We Will Not Forget What We Witnessed: Elizabeth Faye Arnold and William Harold Arnold (Part 3-B)

-by-Angela V. Woodhull, Ph.D. © AV Woodhull, 2011

In Part “A” of Elizabeth Faye Arnold, I ended the factual story by posing a question: “What would a person be charged with for running a red light and hitting someone on a motorcycle who later dies?”

I have now called a few police departments and posed this as a hypothetical question to them. “It depends on the circumstances” was the
typical answer. “It could be anything from negligence to manslaughter.”

“Would the typical investigation by traffic homicide investigator be closed out completely within four hours?”
“Oh, no, ma’am” a Miami front desk officer stated. “To complete such an investigation would take at least a couple of months.”

*************************

On the surface, this factual story, so far, appears to be nothing more than an “unfortunate situation.” It’s early on a Sunday morning. William Harold

Arnold is off on his motorcycle, probably on his way to his church where he plays the piano. He’s sitting on his motorcycle at a large intersection in Orlando and when the light turns green, he takes off, when suddenly, from out of nowhere, a woman in a Mustang hits him broadside. The motorcycle skids to a dirt area on the side of the road. Tina Holland, allegedly remorseful, apologizes to the police officer for being distracted from eating a doughnut. The officer closes out the investigation within four hours. No further investigation is ever conducted. Holland is issued a ticket for “running a red light” and given a court date.

*************************

A careful look at the file, however, reveals some curious information.

It turns out that William Harold Arnold, a 53-year-old spinster who has been living with Mama his entire life, is well hated by his neighbors. There are several police reports where he has called law enforcement on the neighbors, and they, in turn, have filed reports on him. This has been an ongoing battle for many years. One report states that the neighbor children were trespassing onto his property. Another report states that the neighbor children were spraying a chemical on his car. The officer notes that the kids were allegedly spraying only water onto his car.

There appears to be another file of an emergency guardianship proceeding commenced several years ago on Elizabeth Faye Arnold. Elizabeth, it turns out, has gone to the hospital emergency room on several occasions for swollen legs and feet—poor circulation.

While at the hospital, Rebecca Fierle steps in and becomes the emergency temporary guardian. She then places Mrs. Arnold in a nursing home.

The son, however—enraged-- somehow is able to bail Mom out of these emergency temporary guardianships and bring her back home. The emergency temporary guardianships expire. This back and forth scenario goes on for a number of years, about three years.

************************
A background check on Tina Holland reveals that Holland has actually been in jail on several occasions for DUI, possession of crack cocaine, and
prostitution. On the morning when she hits William Harold Arnold, however, she is merely eating a doughnut.

A background on her work history reveals that she used to own a dumpster business with her ex-husband—the type of business that professional guardian Rebecca Fierle would hire when she needs to clean out a house.

The records further show that Tina Holland’s court date was changed on several occasions over the next two years, with the officer always being the one who requests a change of the date.

When the hearing finally comes about, no one is present at the hearing except for the officer. The judge asks if the man hit on the motorcycle is all right and alive. The office responds to the judge that yes, indeed, William Harold Arnold is well and alive.
The judge therefore, based on the officer’s testimony, institutes a $400
fine on Tina Holland for running the red light, and also mandates that she attend traffic school.

The paperwork in the file shows that William Harold Arnold—who was actually deceased—was served a subpoena of notice of the traffic hearing.

The subpoena was, however, returned to the court, undelivered—the process server noting that the house appears to be vacant and that there is a “For Sale” sign on the residence.

A further investigation into the file shows that Rebecca Fierle entered a
death certificate into the record on the date that the accident occurred.

