Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Thirty Names Roberto: Does He Have Thirty Personalities Too?

Roberto Irizarry is a name that has become synonymous with the modern day internet troll, AND also a common example of what a person with an inflated self - image, a manic personality, and a possible internet addiction would look like. Roberto owns a small business in which he supplies emergency responder gear to those in the Public Safety profession.

For whatever reason, Roberto has had an obsession with RadioReference owner, Lindsay C. Blanton III, and an excessive need for attention just this side of abnormal. Recently, on December 08th 2010, Roberto started a thread at RadioReference in which the site itself and Lindsay C. Blanton III was blamed for the trend in Public Safety agencies across the country using encryption on their radio communications systems.

As anyone familiar with internet radio forums knows, any message board serving the radio communications community has a mix of personalities and TROLLS! We all know that forums sections allowing political talk, rants, and general topic discussion will eventually see threads that are just troll bait with the only aim and purpose of  getting the forum natives all excited, and annoying the hell out of forum administrators.

Roberto runs a business called "Mutual Aid Supplies", and apparently, according to a quote from RadioReference user K3HY, Roberto treats his customers to unprofessional behavior.

Here is a direct quote from Lindsay Blanton about Roberto's obsessive and unprofessional behavior:

"The community should know who com-21 is.

He is Roberto Irizarry, the Owner/Operator of an outfit called Mutual Aid Supplies

http://www.mutualaidsupplies.com/

He runs a bustling business through his site and ebay selling gear to public safety agencies, and I'm sure he's doing quite well.

However, as you see he has some pretty serious issues with the way that approaches many online communities in the public safety realm.

In our instance, he's registered quite a few usernames for the sole purpose of trolling our boards. They include

Com-4 (original username)
Com-1
easy123

and of course com-21. There might be more... We're not sure why he participates in this behavior, but it is pretty clear that there is some vendetta against RadioReference since his com-21 registration was for the sole purpose to start this thread.

A rant is a rant, but to join RR just to rant about RR is kind of strange to say the least." __________________
Lindsay C. Blanton III
President - RadioReference.com LLC
Facebook: RadioReference | Twitter: @RadioReference

Roberto has sent some pretty nasty letters to the Reference over the years.

According to Reference user "iamhere300", "Izzy" as he has become known in the thread, has even become a PITA over at firehouse.com with a rather spectacular rant about "P25 and Narrowbanding". Here is the complete quote from "iamhere300" directly from the thread:

"Izzy was on Firehouse.com - arguing about narrowbanding, and P25. He thought they were the same - to go narrowband you had to be P25.

Then he started arguing with one of the premier communications attornies in the US, Alan Tilles, about narrowbanding.

Then he said he ate lunch with the upper level brass of Orlando Fire Department, and sat in on the non-public interviews. A current member of the department then sent this,

QUOTE
Where do you get this ? First you post the cold hard facts About Orlando, none of which are true. Second you have sat in on OFD interviews ? I'm calling BS ! OFD interviews are not a public forum. Who have you had dinner with and shared the innerworkings of OFD with ?

Those of you who took the challenge of taking OFD's written / practical and passed congratulations. Hopefully you will be one of the firefighters hired to fill positions in the three new stations we have broke ground on recently.

Those who thought that MutualAidSupply knew anything about OFD and were misled by his "facts" sorry for believing the BS rantings of liar.

I work for OFD and have for the past 8 years. I came to OFD from a small department in south FL and have loved working here. The tradition and brotherhood here are second to none.

If you have any questions about OFD get the truth.


Stay safe
Rob

END QUOTE

Izzy is famous for being ... An idiot!"

On page four of this now famous thread, Roberto actually made a statement that cell phones could be monitored and Lindsay had this to say in return:

"Roberto,

First, there isn't a single service monitor available that can actually *monitor* a live GSM/CDMA cell phone call. GSM and CDMA service monitors are designed to test and emulate handsets and base station equipment - they cannot intercept live calls between subscriber units and base stations. Get your facts straight.

Second, you can spout all day about your credentials in the healthcare/public safety field, but the reality is you own a small business that supplies equipment to a limited number of public safety agencies. The public safety community has seen these types of inflated claims from you before:

From a quote from you on Firehouse.com:

Suggestions for getting hired with Orlando? - Page 2 - Firehouse Forums - Firefighting Discussion

End quoted section of response. Anyone interested can go here to see the complete context of this portion of the discussion.

Roberto's delusional rants don't hold water when examined against the following:

Letters From Public Safety Agencies


Restricted Info - RadioReference Wiki

RadioReference Blog: Explaining the Data Removal Policy Change on RadioReference.com

As anyone can see, Lindsay did the right thing when he handled business in the way he did. Anyone else with a head on their shoulders would have done the same thing.

A final quote at the end of this thread from Lindsay Blanton and the final action:

"This thread certainly delivered. We had the protagonist, a few antagonists, some sideline dwellers that criticized both parties, the level-headed "come on folks" and the end of thread racist remarks. Two thumbs up for an epic rant!"

com-21 is now "Completely Banned For The Greater Good" and it is being reasonably assumed that all of his usernames have also been banned. Excellent job Lindsay!

Lindsay Blanton was invited by Shortwave America to be interviewed about this whole experience with Roberto, but comment was not returned most likely because of the timing of this publication's request with the 2010 Christmas holiday. 

   

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

He also goes by the fake youtube account name "Chief041" to back up his trolling when he uses his "mutualaidsupplies" youtube account.