won’t see the light of day or the Evil Leader tabloid anywhere, because yellow and green plastic balls and bullet holes in SIST business windows are not newsworthy.

Think about it:

How could these tiny, soft plastic balls blow through 1/4” thick plate glass and bounce gently back onto the sidewalk??