Rojo LOVES Caster Semenya wrote:
My goodness, the Brojos are just journalists who made a website!!!
Except that they were not journalist beforehand, and neither has a journalism degree. Just like the Marathons Investgators guy. He claims is a renowned forensics investigator. But, .... nope he is not, except in the minds of his fanboys.
surely, for sure wrote:
The original thread is the best proof that exactly that much attention was required. It went on for over 3 months and nearly 6000 posts and the key evidence didn't appear until the very end. If we left cheating investigations to the RDs, it would never get done. If investigations had to be private, no one would have any time for it. Derek looked into Frank months ago and didn't find any evidence. It took months of crowd-sourced work by dozens of substantive contributors to uncover a methodical, decade-long streak of marathon cheating that ended up targeting actual podium awards and records. This wasn't "jaywalking." It was a cold assault on the integrity of a sport a lot of us care about.
Really, go read the thread. All of it. You'll find a ton of stupid comments and some stupid suggestions, but no organized harassment. What you'll find is the detailed, back-and-forth investigative work that was necessary to uncover and document Franks's cheating. You'll even find some people complimenting Frank's community service and pointing out that he could legitimately be a pretty decent AG runner if he wasn't cheated. If you prevent threads like that, then cheaters will have nothing to fear.
Disagree, 100%
Check out the first google link on patient reviews:
https://www.vitals.com/doctors/Dr_Frank_Meza/reviewsStarting June 3, through June 27, 6 of the 8 total reviews on his professional site are re: the marathon 'fraud'
still a better love story than twilight wrote:
Starting June 3, through June 27, 6 of the 8 total reviews on his professional site are re: the marathon 'fraud'
The same people posted fake reviews on IMDB for Alexi Pappas' movie. The movie was in the low 7s for score--seemed about right. Then it was dragged down by a bunch of 1-point ratings to 5.6 (currently), and many of those 1-ratings have been removed but they keep the score dragged down. (329 comments with only 8 reviews at this time.)
One comment is "Please don't watch this film" which gave it score of 3. The comment author stated his "qualifications" to declare you should not watch the film with, "I just can't recommend watching this movie. I was a high school track runner on a state championship team."
And how does this relate to you pursuing your goals as a runner?
one question remains wrote:
I guess the only question remaining is.........who wins the HOKAs?
What...is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Learn proper grammar and spelling before you jump.
There is no place for validating cheating and sweeping it under the rug to protect their feelings. Don't become unethical if you cannot bear the consequences of your actions. Look at people who commit fraud, then follow it up with suicidal acts in the corporate world.
responding here since the other thread is locked to registered users
erik wrote:
I did not read the entire original thread. Just a few pages and saw a mix of anonymous internet comments of varying quality and some worthwhile investigatory posts.
That said, this is what I wrote to other LRC staff:
A 70 year old guy with a very comfortable life and prestigious job who jumps through that many hoops to cheat for no financial reward must have some issues that explain both his cheating and his death. I do think his death (suicide presumably) is a reminder that there are real people on the other side of the internet, and this isn’t all some game. On the other hand, if being exposed is enough to push him to suicide, there’s something deeper than marathon cheating going on. I don’t think it’s reasonable to blame critical posts on a message board or the investigation into his performances for his death.
Exposing these cheats is not some evil thing, in general.
I’ve run faster than 2:53 one time. I now have two jobs and two kids and a slowly aging, heavier body. I'm trying to run that fast again with the little time I have. I manage 50 mpw and am enjoying it. A run like 2:53 by a 70 year old is an inspiring feat to keep in mind. On the other hand, we all deserve to know if that achievement is a hoax.
As for trolls and bad faith posts, we can always introspect on our moderating, but I do not think vitriol toward a cheater justifies locking a thread.
Most people aren't putting all the blame on the thread, but accurately citing it as a catalyst seems to have lead pretty directly to a death. Again, 'lead to' is not to mean 'blamed for.'
I believe there can be causation w/o blame, and a multitude of shade in between. I do believe there is some blame on LRC for this though, and it's troubling that their main concern in the aftermath of this death has been to try to shirk that responsibility.
But it's now very clear what some posts on this site to happen to real life. To proceed forward on a path that has already likely lead to one death and will likely lead to more as if nothing happened is callous and maliciously negligent at best.
posting here since i knw you read this one too wrote:
Most people aren't putting all the blame on the thread, but accurately citing it as a catalyst seems to have lead pretty directly to a death. Again, 'lead to' is not to mean 'blamed for.'