That death certificate is then voided out and a new death certificate was created for another date—approximately two months later—when William Harold Arnold actually dies. Furthermore, the court records show that Fierle placed William Harold Arnold on Medicaid, even though she sold his home for $190,000.00. Fierle then was appointed as personal representative and there are outstanding medical bills that come forward as claims against William Harold Arnold’s estate. However, Fierle’s attorney states that the claims are too old, were not timely filed, and therefore don’t have to be paid. Fierle places the “Notice to Creditors” in an obscure little newspaper rather than the Orlando Sentinel.
****************************
We visit Elizabeth Faye Arnold in person. She is alert and appears to be
as mentally competent as a person can be. She has been tucked away in a marginal nursing home for quite some time now and she, too, has been trying to figure out just exactly what happened to her. “They came with an ambulance to my home the day that my son was hit on his motorcycle—even though I had not called for an ambulance.” Elizabeth, removed from her home by ambulance, was rushed to the hospital and then placed in the nursing home, where she has remained ever since.

She removes the blanket that is covering her feet. “Look at my feet,” she says. Her feet are so red and so swollen that there are stretch marks on them. “I’ve met Rebecca Fierle,” she states, “and she does nothing for me and does not give me any answers. I’ve looked out the window and I see her nice Mercedes that she drives. Can you get me out of here? Can you find out what has happened to my possessions, my furniture, my photographs? I don’t have even one picture of my son.”

“Would you be guardian? I want you to be my guardian,” she whispers to me, squeezing my hand.

************************

After much searching, I finally track down the only two witnesses who were allegedly at the accident scene when Tina Holland was eating her doughnut. The one witness just happens to be a city council member and his wife is the secretary for the state attorney’s office in Orlando. He appears to be extremely defensive when I ask him to recall what he witnessed at the accident scene. “Whatever it states on the report. That’s all I remember,” he states. “Read the report.” And he walks off hurriedly.

The other witness is a real estate broker. He, too, appears to be extremely defensive when I knock on his door and attempt to interview him. “How did you find me!?” he inquires. “I don’t remember what I saw,” he states.

“It was too long ago.”

*************************

I interview more neighbors. It turns out that the neighbor across the street is also well connected to city officials. “They were real problem people,” he states. “The yard and the house were always a mess. Nobody liked them.”

*************************

I track down a former landlord of Tina Holland’s but I was never able to actually locate Tina Holland herself. The landlord tells me that everyone in the neighborhood was aware of the motorcycle accident. “She killed a man on a motorcycle and got away with murder,” he stated. “It was the talk of the neighborhood.” “She’s a real problem person—a drug addict. Didn’t pay her rent.”

***********************

Elizabeth Faye Arnold’s house has been repainted. The yard is tidy.

The neighbors no longer call the cops. Everything is now happy and tidy on Silver Drive.

*********************
Related Post: We Will Not Forget What We Witnessed: Elizabeth Faye Arnold and William Harold Arnold (Part 3-A)*Note: Dr. Angela V. Woodhull, a licensed private investigator, spent more than two and a half years investigating court records in Seminole and Orange Counties, Florida and interviewing family members and victims in order to compose this story. All court records that verify the contents of this article were submitted as attachments to the editor of the F.B.I. journal as verification of accuracy. Woodhull can be reached at (352) 327-3665 or (352) 682-9033.

Extra Judicial Killings by Electrocution on the Increase

A man who was causing a disturbance outside Universal Studios in Florida died after being shocked with a Taser stun gun by off-duty police, US authorities have said.

The off-duty officers responded to a call from a security guard at Universal Studios early on Friday morning about a man acting irrationally outside the Cinemax theatres in the city of Orlando.

Ref:here

CLAY COUNTY, Fla. -Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser 10 Times- A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police. Ref=>>here

The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report.

Waterbury, Conn (WTNH) - ** Update ** The deceased has been identified as 26-year old Marcus Brown of Waterbury. Cause of death is pending further studies by the medical examiner.

A man has died after being tasered by police outside Saint Mary's Hospital in Waterbury early Sunday morning.

