Was Representative Danny Davis Racially Profiled?

On Monday (Nov. 19th) Representative Danny Davis (D-Illinois, 7th District) was pulled over early in the morning. Davis claims that he was not speeding, he was not swerving, nor was he drunk. He says the reason he was pulled over is that he is black and had three black passengers in the car at 1 a.m. in the morning. The Congressman was driving three guests he had on his radio show, which he was supposedly working on until around midnight on Sunday. It was on his way from the station when he was pulled over on a street with no traffic for, as the Chicago Police Department says, driving left of center. Davis said that, after careful consideration of the incident, he came to the conclusion that he was pulled over due to his skin color. He said he tried to conceive of any other reason that the pair of cops (who were white, but it doesn't really matter because racial profiling comes from cops of all colors) would pull him over.

It appears as if it is a case of he-said he-said. Looking at the law that Davis is alleged to have broke, however, is a trip into obscure traffic law. The law, 625 ILCS 5/11-706, states that cars cannot drive left of center in numerous situations, with numerous exceptions (I'm not going to spell it out here, just click on the link and read it [if you can't read it on the website, copy and paste it into Word]). From Davis' story (the only one currently out there, plus all we have to go on), he violated no part of the statute. Davis does not strike me as the road-tearin' car-swervin' kind of gentleman from his video on CNN. As a quick sidenote - it appears that Tony Harris does not realize that Davis' beef with the traffic stop was not having the pay the $75, but the principle of the whole thing. He was stopped for nothing, he believes, and feels that his skin color contributed to the stop if it was not the only factor in it. Harris takes the "Oh, well, Mr. Congressman, you have to go through the same system everyone else does," which is not Davis' issue at all. He also implicitly accuses him of grandstanding and making a private matter public. The fact that Davis was pulled over early Monday and the story was not reported on - at least on CNN - until today says something about Davis not overreacting and flinging accusations he had not thought through. I was just kind of confused with Harris' sarcasm and hostile attitude toward the congressman.

OK, sorry for that little tangent. Back to the traffic law "violated." It seems very obscure and a law that is typically used in rural or highway situations, not urban settings. This case - at least on its face - seems to have some of the factors of a racial profiling stop. Namely, a black guy driving (add points for black passengers!) and an obscure traffic law. Remember when a Rhode Island State Trooper pulled over a van of Guatemalan nationals and dragged them to INS when they did the unthinkable: not use their turn signal on the highway? Though I only have anecdotal evidence for the following statement (damnit Baldus get on this!), it appears that traffic stops in which the underlying reason for the stop is the race of the driver and/or passengers are "based" on obscure laws that people break all the time and cops could care less about, like not signalling to change lanes on a highway or driving left of center in a city (note that these are also judgement calls on the part of the officer; something that cannot be backed up by a radar gun, etc.). I suppose that we will have to wait for either the Chicago Police Department to release to police report or for Rep. Davis to go to traffic court to see if the whole "left of center" business holds any water. Until then, given what little evidence there is on the table, I'm leaning towards the Illinois Congressman on this one.

Photo: Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL, 7th District) (en.wikipedia.org),

Daniel Talbot and Sean Sawyer Updates

Robert Iacoviello, Jr. (My Fox Boston)

Something Just Doesn't Add Up II
More information has come out of the ultra-secret case of Daniel Talbot - the Revere police officer who was killed while "socializing" behind Revere High at the end of September this year. There were various parts of the case that did not sit right with me (and a lot of other people from what I have read and heard.) Questions have remained unanswered: why were the officers hanging out behind Revere High at 1:30 in the morning? Why did they believe that their faces would arouse trouble at neighborhood bars? Why were search warrants sealed (which was later ruled as illegal)? What about the alleged confession? Who made it? My confidence in the prosecution's case waned even more as more pieces of information have been released as the case begins to enter the trial phase. It was revealed that a fourth police officer was at the scene - not just any officer, a sergeant. To make it even weirder, the other officers involved (Officers Soto and Bruzzese) in the incident have returned to work after being placed on administrative leave, but Sergeant Evan Franklin (the fourth officer) has not been allowed to return to work and remains on paid leave. What was Franklin's role in the whole incident? Good luck getting an answer. All we know is, according to the prosecutor, "When the shooting started, he left." When asked about why he was not back on duty like the others on the scene, Revere police spokesman Captain Michael Murphy said it was a departmental decision, adding "It's sort of an open-ended thing."

