Category: common sense

The Famous Chicken Video Distraction

I wasn’t going to dignify this video with a response but I reconsidered. It is important to speak out when it is necessary and this video reverberates the lack of respect this man has for his constituents. This was an overblown social media story that was essentially a misunderstanding but instead of correcting the misperception, Sir David decided to mock and even arrest a constituent because this misunderstanding.

Without further adieu, the Famous Chicken Video….

The fact he is the citizen thought they heard a gunshot and it was simultaneously when the deputy rolled by with his window open. If you perhaps heard, then exactly what happened might be ambiguous. That being said the deputy didn’t stop to say check on the animal or attempt to locate the owner as he would have probably done had it been a conventional pet. The fact he didn’t stop added to the misunderstanding of what happened. Had he stopped, he could have cleared the situation up immediately. But instead, he drove away knowing that there were witnesses. The owner was subsequently arrested for filing a false police report because he stated the officer shot the chicken.

Morgan is effectively mocking his constituents and looks like an ass in doing so. This situation was unfortunate but it was preventable with clarification and by not belittling the situation or people involved. It shows how low Morgan is for assuming he is any better than anyone, particularly when this same deputy was allowed to resign last week after being caught in a prostitution sting involving him providing illegal drugs for sex.

Now view the moral high ground the Sheriff is taking. He sounds like a jackass for talking down to citizens and building the moral high ground for this deputy because he obviously above shooting a chicken, right?

Ridiculous and sad that the Escambia County Sheriff even says you should be glad he and his office have a “modicum of character and integrity” for NOT ARRESTING A DEPUTY WHO COMMITTED MULTIPLE FELONIES, BUT DID NOT SHOT A CHICKEN.

Ronald Clark Ball

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Mr. Ball’s incarceration marks the point of no return in the crusade to de-throne corruption in Escambia County. Mr. Ball, being an author, a man of prestige & a globally renown lecturer in the understanding of the cyber threat as it relates to National Security, has become the latest name to the list of victims of abuse of power throughout the Escambia County government. Mr. Ball is not the typical victim, because he is not of a lesser demographic; he’s not a minority, nor a socio-economic nobody that is usually the profile of people marginalized by the Escambia corruption machine. People like Pat Gonzalez, or Michelle Clarke are denigrated by the “honorable” elite of the county due to their backgrounds or prior bad acts. People like Philip Nix, Bill Chavers, Gene Valentino, Anita Hemphill, Laura Montoya or the honorable other citizens who are outspoken in the abuses of the county,  are said to be suffering from a technical term by Sheriff Morgan known as “sour grapes”.  They have been wronged by the county and are labeled as trying to retaliate for their dismissals. That may have basis, if the list of people, who are suffering– allegedly — from “sour grape syndrome” didn’t hit double digits with the exact same complaints, including slander, defamation, civil rights violations, & discrimination.

No Mr. Ball does not suffer from any of the labels previously used by the GOB to discount people. He cannot be seen as I am by Sheriff Morgan, as a lone nut, who spews lies, “a political terrorist”. Mr. Ball has been silenced for a long time but that silence is broken. He cannot be dismissed as the rest of have.

Mr. Ball drafted a pro se motion to dismiss in June that is skillfully written and could be used by any of the above victims against varying agents of the Escambia corruption machine.  While his assertions may sound outlandish, I say to you that the actions against him are just that outlandish and bringing them to light is the right thing to do.

As I have said many times, the abuses of Escambia GOB are vast enough to be in violation of RICO (Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organization Law). This entails 2 or more felonies committed to further an ongoing criminal enterprise. The justice system in Escambia County is, itself, the criminal enterprise. The felonies are embezzlement, perjury, fraud and the list goes on and on.  Morgan arrests people, Eddins & his minions as well as various judiciary perpetuate the wrongful arrest through the court system to the tune of illegal seizures, defamation, and political gain.  The real violation is of the honest services clause.  According to 2017 Fall edition of  American Criminal Law Review, in an article by Alexander Sanyshyn, the honest services criteria is thus:

 Elements of the Honest-Services Doctrine

To be convicted under § 1346, an individual must (i) defraud the victim of honest services (ii) by accepting a bribe or kickback. n446

