But we can make burrito jokes. TJIC, call your office, please.
The popularity of this Chipolte among the NYPD might – just might – have something to do with the 50% discount they give to uniformed officers. Of course, accepting this discount violates NYPD policy, or so the department says. However, offering the discount does not violate Chipolte’s policy, according to a spokesman for the chain.
Joe Wolfe has either resigned or been fired from the Fullerton, CA police department. Former Officer Wolfe was involved in the (warning!) Kelly Thomas beating death (as always, graphic image warning at that link), but has not yet been charged with a crime.
Add Compton to the bankruptcy watch. With a $42 million deficit, I doubt even a tax on rap groups with platinum records will help.
…the city has consistently fallen behind on payments to vendors, including its sheriff’s contract.
Remember when Compton was talking about reopening the Compton PD and spent $1 million on “equipment” before giving up? Good times, good times.
I’ve avoided blogging this next story because I felt like there was a limit to what my readers (many thanks to both of you) would put up with. Surprisingly to me, though, these banana republican updates have been among the most popular recent posts on my blog. You put up something thoughtful and original, and it gets ignored, but people seem to love California political corruption.
Anyway, there’s an ongoing case involving the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and accusations of bribes and kickbacks. The Coliseum is nearly broke, and USC is in talks to take it over.
A bunch of people have been indicted in the case. Former “general manager” Patrick Lynch has already pled to conflict of interest charges and agreed to repay $385,000 he got from a man named Tony Estrada.
Estrada is a former contractor with the Coliseum, and has been charged with “embezzlement and conspiracy”. Estrada is also a fugitive from justice.
Today’s LAT has an interview with the fugitive Mr. Estrada.
Tony Estrada, rocking the ski mask.
No joke. Mr. Estrada claims to be “somewhere in South America”; the interviews that make up the story were conducted by telephone and over Skype. (It is unclear to me how the LAT verified that the man in the mask was actually Estrada.)
And:
This just in: our old friend Cudahy City Councilman Osvaldo Conde (of the bimbo and the badge) has agreed to plead guilty to extortion and bribery. Actually, make that former city councilman: Conde resigned yesterday.
Conde is the last of the three indicted city officials (the others being former Mayor David Silva and former code enforcement head Angel Perales) to take a plea in the case.
The LAT would like for you to know that the United States is not fielding teams in all the Olympic sports. Notable exceptions: soccer (the US team was eliminated), men’s field hockey, and team handball.
Interesting aspects:
The WP would like for you to consider what happens to athletes who don’t make the team. Do they defer their dreams until 2016? (Not if you’re a baseball or softball player; those sports ain’t coming back in 2016.) Do you go pro on the woman’s boxing circuit?
No snark here: I think this story is awesome for several reasons.
Chuy’s is planning a stock offering. I like Chuy’s Mexican restaurants; they’re the most tolerable TexMex I’ve found in Austin so far, if you can deal with the crowd. But there is something I’m curious about:
Are all the restaurants Chuy’s? A long time ago, the Chuy’s holding company ran the Romeo’s on Barton Springs, but they spun that off (and the restaurant closed several years later). I believe Chuy’s still runs the Hula Hut on Lake Austin, but I can’t find any proof of that. I’m thinking the Chuy’s holding company also runs a couple of other non-Chuy’s, but I can’t find a complete list of their holdings online.
Balko and Reason, among others, have been all over the painkiller issue. The government repeatedly and consistently has attempted to make criminals out of doctors who legitimately prescribe high doses of painkillers for patients suffering from intractable pain. Not just that; the government has stomped on the First Amendment by going after patient advocacy organizations, and has even threatened to shut down pharmacies for filling prescriptions.
As a Libertarian, I come down on the Balko/Reason side. Actually, I think if people want to take painkillers, they should be available OTC without a prescription; heck, let’s have the autonomous Glock/heroin/Oxycodone vending robots now!
But this s–t ain’t helping:
On the other hand:
How in the frack did this man even have a license to practice?
