Category: pensacola police dept

I call Shenanigans (and Misfeasance)!

The Tymar Crawford case has been a glorified case of “shenanigans”. While this South Park reference is funny, the concept is not. Shenanigans, trickery, in legalese, is misfeasance. According to Wikipedia, “generally, a civil defendant will be liable for misfeasance (in public office) if the defendant owed a duty of care toward the plaintiff, the defendant breached that duty of care by improperly performing a legal act, and the improper performance resulted in harm to the plaintiff“. That misfeasance is on the part of the State Attorney Bill Eddins. He set up a kangaroo grand jury to take the burden off of his shoulders in publicly announcing that no one would be holding Daniel Siemen accountable, legally, criminally for his actions ie “breach of duty of care” or “breach of public trust” to establish there is “nothing (criminal) to see here”.

Eddins claims that the officer was operating  in the moment of the incidence and us looking at it in hindsight doesn’t do it justice. But what I see is a bad traffic stop ending in unnecessary lethal force. What I mean by that is the premise that they used to engage Crawford was not procedure, policy or legal probable cause for the stop, thus a bad stop cannot end with a good shoot.

 

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According to the 1st two pages of  the Grand Jury report, the PPD officers saw Crawford roll by and they recognized it was him driving. They remembered he had a history of narcotics, violence and weapons charges and that he possibly had a suspended driver’s license but that couldn’t be confirmed. So they claimed, they both smelled “fresh marijuana” as he drove by. This is laughable especially because of the change in laws regarding marijuana. There was no reason for the stop ergo there was no reason for anything that resulted beyond.

FDLE believed Siemen would be charged. How does Bill Eddins prevent that? He obfuscating the facts of the shoot. Nothing happens in a vacuum and judging the acts of a cop in midst of such a conflict isn’t fair, but judging the acts that escalated to this conflict can be judged and calculated. If every action ripples into history, the choice to pursue Crawford without a reason, becomes the central flawed premise in the theater of shit.

Once that threshold was crossed, the fate of it all can be predicted and a life was lost. Regardless of what you think of Crawford, if being black and having a record was not a reason to be stopped even adding in the possibility of suspended license and possible the smell of marijuana, neither of which could be known for a certainty prior to the stop, then you must concede he would still be alive had that choice to enter into such questionable actions by the officers.  The lack of thinking through the consequences of stopping someone they believed had a violent streak for such a bullshit charge would have been calculated since LEO’s are supposed to be trained on such things. The truth is this decision could have resulted in more innocent people being hurt in the escalation of events that such training should have considered, had any consideration had been done.

Fact is one bad choice down a wrong path ended with the death of a young black man. That bell cannot be unrung. God have mercy on Pensacola!

 

Evil Knows No Bounds

In previous posts, I have covered how Naomi Jones’s investigation was bungled; how the ECSO refused to do a missing person report when Gavin Clarke’s mom attempted to get help in her son’s disappearance; how so many children have been discarded because the ECSO failed to do their jobs. This story is more than that. When children go missing, there MUST be trust in law enforcement by the community. However, the distrust in this case is well earned by the ECSO.

The case I am speaking of is Jada McNeal aka Jadekiss McNeal. She went missing in December of 2015.  This case has been mishandled by the ECSO since day one. The original missing personsimage0000001 report was “lost” apparently by the agency without anyone as much as attempting to look into the disappearance. She was labeled a chronic runaway.

Three months later, when Jada’s grandmother contacted the ECSO, she was told no report was done in December, so she proceeded to file one right then. However, since Jada had been gone so long, the ECSO considered the case “cold” and used that as an excuse to do virtually nothing. Sometime soon after a lead came to the ECSO that the young girl was in a sex trafficking ring that ran from Louisiana to Las Vegas.4829175381491712.png

Until May of this year, nothing has transpired in this case, or so it appeared when the family did a press conference to refresh interest in the case. In typical Morgan fashion, Sir David held his own press conference lashing out at the family for doing such a thing. The investigator assigned to the case was promptly demoted for not making Sir David aware of the family’s press conference prior to it happening.