Around 12:30am, police responded to a report of a man creating a disturbance in the lobby of the Emergency Room at the hospital. The man was taken into custody and placed in the back of a police cruiser.

Police say that while in the back of cruiser, the man continued to be combative, so an officer tasered him. The man then became unresponsive. Attempts were made to resuscitate him at the hospital, but he was pronounced dead a short time later. Ref=here


An Ohio man suffered traumatic brain injury after being shot by a police stun gun, reports say. Ref=here

Los Angeles Police Dept. Moves to Further Restrict Police Oversight

Janet C. Phelan Salem-News.com

Oppressive police have been able to disappear people who are politically inconvenient. In Soviet Russia and Pinochet's Chile -- to name a couple of examples in recent history-- have created a reign of fear among the populace.

(LOS ANGELES) -In a startling reversal of an established transparency policy, the Los Angeles Police Department has refused a recent routine records request, citing a 1993 court case, County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (Kusar).

The Kusar case affirmed the public's right to view contemporaneous records and the LAPD has cited this case in its refusal to release a record which is only nine months old. Coupled with the restrictions contained in Government Code 6254, which inhibits the disclosure of issues under investigation, the PD has effectively locked down information about any and all police records.

The specific issue surrounds a request made by this reporter on March 9, 2011 for the report pertinent to the detention of a Los Angeles resident. Jeannie Tanaka was taken into custody on June 10, 2010 upon an allegation that she had violated a Restraining Order. Tanaka was apparently released prior to being booked, after the West Los Angeles PD discovered that there was no Restraining Order in effect.

Jeannie Tanaka, sixty nine years old, is an attorney with the State of California and was visiting her mother , Jean, who is a conservatee. According to Tanaka, the conservator Linda Cotterman called the police and falsely claimed that Tanaka was under a R.O. According to Tanaka's statement to this reporter, she was surprised by the arrival of the police and was handcuffed and taken away in front of her mother during a pleasant and otherwise uneventful visit.

While the Public Information office of the LAPD has orally confirmed Tanaka was released prior to booking, that office has refused to produce any records concerning the incident. Initially, PIO Karen Raynes stated that no electronic record exists and that this reporter would have to pay for an unspecified number of hours of research, as the clerks physically pawed through storage boxes for the nine month old report.

The Public Information Office later abandoned that response and on March 18 issued a letter which could be seen as stating a policy which effectively locks down all police records. The letter, signed by Martin Bland, states that “in accordance with the California Government Code Section 6254 (F) (2) specific information must ordinarily be disclosed from law enforcement files if it relates to contemporaneous law enforcement activity (See County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (Kusar).....The information contained in the report does not relate to contemporaneous law enforcement activity; therefore, I am denying your request.”

However, the California Public Records Act specifically prohibits disclosure of records pertinent to issues that are under investigation, which reasonably may be seen as contemporaneous. By now including records that are not contemporaneous in the list of what cannot be disclosed, the PD has potentially sealed off all records from public view. The letter does not specifically define “contemporaneous” and could possibly reference any report that is not active and not under investigation. Logically, this is a perfect “Catch 22.”

The implications of this are unsettling, to say the very least. The citation of the Kusar case could be seen as paving the way for the police to operate under a mantle of complete secrecy. One could easily project into a not-so-distant future where these two legal citations, in conjunction, could be used to create a modern day “Secret Police.”

In other, oppressive regimes police have been able to disappear people who have become politically inconvenient. The effects of such practices, infamous in Soviet Russia and Pinochet's Chile -- to name a couple of examples in recent history-- have created a reign of fear among the populace. America now seems to be creating the legal structure to accomplish precisely the same thing.
--------------------------------
Janet Phelan is an investigative journalist whose articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The San Bernardino County Sentinel, The Santa Monica Daily Press, The Long Beach Press Telegram, Oui Magazine and other regional and national publications. Her poetry has been published in Gambit, Libera, Applezaba Review, Nausea One and other magazines. Her first book, The Hitler Poems, was published in 2005. She currently resides abroad.