Cutting to the chase, Mr. Rausa and his friends were cited by the NYPD for drinking in public. Mr. Rausa and his friends dispute the application of the law, as they were on their own stoop behind a locked gate when cited. Mr. Rausa plans to contest his citation in court.
It seems that both the law itself, and the application of it by the NYPD, is ambiguous:
Ah, if only there were a simple solution for this…
Fullerton PD officer Manuel Ramos is no longer with the department as of July 3rd.
Former officer Ramos faces murder and manslaughter charges in the beating death of Kelly Thomas. (Graphic image at that link.) The department did not state whether officer Ramos was fired or resigned. Ramos and officer Jay Cicinelli (also charged in the Thomas death) have been on “unpaid leave” since October.
In other news, the LA County Sheriff’s Department was apparently in the habit of passing out “official looking” badges to “civilians with no law enforcement duties”, like local politicians.
Now they’ve decided they’re going to take back about 200 of those badges.
Why are the badges being recalled? Well, they’ve been a source of concern since the attorney general issued an opinion in 2007, stating that the badges “created the potential for civilians to falsely pose as law enforcement officers”. The department swears that the badge recall is prompted by that opinion, and has nothing to do with the arrests of the Cudahy council members.
And why would anyone think this had anything to do with the Cudahy council members?
That’s why. That photo was taken in a nightclub in Cudahy. The badge she’s wearing is one of the badges in question; specifically, indicted Councilman Osvaldo Conde’s badge.
It looks like San Bernardino is the next city up on the bankruptcy watch.
And retiring police chiefs are making out like bandits when they cash in their unused sick leave and vacation time:
More:
(The LAT notes that the El Monte PD had 110 officers, for a city of 113,000, and that El Monte’s credit rating has been downgraded to “junk bond”.)
And more:
I picked the wrong profession. I should have become a police chief in California.
Edited to add: Here’s a shocker that either I missed, or that wasn’t in the original LAT story about San Bernardino:
If the city attorney’s assertions are true, I would expect criminal indictments somewhere down the line.
…let us turn our eyes to the West, and the state of California. It’s like a whole other country! Specifically, like a third world banana republic.
On Tuesday, the mayor of Cudahy, David M. Silva, resigned.
I’m intrigued by the idea that the FBI was using a marijuana dispensary owner as an informant, given the tensions between California and the Feds over medical pot. But there’s more to the story:
There’s a complimentary story in the LAT that goes into more detail about the alleged election fraud. Two men who ran for city council seats had their cars vandalized, rocks and bricks thrown at their homes, and then…
By the way, remember Maywood? The Maywood PD also patrolled Cudahy. A former Maywood PD chief is quoted in the article as having concerns about Cudahy’s elections and the “aura of intimidation”. (As far as I can tell, that chief came in at the very end of the police department’s existence, and did not have anything to do with the circumstances that led to the department being shut down.) The “towing company” involvement is interesting as well; as you may recall, there were some questionable things going on in Maywood with a towing company as well.
More:
Tough town, if the code enforcement folks need to carry guns.
Related: “What you have just said is among the most absurd things I have ever heard.”
There’s a town in Montgomery County, near Houston, called Patton Village. I have it in my head that Patton Village was one of the notorious Texas speedtraps up until a few years back, when The Ledge basically shut all of those down. (Edited to add: I hate using Wikipedia as a source, but it does seem to confirm my recollection with externally sourced links.)
Anyway, Patton Village is apparently trying to disband the city police department. I say “apparently” and “trying” because the mayor tried to hold a city council meeting yesterday. The meeting was posted at 8 PM on Tuesday.
This is a problem. You see, the Texas Open Meetings Act requires 72 hours notice for such meetings. (There is a “public emergency” exemption, but I gather the mayor did not declare such. And while I am not a lawyer or expert on the Open Records Act, I feel confident in declaring that the law strictly defines what constitutes a “public emergency”. Russian Chinese North Korean troops in the streets? Probably. Disbanding the police department? Probably not.)
Anyway, the mayor and two council members showed up for the meeting, but one of the council members walked out after declaring the meeting illegal. Shortly after that, the mayor apparently came out and told the police officers that she was shutting down the department and calling in the county sheriff. Shortly after that, when the media showed up, the mayor said there “were not enough there for the meeting and refused any other comment.”