Defraud of Honest Services

Generally, a scheme to defraud of honest services takes place in a fiduciary or employer-employee relationship. n447 Such a fiduciary relationship is often present when one manages money for another’s benefit. n448 It may also be present when a voluntary trade association n449 or charitable and nonprofit organization is involved. n450 The employer-employee relationships that may give rise to an honest-services claim range from a shareholder-management relationship n451 to a government employee-private citizen relationship. n452 However, the duties owed by a public official and a private individual differ. n453

 [*1725]  The fraud need not be directly accomplished by the defendant–the defendant need only to have caused fraud to be committed. n454 However, the defendant must be aware of, or participate in, the fraud committed by the third party. n455

 

This lays out the basis for many public corruption cases. The use of public power for private gain is the biggest risk associated with people in power.  The various prongs of corruption, quid pro quo corruption, undue influence in inequality corruption, misuse and abuse of power are all used to further the criminal enterprise that operates as the criminal justice & legal system in Escambia County. There is no justice to had in the system in Pensacola. No one is above the law and while that hasn’t been apparent to most people except those churned out by the system in my hometown, Mr. Ball’s case added to the 7 people in the Billings Case, specifically prove a pattern of behavior that spans over many years & many cases. The totality of injustice is astronomical in Escambia County.

Ron Clark Ball is going to the catalyst case that shines a light on the stuff Willie Junior was killed covering up. Get your popcorn, kids. The show is beginning.

I told Morgan that when he saw me coming, that hell was coming with me. He should be feeling the heat, because I am at his door.

 

 

Cognitive Dissonance & Fiscal Illiteracy

I know, I know—Big Words.  Cognitive dissonance is confusion resulting from dichotomous & opposing views about one principle.  Sir David is the personification of cognitive dissonance.  His latest publicly embarrassing rant is about deputy pay raises. Morgan fumes to WEAR:

“It’s nonnegotiable,” Sheriff Morgan exclaimed. “We’ll settle this in front of Governor Scott. We’re not going to negotiate this. This is nonsense, I’m done. I have a board of county commissioners unfortunately that appears to believe that they’re smarter than we are…..It’s OK for an officer to catch a bullet from a thug, but county commission won’t give them a pay raise.”

While these statements have a great deal of truth to them, the BOCC is smarter than any and all the admin at the ECSO & the officers that retired in 2009 had more longevity with greater performance based success that reflect in the crime numbers.  They also had higher standards to pass on a day to day basis. According to sources at the academy, as many as 65% don’t pass the full curriculum.  Of that remaining 35%, a high percentage  (what is estimated to be half) of them find their first couple of months in FTO, proves to them  that a place in this agency is not for them. Now that could be because the people being recruited come from PCC (sounds like a punchline but it is, unfortunately, true) or because the standards have been so low to populate approximately 2.5 times the number of classes churning through the academy than any other point in the last 15 years.

To get back to the cognitive dissonance of Morgan’s latest tantrum on the news lies in the fact that while he accuses the BOCC of letting his deputies “take a bullet for a thug” rather than get a raise, he fails to disclose the increase in the budget at the beginning of this year that he BLEW on hiring an “UnderSheriff” to soak up funds to populate 1 job position for 2 of his followers, Chip Simmons & Eric Haines. Two salaries for 1 job that has been parceled out to 2 people. A colossal waste of funds.  Not to mention the money, he gave Andy Hobbs, David Ingram and Amber Southard that makes every raise in the ECSO look like chump change; his fiscal illiteracy provides the cognitive dissonance we see today.  Yet his strategy is to bitch about and shame the BOCC members when he, not them, wasted approximately $200K in these horrible decisions to stack the top of his agency rather than put the money towards the rebuilding of the agency he single-handedly dismantled by forcing out 62 deputies last year.

Now let’s talk about that number, 62. Of those 62 who left the agency last year, at least a third have entered into civil suits for discrimination, civil rights violations and sexual harassment against Morgan personally and professionally. That is a skyrocketing number of suits against any ONE Sheriff. Another meritorious distinction this non LEO sheriff claims.

To simplify this for some of the current admin at the ECSO and the Honorable Sheriff, you can’t bitch about how the BOCC regards your deputies’ pocket book when you already stole from them too. That is cognitive dissonance–berating someone for something they shouldn’t do when you did it as well but don’t think you should be berated or judged. Hypocritical is another term in this case that would apply.  The money in the budget he gave to Chip Simmons, Amber Southard, David Ingram & Andy Hobbs. They got the money that deputies deserved. Morgan mismanaged that money by rewarding his favorites in a grandiose fashion, leaving the rest in the cold.