Cyberbulling laws say otherwise.
This is not a challenge to the OP. I’m just going to leave this here because I’ll be damned if I’m going to register to take part in this site other than to say this, and then I’m out:
First off, I can’t stand cheats of any kind, especially those who flaunt their bogus accomplishments and become mentors to kids. I can’t stand cheats who reap the rewards of said bogus accomplishments at the expense of those who played by the rules and posted legitimate times. I can’t — and won’t — defend Frank Meza. He gets no sympathy from me. None whatsoever.
That said, it was conclusively proven both here and on MI that Meza cheated at LA, and suspicions were adequately backed up by his performances in a few other races. The evidence was submitted to the LA RDs and justice was served. It may have taken longer than it should have, but in the end you all got what you wanted. That’s where ALL of this should have ended. Threads should have been locked or deleted after the DQ news broke, and Murphy should have stamped “paid in full” on this one and moved on.
More than a thousand (I lost count) stalkerish, obsessive, and unmoderated pile-ons served no purpose in probing — and ultimately proving — Meza’s culpability. MI’s efforts to go back to 2014 (thanks in part to LRC) to once again confirm an established fact also served no purpose. MI published the DQ story on 7/1, followed by the “Meza on a Bike” update on 7/4. Why? You did not need to keep going out of your way to find other instances of cheating once he was caught, whether he admitted to it or not. You did not need to speculate about his ethics outside of running, his life outside of running, or mock him.
Many of Murphy’s subjects vehemently deny the evidence or go to radio silence when confronted, and the matter goes into a holding pattern. Not this time, for some reason. To repeat: Meza got DQ’d from LA, a story that went national — a stain that most likely would have finished his running career had he not gone in the river. It makes no difference what happened in 2014, 2013, 1973, or however far back you were willing to go. One instance of confirmed cheating is enough.
Isn’t it obvious by now? Once a cheat, most likely always a cheat. Search-and-destroy missions are unnecessary — the hard-core cheats eventually do an excellent job of ruining their own reputations and maybe their lives all by themselves, although not often (I hope) in the manner of Meza.
To deny and defend this site’s and MI’s outright hounding of Meza is beyond the pale. While LRC and MI cannot be held directly responsible for Meza’s apparent suicide — we can never know the true motivation behind such an act — you both sure as hell didn’t help matters any, and on some level I hope you realize that. When I saw the story on my Google homepage this morning, my thoughts immediately turned to LRC and MI. Why was that? And to be honest, I’m not surprised at all by what’s happened.
Do the right thing now and finally lock — if not purge — the Meza thread, if you haven’t already. And, while I know this is an absolutely laughable request, please examine your own consciences and scruples in how you run this site going forward, as others have urged. I know if I had taken any part in this vigilantism, that’s what I’d be doing.
(Go ahead now and tell me to flake off, which I will — gladly. After years of lurking, I know how things work here.)
not a suicide wrote:
And all those purer-than-thou cheater-haters keep claiming it was suicide. Face down in water. Did not drown. Did not fall from above. Maybe he was running in the river bed and his heart gave out. But the Cypress Park area where the river passes is not a place you would run--there is a bike trail for that called the "Los Angeles River Greenway Trail". If you were running in that river bed you would get arrested ... it is a haven for illicit actives of all types; homeless people live on the side opposite the bike trail. The water that is there is not water flowing from upstream springs or watersheds. it is nasty smelling, and slimy, runoff--what runs down your gutter and then disappears into the storm drains.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Cypress_Park%2C_Los_Angeles-_LA_River_Bike_Path_Entrance.jpg/220px-Cypress_Park%2C_Los_Angeles-_LA_River_Bike_Path_Entrance.jpg
The location undoubtedly had signifance for Meza as his childhood playground:
http://insearchofaztlan.com/meza.htmlThe location was under the Riverside Drive Bridge, which includes the LA River Trail bike path. According to LAFD, it was responding to reports of a "possible jumper" (
https://www.lafd.org/alert/jumper-07042019-inc0425) and one news item reported that several bikers on the bridge's bike path showed LAFD the location of the body. Unclear whether a jumping was witnessed or assumed; based on the information currently available online, it cannot be ruled out that Meza was running in the river bed as he likely did as a child and succumbed to a medical event. The coroner will determine the cause of death, whether blunt force injury or something else.
we did not cause his suicide he did hes the one that cheated and never took responsibility and took the cowards way out
stop guilt tripping us wrote:
we did not cause his suicide he did hes the one that cheated and never took responsibility and took the cowards way out
lol...'stop guilt tripping us' ?