So what is the official story from the prosecutor? Apparently Derek Lodie was cutting through the Revere High area when he got into an argument with Talbot and his group. Words were exchanged, Lodie called up Robert Iacoviello Jr., a 20 year old from Revere, who came back to the park with Lodie and as Talbot and Soto approached Lodie, Iacoviello shot Talbot in the head. Soto shot back, missing both Lodie and Iacoviello, then went to tend to Talbot. What was their commanding officer, Sergeant Franklin, doing at this time? We do not know. Did the men identify themselves as cops? We don't know, but I'd imagine if they did the prosecution would try to hammer that point home. After killing Talbot, Iacoviello called up accomplices (who? the prosecution will not say), who helped him break up the gun and dump it in various storm drains. More questions: Why did the group get into an argument with Lodie? Why did they not identify themselves as cops? Why did they not call for uniformed, sober officers? Again, the prosecutor needs to explain these things, because the story he weaves seems to have holes in it, especially with so much information being withheld initially. Additionally, how much more do we not know about this case, given that Sergeant Franklin's presence was just recently released? I say turn this over to the feds so that no politics (or, at least, minimal politics) play into this.

Justice for the Tirado Family?

A memorial for Jayson Tirado (Free Republic)

Thanks to Xavier, the commenter on the Tirado post, for alerting me to new information regarding his friend's murder. It appears that Sean Sawyer was at a bar with an unnamed woman from the Queens DA's Office who says that all Sawyer drank was Coke - for 12 hours. Now, in my mind, it does not seem difficult to verify this story. Take a look at Sawyer's tab from the bar (if he paid with a credit card) or, if he paid with cash, talk to the bartender (who surely must remember Sawyer and this unidentified woman if they were there from the time Sawyer got off work [5 p.m.] to the time that Tirado was shot [7 a.m. the next day]). As far as X's assertion that Sawyer is "banging" the woman from the DA's office, the Post article that he linked to in his comment does not directly say that. It says that Sawyer argued with his wife before going to the bar with, as the Post puts it, his "lady friend." I will let you come to your own conclusions on that one. The Post article also points out that it is unclear how much time the pair spent together and when they split up. So we have a huge chunk of critical time before the incident happened during which Sawyer's whereabout and actions are unknown (don't forget the nearly 19 hours after the shooting when Sawyer pulled a disappearing act.)

The pressure on the NYPD has been mounting as of late, with shootings of unarmed black men occurring more frequently. The treatment of these officers after the shootings is also a bit prejudiced, with the cops always earning the benefit of the doubt (Sean Sawyer's case is the epitome of this). I have also read on various threads, etc. that this seems to be a New York phenomenon, with people suggesting that police are underpaid and undertrained. This may be true, especially considering that other police departments do not shoot the amount of unarmed dark-skinned people that the NYPD does (or, if they do, then it is not being reported on). Just look at the Sean Bell case and another case that is extremely similar with a white correctional officer up in Rhode Island. It would be interesting if someone (because I do not have the time right now) put together a data sheet of shootings of unarmed suspects in large metropolitan areas, broke it down by race, and then looked at it per capita to see if New York really does have a disproportionate amount of unarmed shootings of suspects, and if race plays a part in these incidents.

Giuliani's Got a New Friend

Almost immediately following the news of Bernard Kerik's numerous misdeeds (and Giuliani's indifference to them), Pat Robertson swoops in to save the day for everyone's favorite 9/11 piggy-backer. Robertson backed Giuliani, saying "To me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists. We need a leader with a bold vision who is not afraid to tackle the challenges ahead." If it may seem completely hypocritical of Pat Robertson - a staunch Christian conservative - to be backing Giuliani - a pro-abortion, pro-gay rights candidate who has proven himself to be an adulterer with multiple divorces - that's because it is. In fact, according to Pat Robertson's own logic from his own show, it is people like Giuliani who caused 9/11 (thanks to the commenter Elderta over at Gothamist for pointing this out). Two days after 9/11, Robertson had Jerry Falwell (you know, the man who exposed that purple teletubby for what it is - a gay teletubby who is pushing the gay agenda on our innocent little children! Now that's what I call tackling the real issues Mr. Falwell!) on his show "The 700 Club." Falwell had some more insightful discourse with Robertson on the show when he had this to say about 9/11 and the precursors to it: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'." To this, Pat Robertson replied, "Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government." So, it seems that Robertson thinks that it is the abortionists and the gays and lesbians who helped cause 9/11 to happen, yet he is now supporting a candidate who is pro-abortion and pro-gay rights. That makes Robertson's endorsement of Rudy hold little to no weight with me and hopefully anyone else with the sense to connect the dots.