Skip ahead 2 months, I got a call from a colleague in the media who received a lead on Jada’s case. My colleague’s source claimed that a lead came to the ECSO about an inmate in Miami/Dade County jail  that had told investigators there that he had information on Jada being trafficked throughout the state of Florida and the last time he had seen her she was alive. The authorities in Miami contacted the ECSO and spoke to Mike Gilmore head of investigations. Gilmore told him the ECSO was not interested in sending anyone down to speak to this guy who had apparently been arrested in connection with sexual crimes. The authorities in Miami were shocked that the ECSO wasn’t interested in at least hearing what this man had to say. But that wasn’t the end of it. Mike Gilmore called Miami back later and made a request for the original statement this inmate made regarding Jada. Gilmore’s request for the “original” documentation concerned the authorities in Miami and they refused to send any original documentation to the ECSO. Chatter on LEOAffairs.com reflects this corroborating the story I was told

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I was stunned by this news. If I had a child missing and I found out even one lead–no matter how far fetched–wasn’t followed up on, I would have someone’s head on a pike. I proceeded pass along this information to a member of the ECSO admin who has attempted to convince myself and colleagues of his interest in correcting the problematic issues within the ECSO. I was apprehensive about this because anyone associated with this agency who either sees the issues of cutthroat behavior towards the employees not to mention the detrimental effect on the community this agency has built up or is there but unaware of these issues, wouldn’t typically get any benefit of the doubt from me. The list of casualties of this agency to the people within it and the community will take years to rehabilitate. I simply don’t know that it can be rehabilitated with the administration in place particularly Eric Haines and David Morgan.

Without any real options, I took a leap of faith and told this one person in a position of authority about the lead I got. He said he would look into it and keep me posted. In the meantime, my colleague I received the original tip from contacted me to tell me that her source clarified that the ECSO received this tip 2 years ago and failed to follow up. This tip sat–unfollowed–in a file for 2 years. I lost my mind. Statistically, the chances of finding this little girl alive are exponentially less every day; in the last two years, the lack of give a shit by the ECSO very likely cost this little girl’s life or depleted the chances of finding her to NIL.

The person at the ECSO I confided this tip in with the hopes of helping this little girl corroborated that this tip was indeed two years old and unfollowed up on. He refused to assign blame but promised to properly handle this lead ASAP. Since then, 3 trips to areas around the Southeast have been made running down this lead. A few names have been given and they are being run down–2 years too late–but possibly to some end.

My heart has been broken by this story. I was put into contact with members of the family via Cindy Martin, an advocate in the black community who contacted me about doing stories about crimes against people of color that have been inadequately handled and less sufficiently covered by any media. For example, James Beasley who contacted Pensacola PD about someone who was tried to kill him, only to be shot dead two hours after they refused to assist him. Or Devin Kennedy of Pensacola who was killed in Seminole, Alabama with neither the Pensacola PD, ESCO or the Baldwin County Sheriff’s office investigating the crime.

How is it possible in this day and age that these things can happen? The fact they almost exclusively happen to minorities adds a level of perception of rampant racism or indifference to those socio-economically below the threshold of most politicians level of sight.

Getting back to Jada, if anyone has any information on this little girl at anytime since December 2015, please contact Milton Search & Rescue’s Steve Williams. He seems to be the only one seriously investigating for this family.FullSizeRenderIMG_6222

National FBI Embarrassment Paralleled in Local Corruption

I’m not a rocket scientist nor am I a legal scholar, but I am educated; I can read plain English and comprehend the meaning of texts, with a good grasp on the concepts of law due to my own self education via legal professionals and criminologists. It does not take a person with a law degree to recognize the inequities of justice in a corrupt system.
Basic comparison of situations that are essentially the same and the extremely contradictory outcomes depending on status of the person affected within the community.

For almost 2 years, the politics at a national level have escalated (or sank, may be more apt) to a level never seen before. At the core of the issues is the FBI. The FBI is an agency that has been historically touted as the most elite law enforcement agency in the world. The work that agency has done is impressive and professional at times. The FBI set the standards for law enforcement agencies, as well as improving how law enforcement functions should be best achieved. Recently, that image was tarnished. A few bad apples spoiled the bunch.