You may browse through her articles (and poetry) at janetphelan.com

Police 'Involvement' in Conservatorship Issues?

Janet Phelan Salem-News.com

Police arrests in fragile environments, usually involving seniors, violate everything from moral sense to the UN Human Rights Declaration...

(SAN BERNARDINO) - I stood at the Probate clerk's window at Redlands court, craning my neck to read the top sheet of a thick stack of papers which faced away from me. The page was stamped in large, bold letters “CONFIDENTIAL.” That alone was enough to get my attention.

And the clerk was in the back, digging through boxes to find a file I had requested, and had left me alone with the documents, albeit somewhat out of my reach. As I read upside down, I realized that this was a police notification concerning escaped “human property,” a conservatee. A conservatee is someone with no legal rights, and one had just escaped the confines of his genteel prison and was on the loose.

I read on. The conservatee in question was fifty seven years old, a bit young for dementia, I thought, and was described as wearing a baseball cap, T-shirt and shorts. An APB had been put out on the escapee.

For those who are unaware of the gaping legal loophole in “equality and justice for all,” a conservatee (in some states referred to as a ward) is someone who has been stripped of all his rights and all his assets through a legal proceeding.

Conservatorships are generally launched through an action in probate court, when there are allegations that a person may be becoming forgetful or otherwise demonstrating that they are lacking capacity. Often these are ex parte hearings and the person under scrutiny may not even be in the courtroom.

Upon the initiation of a conservatorship of estate, all the person's assets are transferred to the care and protection of the conservator or guardian. A conservatorship of person transfers the personal decisions of the alleged incapacitated person to the conservator.

As many conservators have both powers delegated to them, the potential for financial exploitation becomes of grave concern. In many cases, a capacity hearing never takes place and a conservatorship is established on allegations alone. Conservatorships are very expensive, often requiring the services of multiple lawyers as well as mandating a high rate of recompense for the conservator.

Marie Long

Police intervention in conservatorships is not only restricted to capturing a runaway ward. Increasingly,the police are becoming involved in restraining or incarcerating a family member who is trying to contact or protect a ward. Upping the ante, the police have now involved themselves in jailing someone who was speaking out critically against probate judges.
Robert Gettinger was nearly asleep, he recalls, when a light illuminated his bedroom and he heard a police bullhorn ordering him to come out with his hands up. It was winter in Frazier Park, California and Gettinger, a former police officer himself, came out of his house dressed only in a T-shirt and underwear. It was just before midnight on February 7, 2011.

Gettinger recalls at least ten officers in tactical gear, with guns drawn surrounded his house that night, including Sheriff's officers and Pasadena Police. He put up no resistance and was taken into custody and transported to the Pasadena Jail, where he was booked.

It was not until he was taken from his cell for the initial interrogation, several hours later, that he discovered what he had done to receive this elevated level of attention.

A few months back, when Katie Couric ran a special report on national television revealing problems in the guardianship system, Robert Gettinger had posted a number of criticisms of local judges on the CBS website.

Couric's report focused on the plight of Marie Long, a conservatee in Arizona and revealed that the Government Accountability Office had recently released a report stating that there were reports coming in from across the U.S. alleging criminal misconduct by conservators.

While a Los Angeles Superior court judge, Terry Smerling, had reviewed the posts made by Gettinger on the internet and had signed a search warrant, the District Attorney did not find that the evidence against Gettinger was sufficient to file criminal charges against him and after a couple of days in jail, Gettinger was released from custody.

He states that he had waived his Miranda rights and was cooperating with the police as he did not believe he had committed any crime. His certificate of release, which was obtained by Salem News, states that he was never arrested, only “detained.” The release papers cite California Penal Code 849, stating that the police may release an individual from custody and term his arrest to be a detention when the police are “satisfied that there is no ground for making a criminal complaint against the person arrested.”