This is a 100 or so posts responding to a 5,000 post guilt trip thread that ended up causing a man to take his life.
Simply seeing a body in that riverbed does not mean jumper. There is a very good running trail along the river on the eastern side. Along the other side you'll homeless encampments, and along both sides a lot of graffiti. The river bed in the area was concrete, but some parts of the bottom have been removed to let the bottom be more river like. Running along the bottom is just not a good idea. Why?
We only know he did not drown. That is really it.
The posters trying to cover their behinds claiming it was an obvious suicide, and now that he obviously jumped, are fools. They don't know what really happened, but the decide what is true and then try hard to hammer their view into a fake reality. If those same suicide finger pointers were some of the mass posters on the Meza thread then I call their sleuthing skills into question—such poor quality work on their part. (I did not visit that thread after the first two pages. I was a thread not worth wasting any time with. )
lol...too perfect wrote:
stop guilt tripping us wrote:
we did not cause his suicide he did hes the one that cheated and never took responsibility and took the cowards way out
lol...'stop guilt tripping us' ?
This is a 100 or so posts responding to a 5,000 post guilt trip thread that ended up causing a man to take his life.
+1
They are working incredibly hard to sell the suicide-story to cover they guilt.
Smart. wrote:
Giving out personal information (address, employer, race entries) and encouraging (indirectly is the same a direct) other vigilantes to use that information to set things "right". Claims of someone involved in child porn, and other law breaking (jaywalking, parking tickets) are what makes this site and the ridiculous people post this nonsense entire guilty.
Actually, the jaywalking and parking ticket comment, which was mine, was part of an appeal to others to recognize that a shortcoming in one are (like committing one of those offenses) doesn’t justify attacking a person in their entirety (by appealing for him to lose his medical license or job).
Do better.
Body Evidence wrote:
Simply seeing a body in that riverbed does not mean jumper. There is a very good running trail along the river on the eastern side. Along the other side you'll homeless encampments, and along both sides a lot of graffiti. The river bed in the area was concrete, but some parts of the bottom have been removed to let the bottom be more river like. Running along the bottom is just not a good idea. Why?
We only know he did not drown. That is really it.
The posters trying to cover their behinds claiming it was an obvious suicide, and now that he obviously jumped, are fools. They don't know what really happened, but the decide what is true and then try hard to hammer their view into a fake reality. If those same suicide finger pointers were some of the mass posters on the Meza thread then I call their sleuthing skills into question—such poor quality work on their part. (I did not visit that thread after the first two pages. I was a thread not worth wasting any time with. )
The LA Times has reported that the police were in the area responding to reports of a jumper on the bridge.
This LA Times story says LAPD responded to call about a jumper at the bridge.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-frank-meza-marathon-runner-cheating-dies-20190705-story.html
updated wrote:
Body Evidence wrote:
Simply seeing a body in that riverbed does not mean jumper. There is a very good running trail along the river on the eastern side. Along the other side you'll homeless encampments, and along both sides a lot of graffiti. The river bed in the area was concrete, but some parts of the bottom have been removed to let the bottom be more river like. Running along the bottom is just not a good idea. Why?
We only know he did not drown. That is really it.
The posters trying to cover their behinds claiming it was an obvious suicide, and now that he obviously jumped, are fools. They don't know what really happened, but the decide what is true and then try hard to hammer their view into a fake reality. If those same suicide finger pointers were some of the mass posters on the Meza thread then I call their sleuthing skills into question—such poor quality work on their part. (I did not visit that thread after the first two pages. I was a thread not worth wasting any time with. )
The LA Times has reported that the police were in the area responding to reports of a jumper on the bridge.
An assumed jumper by people who saw the body after the fact. No one saw any jump.
Geez.
Part Time Runner wrote:
This LA Times story says LAPD responded to call about a jumper at the bridge.
Why did you leave out the word assumed jumper from the story? Does not fit a narrative?
So, if the autopsy shows his death was due to a fall/jump from a bridge will you think he had a heart attack? Or will you shout out fake news?