The law enforcement failures (FBI) seen at the federal level should cause all of us to take pause. FBI, among other federal entities has oversight from Congress, the media and others, with a voice that resonates in the public–not just nationally, but globally. Still, the system failed, and bad people were able to do unprecedentedly bad things that the public has never been able to see before. Individuals that swore an oath to avoid personal bias while applying the law to and for the citizens who placed trust in their morality, and overall stewardship of the greater good and who are trusted to make decisions beyond the scope of their duty. These trusted, elite few made a personal choice on what was best for everyone and who should answer for law violations. These trusted, elite few are responsible for enforcing the law, based on an obligation to the public to decide on what they perceived should occur in the best interest of everyone.

This agency, the FBI, is not representative of law enforcement at all anymore. They take advantage of the access they have to the “big stick”, being abuse of their trusted power to ruin people by bearing false witness, misrepresentation of the facts and obfuscating the facts. No one would ever want to be on the wrong side of such a corrupt organization, nor would we wish it on our worst enemy.  It is unfair and impossible to combat unless there is unlimited flow of cash or political power to fight to fight such a thing. This is precisely what is taking place in Escambia County right now!

There have been stories/reports about Sir David and his misuse of money that was not his to spend, that only benefited him personally and politically. Sir David, knowing he is above the reach of Bill Eddins, ignored state laws and spent what he wanted. Sir David acted with reckless brazen thumbing his defiance because of his elected position or maybe because he was an employee for Eddins before their elevation to elected office. Regardless, he clearly acted as if he had no reason to worry about violating the law. His administration routinely conducts investigations that are questionable that target citizens and ECSO employees. Many situations should petrify people who could be in the crosshairs of political vendetta to wonder why Sir David is allowed be a criminal. He is aware that to be held accountable someone in the States Attorney’s Office would have be willing to be accountable AND willing to hold him accountable.

Time and again, Eddins has not even pretended he would fight any sort of political corruption. He routinely takes the side of an official, often without looking at evidence against such an official or having facts to support his position. It is impossible to trust Eddins when his conduct has been so questionable. Individuals have suffered long arduous trials that take thousands of dollars to present and even more to defend. An average citizen could never keep up with what can be spent by Eddins. Yet, this is where a citizen in this county is expected to turn when reporting an issue with an official. It could be argued that the message is, “as long as you don’t rock the boat, we won’t destroy you.”

State Attorney:Judge throws out case against Wild Greg’s owner

by Ly’Nita Carter

PENSACOLA, FLA. (WEAR-TV) — 

Aug, 16, 2018

The owner of Wild Greg’s Saloon in downtown Pensacola is acquitted Thursday, according to the State Attorney’s Office.

Greg Urban was arrested and charged in May with resisting an officer without violence, a report states.

The charges stem from an incident in February. Pensacola Police were conducting an investigation at the saloon.

According to a report, authorities claimed Urban resisted arrest or interfered with an officer performing his course of duties.

On Thursday, an Escambia County Judge ruled there was not enough evidence to move forward.

A recent case involving a local business owner is probably one of the best examples of what is being described. Greg Urban was arrested for resisting arrest without violence. The officer testifying stated that Urban had lied during an investigation that did not involve Urban as a suspect. The officer espoused the quote he claimed Urban said that prompted the arrest. Since there was a video of the dialogue, it was presented a video to the judge in court following the officer’s account account under oath. The video revealed Urban did not make the quote as stated by the officer. The defense attorney pointed this out and the officer continued to misquote what Urban had stated. Fortunately, the judge was paying attention and the case ended with a Judge Ordered Acquittal. This should be a gross embarrassment to the States Attorney Office and the Pensacola Police Department. They conspired to take a case to a jury trial that they should have known had no basis for even probable cause. Yet there will never be in public acknowledgement of such a gross mistake. These folks forced Urban to court and forced him to spend money for counsel and lose wages during the process. See the “big stick” mentality at work?

Citizens must force change for this behavior to end. Get these stories out into the public and support those already courageous enough to have their story out. This kind of irresponsible, corrupted behavior can only be stopped through exposing the corruption and put this improper behavior in the spotlight. No one can take these officials at their word. Question the issues that seem wrong. Make the officials in the office paid for by taxpayers be held accountable. Do not allow them to treat anyone as if they are irrelevant. Turning a blind eye to even one person being treated like Urban increases the odds that anyone could be the next target.

Don’t forget, taxpayers are the reason they have a job!