But wait! The story gets better!
The mayor, two other city officials, and four police officers are under indictment!
(The others indicted are the city secretary, two court clerks, and the four police officers, who are named in the HouChron story.)
But wait! It gets even better! Why were these folks indicted?
Somehow I missed this story when they were indicted. I must have been distracted by shiny objects.
Really, isn’t that just about the most stupid example of municipal corruption you’ve ever heard of? Using cop cars as loan collateral? And what about the banks? Don’t banks inspect the collateral before accepting it? I mean, I could see these folks claiming that they were personal vehicles, but I’d at least expect the bank to want to look at the title. (And I would assume the title would be in the name of “City of Patton Village”, not “Pamala Munoz” or one of the others charged.)
Plus, you know, if I’m a bank officer, and I go out to look at the collateral being offered, and I see it has a light bar and sirens and a shotgun rack and a BIG FREAKING SEAL on the side saying “Patton Village Police Department”, I’m going to be asking some questions. Just saying. Perhaps I overestimate the intelligence of the average banker.
By the way, the HouChron story is largely (but not entirely) based on reporting by the Montgomery County Police Reporter, who the HouChron credits, and who I do want to provide a link to as well.
This is an odd story.
Charles Anthony Malouff used to be a cop; he worked for both the Bosque County sheriff’s office and the Bertram Police Department. In 2007, he was convicted of “unlawful transfer of a firearm” and got three years probation.
It is not clear to me if he resigned or was fired, but in either case he stopped being a police officer.
Malouff and Mary Jo Woodall have been indicted on various fraud charges; the two are accused of trying to fraudulently obtain federal stimulus funds for a wind farm near Jonestown.
Back in October, search warrants were served at Malouff and Woodall’s homes. In the process, two gun safes were found at Woodall’s home. Woodall said they belonged to Malouff. The safes were opened, and…
According to the Statesman, the “destructive devices” were registered to the two agencies Malouff worked for. Malouff has pled guilty to the weapons charges; the plea agreement specifies a 2 1/2 year sentence, subject to judicial approval. The Statesman article raises a whole host of questions:
I have not been able to give a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about the whole Drake/Chris Brown/Tony Parker kerfluffle. (If you are unaware of this, consider yourself lucky.) But there’s an interesting aspect to the story in today’s NYT.
W.i.P (the club where the fight broke out) and Greenhouse (another club) share both the building and a liquor license. Greenhouse has what the NYT characterizes as “a history of violence and other problems”. So…
Yep, that’s right. You go into a club, the club captures your ID, keeps it on file for 30 days, and gives it to the cops if they ask for it.
I’ve written previously about the Patricia Cook case (the woman who was shot by a cop in Culpepper, VA: the cop is now charged with murder). Reason has an interesting article about how the community used Facebook to draw attention to the case: the Facebook campaign led to increased press coverage and the discovery of a new witness. One thing that leaps out at me:
“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” indeed.
And do you remember Deputy James Mee of the LA County Sheriff’s Department? You might: he arrested Mel Gibson. Apparently, Mee later sued the department, claiming his superiors had tried to pressure him into removing Gibson’s anti-Semetic remarks from his report. Deputy Mee settled the suit for $50,000….
…and now the department is planning to fire him.
Mee’s lawyer claims that the department is also peeved because Mee testifed for one of his colleagues at a disciplinary hearing. The gentlemen in question was accused of drunk driving, Mee testifed as an expert on DWI, and…
I don’t know what to make of this. My reading of the LAT account is that the LACSO is looking to get rid of a meddlesome deputy, but I concede that account is pretty one-sided. It would be interesting to see LACSO’s side of the story, but they probably can’t discuss it.
I was eight years old in 1973.
I have vague memories of hearing about the Wounded Knee standoff on the network news, but not much more than that.
What does this have to do with the price of beer in Whiteclay?
Glad you asked.