A review of the comments made by Gettinger on the CBS website has left this reporter baffled. An obviously passionate Gettinger was highly critical of a number of local judges, including Candace Beason, Aviva K. Bobb and David Yaffe, and made repeated pleas that they be brought to justice and punished for their crimes against U.S. citizens. The expression of such opinions is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and does not violate the law.

In an attempt to ascertain the cause of action against Gettinger, this reporter obtained the initial police report. No crime or penal code number was indicated, and the report only stated that there were “suspicious circumstances.” A section which presumably contained a written complaint about Gettinger was completely blacked out.

According to Gettinger, his mother, Gertrude Gettinger, was placed into a conservatorship without notice to the family and on false statements by his sister, Sylvia Schmidt. Gettinger alleges that Schmidt had been estranged from both of their parents and is solely motivated by greed.

Gertrude had accumulated property and assets in excess of two million dollars which are now under the control of Schmidt, who, according to Robert Gettinger, has hidden numerous bank accounts and stolen property belonging to Gertrude.

He alleges that Sylvia has exaggerated, if not completely confabulated, reports of Gertrude's “mental illness” and provided evidence to this reporter that Schmidt was coaching doctors as to what kind of letters to produce to substantiate Schmidt's statements of Gertrude's diminished capacity. Per records reviewed by this reporter, Gertrude Gettinger has been drugged with powerful mind altering drugs without her agreement.

Bob Gettinger states that his mother's wishes have been ignored, that she has been removed from her home against her best interests and has been conned out of her property by Schmidt, who now will not allow Robert to see his own mother.

Gettinger has not been shy about voicing his concerns. Last year, when the United Nations received a report maintaining that conservatorships constituted a significant human rights problem inside the United States, Bob Gettinger's twelve page report on the conservatorship of his mother was included as an example of serious human rights concerns. His statement to the UN included his specific allegations that a number of bank accounts belonging to his mother had gone unaccounted for, thus indicating what could be a powerful motive for the conservator.

Gettinger also states that after achieving conservatorship over Gertrude, Sylvia Schmidt stopped working, as the income from the conservatorship is ample to cover her own needs.

While Gettinger maintains that these abuses were visited on his mother by his sister, he directly posits responsibility with Judge Candace Beason in allowing the abuses to continue. He cites a number of decisions issued by Beason at junctures in which the course of events could have been altered but were not, due to what he sees as malfunction of the court.

He also implicates Judge Aviva K. Bobb, head of Probate in the Los Angeles Superior court system, for creating a judicial culture in which laws are flaunted and ignored and conservator abuse is allowed to run rampant.

In his posts on the CBS news site, he also referred to the case of conservatee Lee Peters, whose death appears to be directly tied to Judge Bobb's refusal to give weight to the family's repeated pleas that the conservatee was developing phlebitis and needed appropriate medical intervention. Peters died of a clot that migrated to her heart.

While Robert Gettinger was released from jail on February 10, his computers remain impounded by the Pasadena Police. Numerous requests as to when his equipment(which Gettinger needs for his work in the computer field) will be released have met with delay after delay, as the Pasadena Police have spent now well over a month examining his computer files to see if they could find additional evidence against Gettinger.

In a recent conversation with Lt. Tracey Ibarra of the Pasadena PD, she suggested that Gettinger may need to obtain a court order to have his belongings returned to him.

In another ongoing conservatorship battle in Los Angeles, the Beverly Hills police were recently called and requested to arrest Jeannie Tanaka, whose mother is under a conservatorship with local conservator Linda Cotterman. Jeannie Tanaka, who is herself over sixty five years old, was taken into custody during a visit with her mother after Cotterman called the police and told them that there was a Restraining Order in place against her. Tanaka, who is an attorney with the State of California, was taken to the Beverly Hills police station and subsequently released after the police realized there was no such order in existence.

