The missing box showed up Friday, delivered to the Clymer & Musser law offices downtown.
A Lancaster Post newspaper box sits at corner near the Fry home.
Franklin & Marshall College security forces, it seems, had the red newspaper box since Monday, but held onto it for four days. Perhaps they weren't sure who owned it.
Even though it had the Lancaster Post's newspaper logo on top.
The box was originally on Marietta Avenue at South School Lane — across the street from Nevonia, the mansion owned by F&M and the home of President John Fry and his family. The box disappeared sometime last Sunday, so on Tuesday, Post co-publishers Ron Harper Jr. and Christiaan Hart Nibbrig came and installed a new box — this one on the north side of the road, right outside the border of F&M's property.
Moments later, F&M security roared up — and, Harper says, beat him up.
The incident generated considerable outrage, with Harper accusing Fry of using his "jack-booted thugs" to both stifle freedom of the press and try to intimidate him personally.
But it appeared last week that there was plenty of intimidation to go around.
In the driveway of his stately home Thursday, Fry seemed upset. At least once, he said, Harper came to the house after he was warned to stay off F&M property.
Harper says that's a lie — though "real" journalists, he said, do what they must to get a quote.
Fry has three children, age 7, 13 and 17, and he said they're scared. Who is this guy that keeps coming around, even after being told to stay away?
"You know, set up the video camera outside my office," said Fry. "Videotape me all day. Record me walking to my car. I'm a big boy. I can take it.
"But leave my family out of it."
Harper was having none of it Friday.
"He's trying to deflect attention from his Gestapo tactics by hiding behind his kids' diapers," he said.
Article on studentsIn its May 30 edition, the Lancaster Post ran an article about two F&M students who had been arrested and charged with stealing liquor from the then-unfinished Iron Hill Brewery in College Row. Post sources said Fry asked Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman to "go easy" on the students; both may be given the opportunity to plead guilty and enter the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program.
Said F&M spokeswoman Dulcey Antonucci Friday: "We deny it totally."
In the course of reporting the story, Harper wanted a comment from Fry. So he went to Fry's house and knocked on the door. When no one answered, Harper left a business card on the windshield of Fry's car.
Fry said Thursday that he told Antonucci he didn't want Harper at his house. Antonucci called Harper and, she said, told him he wasn't to come to the house.
Harper's account of that conversation differed: He said Antonucci said nothing about staying off the property — but merely tried to palm him off on a college vice president. "She said, 'Here's the procedure you have to follow' " to get a comment, he said.
Harper said he told Antonucci, "I'm not going to tell you how to do your job, and I'm certainly not going to let you tell me how to do mine."
Harper would return to Fry's house, knocking on the door again. No answer; so he left another card.
Harper was then hand-delivered a "defiant trespass notice," warning him that if he set foot on any F&M property, he would be arrested. The day the Post printed its story about the F&M students, someone left four copies of the newspaper on Fry's front porch.
Fry said only his 7-year-old and a baby sitter, an F&M student, were home at the time.
Antonucci said the college "is not accusing" Harper of dropping off the papers — but, she said, the incident further concerned Fry and other college officials.
Russ Eshleman, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who teaches journalism at Penn State and writes a column for the Sunday News, said that "all of us who worked as reporters have at one time or another staked out public officials." While covering Harrisburg, he said, he used to try and ascertain when the governor was walking to his car so he could "ambush" him with a few questions.
Still, said Fry, "My kids don't understand this. They're asking me, 'Who is he? Should we switch on the security system?' "
Harper dismissed this: "I have five kids of my own. I love kids.
"This is nothing but an attempt to dismiss the fact that I was assaulted by his private police."
Video cameraThat altercation happened Tuesday, June 3, just as Harper and Hart Nibbrig had finished installing the new newspaper box in the public right-of-way near Fry's property. Several F&M security officers, alerted by an F&M employee at the mansion, roared up; Harper, then on the opposite side of Marietta Avenue, switched on his video camera and recorded part of the confrontation.
"Were you on that property?" one guard asks. Harper responds: "No — on the public sidewalk."
The officer is repeatedly heard telling Harper to shut off his video camera; Harper refuses. The video ends with Harper apparently being forced to the ground. "Do not touch me!" Harper yells just before the camera shuts off.
At a news conference to discuss the event Wednesday, Harper sported a large purple bruise on his right temple. F&M security, he said, body-slammed him to the ground, took his video camera, and confiscated Hart Nibbrig's camera, deleting pictures of the incident.
Fry said he was in Philadelphia that day, returning to his home just as the incident was taking place. He saw the flashing lights, and his first thought was that there might have been a traffic accident. So he approached — and saw Harper.
Fry said he walked away, opting to let security handle the situation.
Harper was handcuffed, arrested and put in an F&M holding cell for two hours. He was charged with summary defiant trespass and summary disorderly conduct.
"And the whole time I was sitting in that cell, my newspaper box was in the next room," Harper said.
Harper said he believes F&M security stole the box, though he can't prove it.
Asked if he thinks Fry ordered F&M security to rough him up, Harper responded: "Fry gave his people the notice that they were to 'get' me."
Hart Nibbrig was not charged.
Harper, 44, of Stevens, has long specialized in catching police behavior on video. In 2005, he was involved in an altercation with city police, who charged him with harassment, but soon withdrew the charge. On the tape of that incident, police are shown shoving Harper and threatening him with arrest.
Harper was also involved in a 2004 incident with Manheim Township police, after being removed from a township meeting when he charged that officials had violated the Sunshine Act. Harper also taped part of that incident; police threatened to charge Harper with violating wiretap laws. Police detained Harper, but never charged him; Harper later sought, and got, an apology.
Often, he knows better than police exactly what the law allows him to do; sometimes, that seems to anger the cops.
"My public safety people are protective of the house," acknowledged Fry. "And they were bothered because [Harper] had been on the property after being told not to — and all of a sudden, he's here."
Harper, however, said that at no time after receiving the defiant trespass warning did he set foot on F&M property.
He also thinks the warning itself was bogus: "That defiant trespass warning is not fair use," said Harper. "It's not to keep people away from asking difficult questions.
"Fry has never called me back, and I don't have to accept a media flack."
But Eshleman, the Penn State journalism professor, said that "no comment" often speaks as loud as a perfunctory quote.
Asked if F&M planned to pursue the charges against Harper, Fry said he will "let the lawyers handle that."
Len Brown, of Clymer & Musser, who is representing the Lancaster Post, said in an e-mail:
"The Lancaster Post wants to be able to freely distribute its paper in the public areas of the county just like every other paper does. If their right to do so is not impeded then legal action will not be necessary."
An investigation into the incident with F&M security is ongoing, Brown said. "Reporters should not have to live in fear of being harassed, roughed up and put in holding cells by the police," wrote Brown. "We have sent a litigation hold letter to attorneys for Franklin & Marshall demanding that they preserve all video, audio and other evidence of the encounter."
During the Wednesday press conference, Harper said he intended to seek a restraining order against F&M; but as of Friday afternoon, "Nothing has been filed and it's our hope nothing will need to be filed," said Brown.
Said Harper: "I was assaulted for putting up a constitutionally protected newspaper box. That's what this is about."
Fry said he realizes the box is constitutionally protected. Yes, he said, it is in the public right-of-way.
But it's also there, he believes, to taunt him.
"Why doesn't he just do this at the college?"
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817.
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