That brings us to the fiscal illiteracy. The fiscal illiteracy refers to his failing to manage the agency in the way it should be, despite the fact the Honorable Sheriff claims he can. I don’t know, maybe Webster University’s graduate level business classes,  37+ years ago, didn’t prepare Morgan to actually use numbers as high as the Honorable Sheriff has to work with today. Maybe there are too many big numbers for him to understand in one budget. I don’t know.

Let’s look at the over all money issues historically Morgan has had:

*in the military, he allegedly was skimming government money via credit cards, resulting in his early retirement

*the mishandling of the budget regarding the jail that resulted in him losing the oversight of that jail

*the employee that embezzled $150K from the LET fund for years without anyone knowing and his CFO keeping his job even though he facilitated larceny

*the citizens’ complaints on how LET money is spent resulting in an investigation by the State Attorney.

There is a pattern of misappropriation.  It seems very clear to those of us who pay attention.

The conclusion, based on the past history of this Honorable Sheriff leads to the reasonable assessment that, either he is criminally responsible for misappropriation of taxpayer funds as well as mismanaging criminal justice principles and personnel necessary for a LEO agency in the 21st century,

OR

He has been given too much responsibility for his capability.  He cannot seem to handle doing the duties of his post, which is to maintain law and order while sustaining the county’s fiscal well being and safety.

You decide.

I almost forgot to give a shout out to Gerry Champagne for trolling and liking my FB page for Florida Open Gov. Initiative.

CORRECTION:

I mistakenly said that 65% failed the academy. That is incorrect. The cadets go through the academy fine; it is 65% failing out of FTO or discovering this job is not for them.  My Bad.

How Morgan & the PNJ Will Be Downfall of the Billings Convictions

Criminal Justice expert Dr. Edward J. Bronson recently analyzed the pre-trial publicity in the Billings Murder case. It was a fascinating look at just the local newspaper coverage. The reason he was called to look at this has to do with the fact that it has become an inarguable fact that press coverage prior to trial impacts jury verdicts. There have been 44 empirical studies with 5500+ people by dozens of social scientists over the last three decades.

The biggest shocker of Dr. Bronson’s analysis was that the Billings Murder case–overall–is the 27th highest publicized case EVER. This case rivals OJ, the Lindbergh baby, Bundy, Zodiac, Son of Sam and Jon Benet Ramsey just for starters. The average high publicity case has around 100 articles written about the case, pretrial. The PNJ & InWeekly did 250 articles on this case. Each of these articles were biased against the defendants, particularly Pat Gonzalez Jr. Not one of these articles were by anyone close to Gonzalez Jr or who advocated his character in any way, despite his contributions to the community, although the Sertoma club “Man of the Year” award was mentioned in passing as was high martial arts career. Not one of these articles offers any other theory of the crime or any leads outside the narrative the Sheriff concocted.

The Michigan Supreme Court ruled to delay a trial by 9 mos because of 1 news comment by an attorney on a Sunday morning at 6 AM. The judge determined the attorney had the potential to have tainted the jury pool with this one appearance. In comparison, Sheriff Morgan held press conferences up to twice a day locally; he spoke on Dateline NBC, Nancy Grace, Oprah Winfrey and Larry King to name a few. He said things like, “extremely gruesome scene”, “hateful, senseless crime” “bad seed” (speaking of Gonzalez Jr.), “stupid thugs” and referred to the Billings as “very good Christian people”.  Adding on to the fact, Morgan greeted the Grand Jury panelists prior to the indictments of Gonzalez Sr and Jr. He shook each person’s hand and said things like, “I’ve done my job; now it’s time for you to do yours”. This seems like a directive from the highest law enforcement officer in the community.

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The PNJ articles were extremely damaging as they are the only point of printed news in the area. 174 times the death penalty was mentioned in relation to this crime—prior to any trial commencing.  This is extremely damning because the implication is that these people deserve death, before the facts of the case or the defenses were laid out.

Dr. Bronson noted that he had never seen more inflammatory comments within the PNJ by the reporters and in letters to the editor prior to trial. There was no possible way a reasonable person could consider that an unbiased jury could be had in this community. Judge Geeker doesn’t think this is an issue but ultimately this will go to the US Supreme Court, who has no ties to Escambia County corruption.

