Archive for the ‘Austin’ Category

Update from the legal beat.

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

I’ve written before about VonTrey Clark, the APD officer who hired thugs to kill his pregnant mistress (Samantha Dean, a victim services coordinator with the Kyle Police Department) then fled to Indonesia when his plot unraveled.

He pled guilty yesterday.

Clark waived his right to a trial by jury with the understanding he was waiving the right to call witnesses. Clark then signed a document stating he confessed to the crime. The prosecutors read the document Clark signed, which stated Freddie Lee Smith killed Dean. The document stated that Smith’s gun misfired, Smith returned and fired the gun again and then the scene was staged to look like a drug deal gone bad.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, he’ll spend life in prison without parole and waives the right to appeal.

Kimberly Dean, Samantha’s mother, read an impact statement following Clark’s guilty plea on Monday. She spoke about how Samantha was a daddy’s girl, a hero and a gift from God. She said Samantha was smart, independent, loyal and a true and a fighter who had fought and beat cancer. She also spoke of her love for her granddaughter, Madeline Rose Dean.
“We are two less people because of you. I am the mother to Sam and grandma to Madeline. There isn’t enough paper to write down all my feelings. There are no apologies grand enough to minimize my disgust for your existence,” Kimberley said. “You have issued all of us a life sentence.”

DGU

Tuesday, November 19th, 2019

Two local defensive gun use stories that I want to note (without much comment) for reasons:

1. Uber Eats driver gets into a standoff. Noteworthy because the Statesman is highly specific about the guns:

Palomino then pointed a black, semi-automatic Glock handgun at the man, the court documents say.
The delivery man pulled out a Sig Sauer P238 handgun and pointed it at Palomino.

2. Running gun battle in South Austin Sunday night.

The incident happened in and outside of the Mustang Pawn Shop near the Stassney Lane intersection. A witness says that shortly before 7:00 p.m. several men, armed with assault rifles got the drop on an employee. Once inside they smashed a jewelry display and grabbed what they could. When they ran out, the store owner reportedly gave chase with a shotgun.
A shootout followed, which apparently smashed a window at a business across the street. The violent confrontation was justified according to a neighbor, who didn’t want to give his name but knows the store owner.

The store owner apparently disabled one vehicle the robbers were using, but they managed to get away in a second vehicle.

Some of those who spoke to FOX7 said they sought cover by falling to the floor. Others said they are frustrated by the growing crime problem.
“It’s an overflow of gang wars and little thugs that are running around that have access to all the guns, and how they do it is, they just kick the door in and take them,” said the neighbor.
The solution, according to the resident, is simple but potentially deadly.
“Start shooting back, all the people around here, are pretty much armed.”

Obit watch: August 20, 2019.

Tuesday, August 20th, 2019

NYT obit for Cedric Benson.

Statement from APD.

Notes from the legal blotter.

Tuesday, March 19th, 2019

Mildly interesting, though the Statesman is short on details (perhaps because law enforcement is not giving those out):

State officials cancelled liquor permits for Club Casino, 5500 South Congress Ave., and Zota’s Night Club, 4700 Burleson Road, on March 8., TABC officials said.

The bars were shut down “after a months-long investigation into human trafficking, narcotics and drink solicitation” involving both TABC and the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

More interesting: APD fired officers Donald Petraitis and Robert Pfaff yesterday.

Why? February of last year, the two officers arrested a man named Quentin Perkins:

Petraitis and Pfaff filed reports that said Perkins had tried to walk away from them and glanced back as if he were planning to run. However, video footage from the incident presented during the officers’ trial showed that Pfaff used a stun gun on Perkins despite Perkins being on his knees with his hands raised.
Parts of the officers’ reports are “simply not true,” Police Chief Brian Manley wrote in their disciplinary memos, which were released Monday.

Manley also accused Pfaff and Petraitis of coordinating a false story.
“I find it improbable that both officers came up with a similar version of events, which included things that did not happen … as well as not recalling what actually did happen. … I have serious concerns that Officer Pfaff and Petraitis got their stories straight before they spoke with (a supervisor) and prepared their reports and the probable cause affidavit,” he wrote.

The disciplinary memos also say a police academy supervisor told the Austin police internal affairs unit that the stun gun use under these circumstances was unreasonable.

Even more interesting: the two officers were charged criminally as a result of this incident…and were acquitted of all the charges. Which is an additional illustration of something they tell the students in our Citizen’s Police Academy classes: you can do everything within the bounds of the law…and still get fired for violating APD policy, if that’s the way the chief wants to go. (And if you actually violated policy. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell the Taser story.)

Edited to add: I was going to include a link to the chief’s memo, but the city of Austin has reorganized the website and made the disciplinary memos extremely hard to find. DuckDuckGo to the rescue, but: the most recent one posted is from January 10th.

Edited to add 2: How bad does a jail have to be before even the people who run it quit? This bad.

In addition to the carbon monoxide issue, Barnett cited exposed electrical wiring, mold, bad plumbing, and an instance where a snake fell on an inmate’s head.

City Council updates.