Robertson's endorsement, while taking some of the heat away from Rudy's buddy Bernie, could not completely overshadow the matter. On November 9 Bernie was indicted in federal court for numerous felonies, including fraud, tax evasion, obstruction, applying a false loan application, and making false statements. But things may not be looking so down for Kerik, as he has a true friend in Giuliani. When asked if he would pardon Kerik if voted into office, Giuliani skirted around the question, saying it wasn't a fair inquiry. In another blow in Giuliani's attempt to free himself of Kerik talk, Judith Regan - the woman that Kerik brought to the apartment originially intended for 9/11 workers for some lovin' - is coming out and saying that she was asked to lie to federal investigators about Kerik by the honchos at HarperCollins Publishing LLC, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp which is the parent company of such balanced media outlets as the New York Post and Fox News. Regan also alleges that the orders were coming from higher than HarperCollins, insinuating that they were as high up as News Corp. itself. While Regan's comments should be taken with a grain of salt (this is, after all, a woman who did not mind that Kerik was married and had another lover while sleeping with him, but the fact that his wife was pregnant was what sent her over the edge and she also tried to publish OJ's book If I Did It), it does - whether her accusations are correct or not - bring Kerik back into the spotlight, which also brings Giuliani into a negative light. As far as her assertions that it was coming from as high as Murdoch over at News Corp., I am wary of this accusation given Murdoch's baffling support of Clinton in the past and for president. Whatever Regan's agenda (or Murdoch's, for that matter) none of this pans out well for Rudy. What else does not pan well for Rudy? The lack of an endorsement from the New York City chapter of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association with their president, Patrick Lynch, making it clear how the association felt regarding Giuliani's push for public office: "Giuliani has wrapped himself firmly in the cloak of 9/11 for his own political purposes. But the real heroes of 9/11, those who helped to evacuate those towers and lived to tell the tale and all those who participated in the recovery and cleanup, know the truth. Rudy Giuliani has no real credentials as a terrorism fighter. His only credentials lie in managing the cleanup after a terror attack. The New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association could never support Rudy Giuliani for any elected office." It seems that Rudy's popularity may be waning. Peace.

Photos [top to bottom] - Giuliani and Robertson at the latter's announcement of his endorsement of Rudy (Rudy Giuliani's flickr), Judith Regan (www.orbitcast.com), Bernard Kerik (www.politicalfriendster.com)

Giuliani Hopes for Kerik-esque Performance in the White House

Yesterday the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, claimed that, "if I have the same degree of success and failure [as has Bernard Kerik] as president of the United States, this country will be in great shape." Anyone with any knowledge of Kerik should be taken aback, as I was, at this statement. Kerik, the police commissioner of New York for a little over a year (August 21, 2000 to December 31, 2001), has had a rocky decade or two, to say the least. Giuliani, for one reason or another, is in love with this guy and this is seriously going to hurt his presidential campaign. Kerik has been proven to have been in cahoots with organized crime-connected construction company Interstate Industrial; a company that paid for $165,000 worth of renovations for his Bronx apartment. In return, Kerik lobbied hard for the company, but that lobbying proved futile when a Kerik friend, who he got hired at Interstate, was caught in a stock scandal with a mob soldier that Interstate had done business with (the whole mess is laid out nicely in this article). As a result, the company lost its $85 million in city contracts. Guess they could do business with the city that Giuliani was in charge of because they were not part of the five families?

Giuliani, of course, claims ignorance when it comes to Kerik's misdeeds. Giuliani has never really been one to listen to other people, as he ignored half of his cabinet when he appointed Kerik as police commissioner. Giuliani did not care that Kerik never graduated high school and that any position above a captain in the NYPD required a college degree. He did not care that Kerik was involved with Interstate (Giuliani claims not to have known this, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary). Kerik was his man. The two certainly are similar people. They both have overcome upbringings from rougher backgrounds with Kerik's mother having been a prostitute who abandoned her son and Giuliani's father a convicted felon who was hired muscle for the mob (though Giuliani's dad never abandoned the family, his predicate status made it hard to keep a job). But, they both were part of failed marriages and have cheated on their wives with women named Judith. Giuliani, quite infamously, with Judith Nathan (which, of course, was followed by his public announcement of separation from then-wife Donna Hanover before consulting her about it) and Kerik with Judith Regan in an apartment overlooking Ground Zero that was originally intended for those working the site.

