ustxtxb_obs_1967_06_09_50_00025-00000_000.pdf

question of whether to send in a crew. ABC arrived the next day. That morning Sen. Bernal had scheduled a press conference in McAllen. Hearing about the Dimas incident, he went to the courthouse in Rio Grande City and talked with Dimas; but reporters were not permitted to be present. Afterward, asked how Dimas was, Bernal said, “Well, he’s as well as anyone who has been hit with a rifle on his head can be.” Bernal said Nye had asked for an F.B.I. investigation. Then Bernal held his press conference and left the Valley. McKEITHAN, FEARFUL that his clients’ injuries might be said later to have been made more serious after their release from jail, called Dr. Casso, an M.D. who runs the McAllen Poly-Clinic. Casso sees between 50 and 100 patients a day, many of them poor Mexican-Americans. His fees are reputed to be lower than many doctors’, and he is said to give away a lot of his services. He has been a leading figure in PASO, the militant, although lately moribund Political Association of Spanish-speaking Organizations. He has treated many of the Starr County strikers sent to him, and union people say he has not charged them. Dr. Casso told the Observer this about his examination of the three hurt strikers in the Starr County jail: “Benito Rodriguez first told me that Allee and two other Rangers tore the door down and that they came in swinging the shotguns by their butts. Rodriguez told me that he was knocked down at least twice, and ‘the second time I was senseless, staggering, I don’t know whether I was down again or not. Every time I was knocked down they hit me across the back and neck with the butts of the guns,’ and one of ’em rammed his shotgun barrel into his head he had his hand covering his head and tore his fingernail off, and there was a cut about an inch long in his little finger. He also had an area of skin completely torn off behind his left ear, with . . . swelling there; apparently this was done again with a rifle barrel.” Examining Moreno, Casso said Moreno told him he was standing outside the house when the Rangers went into it and that Allee “rammed his gun into his ribs.” Casso found “two concentric circles on the right chest about the level of the ninth rib. The ninth rib was quite tender.” Nothing was broken. Dimas, arrested inside with Rodriguez, told Casso “essentially the same thing” Rodriguez had, Casso said. “Dimas says that he was knocked down at least three times. When he got up the third time he was blind ‘in between knockdowns they came down on top of me with rifle butts up and down on top of me and my head.’ Dimas has numerous contusions, numerous bruises, all over his back. He had a blood clot about the size of an orange on his low-back. . . . That was definitely done with the butt of a rifle right across his back. No other way to do it. You can’t do that with a kick.” Nothing was broken. The muscle fibers were sore, and the swelling was quite visible, Casso said, continuing: “He has a laceration cut on his head behind his left ear that had been sutured with four stitches of black silk or cotton. . . . An infection had already set in” where this suturing had been done, and “Under this laceration was a huge swelling. “The most serious thing of all is the brain concussion that he has,” Casso said of Dimas, who was at the moment his patient in the McAllen Hospital. Casso explained that a concussion is a swelling of the brain after it has been jarred inside the cranial vault and that this can cause intense headaches, nausea, convulsions, and finally coma. Dimas had the headaches and nausea, Casso said; The man appeared as in a trance when I questioned him. Stupefied.” Casso added, “He was beaten out of his wits. Horrible. For somebody with a brain concussion to that extent to be in jail that doesn’t belong to this age at all.” Casso said he told Chief Deputy Raul Pena, “This man belongs in a hospital, not in a jail,” and that the Chief Deputy shrugged his shoulders, said nothing, and took the men back to their cells. Dr. Casso made angry statements to the press after having examined the men, and he was quoted. He says he was at his clinic when he and his secretary by chance picked up extensions of the phone at the same time and both heard an Anglo voice say, “Tell Dr. Casso he better stop squawkin’ about the Rangers,” and then the line went dead. He and his secretary, Dr. Casso says, have a specific idea who made this call; the voice reminded them of one they had heard on television. Casso also told the Observer that his wife received a call the night after the Dimas incident in which an Anglo voice asked, “Is that you, Ramiro?” repeatedly, and then hung up. Casso also said he had received a third call in which an Anglo voice said, “Ramiro, you’re a kike,” three times, and hung up. `What Force We Deemed Necessary’ ONLY ONE OTHER news medium, KRGV-TV of Harlingen, interviewed Allee that day about the Dimas matter. While the equipment was being set up at the Ringgold, Allee kind of growled that if “all the radicals” would keep on good behavior, they’d get through this all right. He started out his TV interview with a reference to “the better elements of the people of this country” and a statement that 98% of the people are glad the Rangers are in Starr County. Asked about the force used in the arrests the night before, Allee said, “We had to use what force we deemed necessary. This Dimas, we requested him to come out of the house. He failed to do so. They didn’t respond to our command,” and the Rangers didn’t know whether they had guns in their hands under the table. The TV interview was quickly over, as TV interviews usually are. Allee was disgruntled he’d not had time to show the two men’s police records. “That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with,” he said. “We had reports several months ago that he [Dimas] was going to get Jim Rochester. So we took it for granted that he was out there [at La Casita] for that purpose.” It was during this TV interview that Allee learned Casso had examined the hurt men. Allee asked who the doctor was; he would not comment on a report that the doctor had said Dimas might have a fractured skull. But he promptly left the Ringgold Hotel for the courthouse, and three of us reporters followed there. Allee went into a conference with the two Penas and Justice of the Peace Lopez in the sheriff’s office. When Lopez came out of that office, we were interviewing him in the lobby of the courthouse, but he motioned us to follow him to his courtroom in the basement, which we did. Lopez, asked if the men were still in jail, said, “As far as I know, yes.” What were the charges? Lopez read the charges, fully and at times rather slowly. Dimas was charged with rudely displaying a deadly weapon at the La Casita farm shed and also with disturbing the peace there by yelling “Viva la Huelga!” Both these complaints were signed by Jim Rochester. Lopez said he didn’t know whether Rochester signed them as a “special deputy” or a private citizen. Moreno and Chandler were joint ly charged with unlawfully concealing and giving aid to Dimas so that he might evade arrest, and Rodriguez was charged with assisting in the resisting of the arrest of another. These later complaints were signed by Allee. Dimas himself was not charged with resisting arrest, at least as of that time. Lopez said he had been called, and “I gave the order to go in the house” and make the arrests. He said one of the Penas and Allee were the only two he saw go into the house, but another officer may have. They were inside three or four minutes; the JP said he heard no cries. Dimas, emerging, “was bleeding” from “a small wound” on his head, and “Rodriguez had a small cut on one of his fingers.” Asked if he had any opinion in the matter, Lopez said, “Well, no, I don’t want to mention it.” Deputy Roberto Pena, encountered in the courthouse lobby, told us, when asked where the men were, that “One of our officers took ’em to Ramirez Hospital today,” about 15 minutes ago. Confirming that Casso had examined them in jail ear June 9, 1967 25