The NYT cites several odd deaths: a man found with “stab wounds to his face and neck” was ruled to have committed suicide. A woman who was found with a stab wound in her burnt home was ruled to have died of “carbon monoxide poisoning, acute alcoholism ‘and other factors'”. Another man was killed with a hatchet, but the killer was never prosecuted “because of impairment caused by a mental condition”.
Here’s another good one:
Cast your mind back, way back, to those halcyon days of June, 2011. Remember those times?
Disco was the rage. People were discovering that you could get food out of trailers. And in Liberty County, police were digging up someone’s house based on the claims of a self-proclaimed “psychic” that there were 30 or more bodies buried on the property.
Really. I’m not making this stuff up.
Why this flashback to the era of Herman Cain and Casey Anthony?
As we often say at WCD, “Quel fromage!”
Two stories by way of Lawrence:
This odd one about a scientist who works for the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas trying to stop approval of a $20 million dollar grant to Rice University and M.D. Anderson. Lawrence sent it to me and asked if I could make heads or tails out of it; I think I can, but it seems to me to be one of those HouChron stories that’s like a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
I’m not sure if this has been on FARK yet, but since Lawrence sent it to me, I’m linking to it anyway as part of the “Art, damn it! Art!” watch: a 200-foot-long knitted rabbit on the side of an Italian mountain.
The NYT has a story I find kind of odd about the NYPD Accident Investigations Squad. Basically, the AIS investigates traffic accidents: “But they do so only in cases of death or when a victim is deemed likely to die.”
The problem, according to the NYT, is that AIS sometimes doesn’t investigate accidents where the victim is not immediately dead; if the person dies days later, evidence may be “lost”.
I have two problems with this, both related to the incident the NYT cites:
Edited to add: It occurs to me that some folks might be as confused as I was by the NYT references to the Highway Patrol and the NYPD. The state of New York does have a state police agency, the New York State Police (whose website is currently broken, it seems). There is also a group within the NYPD called the Highway Patrol “primarily responsible for patrolling and maintaining traffic safety on limited-access highways within New York City.” So it isn’t a statewide police agency in the Broderick Crawford sense, but a confusingly named NYPD division. Got it.
Sorry, folks. I’m getting a slow start today; I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. (Nothing serious, just the 7,500 mile oil and filter change/lube/check the fluid levels.)
How about that successful recall election yesterday? No, not that one. It seems that the good people of Fullerton, California, voted overwhelmingly to throw out three city council members. What makes this interesting is that the recall started as a reaction to the council’s perceived indifference to the beating death of Kelly Thomas. (Warning: that last link contains a graphic and disturbing image.)
This is the first time I can recall that voter anger over police misconduct has become that much of a hot button issue. Let us hope it is not the last time.
I will probably wait until tomorrow to post a roundup of Bradbury obits.
The Austin Public Safety Commission passed, on a 5-0 vote, a resolution recommending that the Austin City Council provide funding and set up a process for review of “cold” cases outside of APD. (One member abstained from voting.)
This raises some questions:
1. Who is the “Austin Public Safety Commission”? Are they the people who do the gun buybacks?
Answer: No, the gun buybacks are the “Greater Austin Crime Commission”. The “Austin Public Safety Commission” is a city organization that serves as an “advisory body to the city council on all budgetary and policy matters concerning public safety”.
2. What “cold” cases are they looking to have re-examined?
If you said “the yogurt shop murders” to start with, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.
3. Why do they want an external review of these cases? Do they not trust the APD? If so, isn’t that a problem that should be addressed?
Interesting question. Kim Rossmo is the vice chairman of the commission.
4. Is this a good idea?
I’m not sure I can judge this. Having a fresh pair of eyes to look at complicated stuff always seems like a good idea. But the case is 20 years old now; how many people have looked at it? Not just within APD, but outside of the department? Is there really a lot of evidence for Rossmo’s theory of “groupthink”? On the other hand, did the APD really push a weak case because they were looking to close a red ball?
I’m inclined to think that the case probably can’t be solved at this point, and I’m not sure how much good another set of eyes would actually do. Color me both skeptical and happy if I’m proven wrong.