Many, including Giuliani himself, point to Kerik's work as police commissioner and say that it outweighs his personal shortcomings (though I would hardly call abusing a public office a "personal" issue). Giuliani says that "There were mistakes made with Bernie Kerik, but what’s the ultimate result for the people of New York City? The ultimate result for the people of New York City was a 74 percent reduction in shootings, a 60 percent reduction in crime..." Kerik was Commissioner from August 2000 to December 2001. In 2000, the crime index was 288,368 (meaning there were 288,368 reported crimes in the year 2000). In 2001 the crime index was 263,764, not including the 3000+ homicides that occurred on 9/11. That is a drop in reported crime of 8.5%, a far cry from the 60% that Giuliani attributes to Kerik. Maybe Giuliani was referring to the whole period of the 90s and attributing it to Kerik, in which case I would be pretty pissed if I were Ray Kelly, William Bratton, or Howard Safir.

So, at the end of the day, Giuliani is not fit to be president of this country. The man just does not have the credentials to do it. Kerik may be to Giuliani what Chappaquiddick was to Ted Kennedy (that's a good SAT analogy for all you high school juniors), except that Giuliani had a poor approval rating as mayor of New York up until September 10, 2001. The fact that he is the Republican front runner is troubling. Either people are not doing their homework when it comes to these presidential elections, or people just do not care (personally, I do not know which is scarier). Maybe if Giuliani gets the Republican ticket he can have Kerik as his running mate. Peace.

Photos (top to bottom) - Rudy Giuliani (wikipedia.org), Bernard Kerik after an arrest in 2006 (wikipedia.org), Kerik and Giuliani; like two peas in a pod (www.jonesreport.com)

Fine Police Work in Shaolin

New York's finest are at it again. Less than a week after Sean Sawyer made people lose more confidence in the city's police force, Staten Island cops Thomas Elliassen and Richard Danese thought it would be appropriate to take a 14 year old boy who, being a teenager, was throwing eggs at cars on Halloween and leave him in a swamp. The boy, whose name I won't release due to his minor status, walked to a Burlington Coat Factory store and asked security to call his parents. The officers were stripped of their pieces and forced to do desk work. They were charged with simple misdemeanors (unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of a child) and the harshest penalty they could face is up to a year in jail. I would hit these cops with PL 135.20 (kidnapping in the second degree), which says a person is guilty of it when they abduct another person. It is fine if a cop restrains another person if he is breaking a law in order to take him down to the precinct to follow the course of the justice system, but to restrain someone in order to take them to a swamp to scare them is abduction. You cease to be a cop at this point. They should be charged with the crime they committed, which happens to be a B felony - considerably worse than the A misdemeanors they are being charged with now. Just for good measure, as the boy's lawyer Jason Levanthal states, they should also be charged with PL 195.00 (official misconduct), an A misdemeanor. I would also tack on PL 195.05 (obstructing governmental administration in the second degree) for their perversion of the administration of law.

The shitstorm does not stop with the abduction of the 14 year old boy. Apparently one of the cops had a rowdy MySpace page that quoted such classic film quotes as "Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta," and "Let's do lines off a stripper's ass!" As a public servant, why put these things on a public web page for the world to see? Not the brightest of ideas, because now the boy's lawyer is using them as more evidence that these cops were unfit to serve the public. It just goes to show, that unless you are completely competent at what you do and everyone knows that these comments would be a joke, don't put them on your webpage. I would even say don't put them on your webpage at all, because it is just opening up doors for people to attack you. I don't know if these guys actually do lines off strippers' asses or want to be gangstas, but the fact that it's on their webpage and they did the type of shit they did while on duty, you have to wonder. It also seems that , as the boy's father says that when he met with the commanding officer of the precinct, he said that the two cops who did this were "old school," and that they just wanted to teach the boy a lesson.

Obviously this problem has far reaching consequences for the whole NYPD. Cops like Elliassen and Danese make the whole force of over 37,000 cops look incompetent. Chalk them up with other clearly ill-fit cops like Sean Sawyer and you have a problem that needs to be resolved, namely by charging cops like civilians. A badge should not make you immune to the law. Unfortunately, various New York District Attorneys' Offices think that cops should be given leniency in the justice system. Now I'm not saying that the justice system is perfect, but I would rather go through it than have a police officer decide my punishment. Cops are here to keep order and make arrests for illegal conduct. The last thing we should do is give them the power to dole out punishments (something that some of the posters on Gothamist think would be a good idea, it seems). Leave cops to arrest people, a job that some of them (at least these two) seem to be only mediocre at, anyway. Peace.

Photos - Top: 120th Precinct Stationhouse (wallyg's flickr), Bottom: 120th Precinct's commander, Inspector Richard Bruno (www.nyc.gov)