Monday, January 7th, 2019

The new council members get sworn in later today.

However, the city hasn’t updated the contact information yet. For example, the page for District 1 has Natasha Harper-Madison’s name on it, with “Biographical information coming soon”, but the email form still says “Send email to Ora Houston”.

Point being, I’m not ignoring that the contact information pages need to be updated: I’m just waiting on the city of Austin, and Travis County, and Congress, to get their acts together.

Things I have been neglecting.

Friday, December 21st, 2018

I really haven’t been doing a good job of keeping up with APD firings.

It isn’t that I’m in the tank for the police department now that I’m doing the Citizen’s Police Academy stuff: I don’t feel like I am, and updating you on firings and other disciplinary actions is a good way to show that the department takes these things seriously.

The problem is more that I’m busier now, both personally and professionally, than I have been in quite a while. I’m not complaining, but it does cut into my blogging time. Heck, as you can see, I’m having trouble even keeping up with obits.

But: when someone in a command rank at a major metropolitan police department gets fired, I kind of feel like I have to take note of this.

Here’s the story from the Statesman.

Here’s the official memo from the chief.

I’m not going into details here because the story has a lot of salacious elements: if that’s your bag, you’re welcome to read the less detailed Statesman article or the much much more detailed disciplinary memo.

The gentleman in question plans to appeal, and his legal representative accuses the chief of “inserting himself into the private life and figuratively the bed” of the officer. I can sort of maybe see that point: there’s a lot of stuff in the memo about whether his behavior, even if there was consent involved, is a violation of the law.

BUT: it seems pretty clear to me from the memo that the gentleman in question also tried to hide information (left his cell phone at another person’s house, deleted videos) knowing he was under investigation. That’s a huge violation of department policy, and (in my humble opinion) justifies a firing by itself.

Austin politics.

Thursday, December 13th, 2018

So the run off election for city council members is over.

Sabino “Pio” Renteria is going to retain his place in District 3.

Natasha Harper-Madison is the new District 1 council person.

Paige Ellis is the new District 8 council person.

As I’ve said previously, I will be updating the City Council contact page, but it will be after the new members take office and I can get their information: I think that will be early January.

Administrative note.

Wednesday, November 7th, 2018

I get a lot of hits on the contact information for Austin City Council members page.

Just so everyone knows, I will be updating that and the other contact pages, but not until after the new folks take office, which I think will be January.

As the flaming hyena turns.

Thursday, October 25th, 2018

Remember Dawnna Dukes? Remember what an enormous nothing-burger that whole thing turned out to be?

She’s suing the Statesman, Margaret Moore (the current Travis County DA) and Rosemary Lehmberg (the previous DA), “an investigator with the state auditor’s office”, and three former aides.

The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday by Dukes on her own behalf and without a lawyer, seeks $7.8 million for malicious prosecution and defamation.

The fact that she’s proceeding pro se with a defamation suit is not a good sign. But I Am Not A Lawyer: I’d ask Ken White for his take, but he’s pretty busy these days.

On the other hand, she’s probably proceeding without a lawyer because she’s broke:

The 12-term Austin Democrat said investigative stories by the Statesman, followed by corruption charges that were eventually dismissed, left her financially ruined — saddled with a $187,000 legal bill, deprived of consulting contracts and unable to find additional work.
As a result, her lawsuit said, Dukes’ credit cards were canceled, her car was repossessed and her home and East Austin commercial properties were foreclosed upon.
“The trauma due to financial hardships and loss of reputation aggravated (Dukes’) health issues and, to this day, there is still a lingering inconsolable grief caused by her substantial loss,” the lawsuit said.
Dukes also blamed her legal trouble for her defeat in the Democratic primary in March.

I’ll try to keep an eye on this one. Especially the discovery portion of it: that should be a lot of fun.

No stars, no bucks.

Wednesday, October 24th, 2018

In case you haven’t heard, customers who get water from the City of Austin are under a boil water notice. The water treatment plants are overwhelmed by the volume of silt and organic matter that’s being stirred up by the release of water from the dams, as a result of the continuing rain in the area.

At my office, the water fountains, water dispensers, and coffee makers are completely shut down. (Even though the fountains and dispensers have their own filtering systems.) I’m lucky: the MUD that services our house in Lakeway is not impacted by this, we don’t have to boil our water, and I can put coffee in my Yeti cup (thanks to my beloved and indulgent sister) before I leave in the morning and keep it hot until I finish it off.

But I digress. I tried going over to the Dunkin’ Doughnuts near my office yesterday to see if they could do one of those big coffee boxes for the office. They just laughed at me. (Hey, I figured these places had their own water filtration systems.)

I just called over to the Starbucks nearest our office to see what their status was. (Again: Starbucks brags about their water filtration system.)

Not only was that Starbucks not doing the big coffee boxes, they were not brewing coffee at all. The guy who answered the phone told me none of the Austin Starbucks (79 of them, I think he said) were brewing coffee: if I wanted coffee, I’d have to go to Cedar Park, Georgetown, or Round Rock.