As for the media circus that propelled Morgan’s career and ultimately kept him in office, here’s the take away: David Morgan whored himself out to every news outlet possible. He was the source of most people’s knowledge of this case. As the community and world has seen with every instance in Morgan’s tenure where he smiles pretty for the camera, he seldom is the most accurate point of information. He stretches the truth and even lies to make himself seem important. Why would it be any different with this case? Good news for all the defendants, because if Pat Gonzalez gets a new trial, the flood gates of motions and lawsuits will dominate what was the old news of this case….with Morgan as the punchline.

not a sheriff

Dr. Edward Bronson Expert Testimony exhibit2-expert test.

Why Not Having a Law Enforcement Officer as Sheriff Hurts Escambia County

Speaking to the skills Morgan brought to the ECSO, this is an example of a case from an actual court deposition of Chris Baggett.  I have cut and pasted the relevant portions and as to not disclose any true case information:

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The problems in this case are huge in terms of conviction. The fact that no one person was acting as a lead investigator by delegating exactly the job he is asking for help with and by FOLLOWING UP to make sure nothing but his directions are followed leaves room for the defendant’s counsel to attack the provenance and evidence, the accuracy of said evidence and even the intentions of the
investigators to try to circumvent the law.

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Working for Judge Mapother a lifetime ago, there was one rule that anyone could get fired for and that was lack of documenting a case. If there is no documentation, it did not happen. Or at least, you cannot prove it happened. In criminal cases, if statements are not taken on the record or recorded in some form, they cannot be proven in court. That is what we have here.

 

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Why is any of this important?  Well this is important because in looking at the statistics of cases of the Circuit Criminal Court in Escambia County, the number of cases that are sent to the State Attorney that end up being dismissed for one reason or another—like improper evidence or insufficiency,–both of these are typically problems that initiated prior to the State Attorney receiving the case–shows that the State Attorney is more likely to dismiss and plea bargain a case than to fully prosecute it.  Here are the statistics:

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Nearly 20% of defendants had their cases dismissed or acquitted.  72% took a plea.  Both are results of the state being unwilling to take their evidence in front of a judge and jury. 92% of cases are not being fully prosecuted since 2009. One has to wonder how many of these cases were screwed up by either poor police work or malicious arrests that Sir David seems to love.   Just a note for the people awaiting a trial in the deputy sexual assault case, there is historically slim to no chance of this ever getting before the jury…ie no real chance for justice to any responsible level.

They Were Meant to Get Caught

In looking at the elements of this “well-planned” home invasion from Patrick’s perspective would any of us do the the following things:

1. Use a mentally unstable, chemically dependent father as any part of the crime. A man that will crack under pressure and who has been willingly absent the majority of his son’s life. Highly suggestible and paranoid, he believes everyone is “after him”.

2. Use a pieced together 1979, 1982, & 1986 Dodge van without brakes or reverse, as a good “getaway” vehicle.

3.  Commit a crime with knowledge of surveillance cameras that are not deactivated.

4.  Tell a number of people about the crime prior to committing it, knowing that gossip spreads like wildfire in Pensacola/Gulf Breeze

5. Use 4 people out of 8 that were strangers  whose trustworthiness had NOT been established nor were they close friends. Gary Sumner knew Pat for 3 weeks. He introduced him to Donnie Stallworth, Rakeem Florence & Frederick Thornton. Not knowing these guys from Adam, give them guns, tell them secrets and expect the kids to be able keep from cracking.

6. Allowing a known addict, Wayne Coldiron, be involved. He is a strung-out addict. Coldiron tells everyone Patrick did this and he was with him. Right off the bat. Just a bit too easy.

7. Putting as many people as possible in a house at one time. The chaos and the number of people exponentially increases the chances of leaving evidence behind as well as having someone crack.

8. Shooting 2 people that could have been easily incapacitated without a weapon. As someone who has been trained from childhood to defend themselves with their body, who trained people to fight back against any size attacker, going in solo to “take care” of the adults would have been the way to go and then bring others in after or as needed. This would lessen the liability to the one person we can all trust above all others–ourselves.

The vehicle and 6 unpredictable people entering into this plot would be absurdly ridiculous for a well thought out plan. Unless the plan was to have the people entering the house get caught….

This is the worst devised plan ever! Especially for Patrick. He was arrogant and a big talker, but he is intelligent. When you lay this all out, who would be dumb enough to go into this? The one person he trusts–Pam Long Wiggins–is just as screwed as he is. Her hubby, Hugh blames everything on the 2 of them.