What does a Starbucks do if they can’t make coffee? I guess you could boil water (or heat bottled water) and do tea from teabags. Maybe serve pastries?

One of my cow-orkers said earlier that they expect this to go on for another twelve days. I can’t find any news or official government source that’s reporting an expected duration for this boil water notice, though, so I’m taking that with a grain of salt.

I swear, you people are going to make a prepper out of me yet.

Short memo from the police beat.

Thursday, June 14th, 2018

After 18 months, countless hours of debate, and several public meetings (one of which interfered with the Austin Citizen’s Police Academy graduation, not that I’m BITTER or anything), the Austin Police Department finally has a non-interim chief…

Punch Rockgroin! Brian Manley.

As I’ve said before, he seems to me to be a good guy with a truly macho name and a good leader with local ties. We’ll have to see how his tenure plays out, but I am cautiously optimistic.

In other news, the felony perjury and misdemeanor official misconduct charges against Joel Abelove, the district attorney of Rensselaer County (in upstate New York) have been dropped.

I would have sworn I wrote about this at the time, but apparently I didn’t. It’s rare to see a sitting DA charged with a crime, and the backstory is interesting.

In April of 2016, a man named Edson Thevenin was stopped by police in Troy on “suspicion of drunk driving”. The stop escalated, there was a “brief chase”, and somewhere in there a police officer became pinned between his cruiser and Mr. Thevenin’s car: Mr. Thevenin was shot eight times and killed.

After the shooting, Mr. Abelove, a Republican, quickly convened a grand jury, something that the attorney general’s office believed was intentionally meant to ensure that the officer, Sgt. Randall French, did not get charged in the killing. Mr. Abelove had also conferred immunity on Sergeant French before the grand jury voted, Mr. Schneiderman’s office said, and was alleged to have lied to a separate grand jury about another immunity case.

I can see two ways of spinning this: former AG and known abuser Schneiderman was peeved that the state couldn’t go after a cop who was involved in a shooting, and tried to take it out on the DA instead. Or: Abelove was trying to manipulate the grand jury system and cover for a cop in a bad shooting.

Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat who resigned in disgrace last month after allegations that he had physically abused romantic partners, was empowered to investigate Mr. Abelove under a 2015 executive order from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The order allowed the state attorney general to serve as a special prosecutor for investigations into the deaths of “unarmed civilians caused by law enforcement officers.”
In the case of Mr. Thevenin, Mr. Cuomo issued a second executive order that allowed Mr. Schneiderman to specifically examine Mr. Abelove’s handling of the investigation, including “its grand jury presentation.”

What led to the decision to drop the charges?

Justice Jonathan D. Nichols questioned the scope of the authority included in the Thevenin executive order and ruled that the attorney general’s office “was without jurisdiction and hence unauthorized to appear in front of the grand jury,” in relation to the perjury charge.
“The court finds the integrity of the grand jury was impaired in this case,” Justice Nichols wrote. “And impaired to the extent that prejudice to the defendant is clearly possible.”

Smart people writing smart stuff.

Thursday, May 17th, 2018

This isn’t me being lazy, hand to God: this is me pointing out some things other people wrote that deserve wider attention.

1. There’s a good (and by “good”, I mean “reflects my biases”) op-end in the Statesman that’s a response to the complaints about the academy (previously discussed here):

While our police should be both guardians and warriors, they should eschew militarization, in which a preference for use of force is the answer to all problems. As guardians, our officers must be willing and able to use appropriate force as a warrior but understand it is not the preferred course of action.

Skill level is part of what determines the justification for force; therefore, highly skilled officers are desired. Officers should prefer de-escalation — an important part of their training — but also be capable of escalation, and not just to the final option of a firearm that less capable officers are limited to. Unfit or less capable officers are a liability to themselves and to the public. Weeding them out is properly done in the academy.

2. Pat Cadigan (who, as we all know, is two orders of magnitude smarter than I am) takes apart a misguided recommendation from the Macmillan Cancer Support folks: avoid using the “fighting” metaphor.

Macmillan, honey, it’s not the fighting metaphor that makes patients feel guilty about admitting fear and preventing them from planning properly for their death––it’s the fact that they have frickin’ terminal cancer––literally, not metaphorically!

3. South Texas Pistolero on two recent books about Pearl Harbor and Curtis LeMay.

Also, both Kimmel and Short knew they were woefully undergunned; they repeatedly begged for more weapons from Washington and were refused every time. And we haven’t even gotten into the monumental amount of intercepted communications between Japanese forces in the months leading up to the attack that were kept from them.

The Summers and Swan book looks interesting: I plan to keep an eye out for it. I have heard the Kimmel and Short theory before, though: when we rewatched “Tora! Tora! Tora!” recently, one of the themes that stood out for me was that Kimmel and Short got the shaft because of stupid decisions above them.

You know that an invasion of Japan would have brought about more of that if they had managed to somehow gain the upper hand. And even if they had not, they were all still going to fight to the death. It was going to be brutal either way. The bombings sucked, but in the end, I think it’s safe to say they saved lives on both sides.

See also: “Thank God For the Atom Bomb” by Paul Fussel.