Cotterman did not return phone calls from this reporter.

Joseph Quattrochi, whose father was successfully released from a conservatorship under Southern California conservator Melodie Z. Scott, was arrested by the Redlands Police while waiting for other activists to show up for a demonstration in front of Scott's office.

The police arrested Quattrochi after an employee of Melodie Scott's alleged that he threatened him outside of the office. All charges were subsequently dropped against Quattrochi. The demonstration took place without further incident.

Ricky Ritch, a non-practicing J.D., was cited with contempt of court and ordered into custody by Judge Aviva K. Bobb for failing to file an accounting which was physically in the file before her at the time she ruled that he had failed to do so. Ritch was the son in law of conservatee Marshall Stern, who had nominated Ritch to be his conservator. Instead, Bobb overrode Stern's wishes and appointed a "professional conservator" who, according to Ritch, misappropriated considerable sums of money.

In Ritch's own words: “On January 23, 2006 I paid the $1000 fine and submitted myself for incarceration. On that date Sheriff Astorga hit my head against the car that he was using to transporting me to the jail while I was handcuffed. Sheriff Astorga stated as he was battering me, “That was a message from the Judge.” Or words to that effect. He then kicked me into the car wrenching my broken back in the process. During the next day and a half I was denied my medication for my broken back or the concussion I received from Sheriff Astorga's attack on me. I was told, “That's what you get for messing with a Judge.” That message was repeated several times during my incarceration.”

In a written statement by his lawyer, Albert Sterwerf, he affirms the following: “When Mr. Ritch was released, I personally saw the bump on his head. I drove him directly to a hospital where he was reunited with his wife. I remained with him at the hospital until the initial diagnosis was finished by the doctor. They said that Mr. Ritch had a concussion.” He also confirms that the accounting in question was filed and in the court file when Bobb ordered Ritch into custody.

Robert Gettinger wonders why the police are so eager to step in. He recalls being told by one of the arresting officers Detective Kevin Okamoto, that there is a special squad of officers whose job it is to protect the judges. As he wrote on the CBS website:

"We need to tell anyone and everyone. We need all victims to come forward, even for cases from years ago as this crime has been going on for many years. If the police or government won't help us then we need to take justice into our own hands. IF THE POLICE WON'T INVESTIGATE then we have a right to justice.

"Those who protect these judges and lawyers need to be informed about what kind of monsters these people are. They're just like Adolph Hitler, they're putting our seniors in prison, stripping them of their rights, stealing their belongings, drugging them and sending them to a legal GAS CHAMBER. The Holocaust is back, right under your nose.....Please email your friends, share this story which is just an example, the woman in this story lost everything, at least she has her life as many victims are dead. Post the names of the lawyers, judges and names of the agencies you contacted who did nothing. Put their names in public light."

Since being released from jail, Gettinger has been networking with other court victims on a Facebook site.

Sylvia Schmidt did not respond to phone calls or emails from this reporter.

Janet Phelan is an investigative journalist whose articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The San Bernardino County Sentinel, The Santa Monica Daily Press, The Long Beach Press Telegram, Oui Magazine and other regional and national publications. Her poetry has been published in Gambit, Libera, Applezaba Review, Nausea One and other magazines. Her first book, The Hitler Poems, was published in 2005. She currently resides abroad.

You may browse through her articles (and poetry) at janetphelan.com

Please Write the County Commissioners by Monday

Please make a difference, their fight is our fight!

WE NEED TO CHANGE THE INQUEST PROCESS! They meet next Tuesday, October 5th. Please email all of the County Commissioners listed below by Monday. If you do not live in Las Vegas, tell them that you will not vacation or retire in their city simply because you don’t feel safe. You can use the template letter below or write your own. Please email this template to as many people that you know that may have an interest in this situation. THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!!!

http://www.accessclarkcounty.com/depts/commission/Pages/commission.aspx

ccdistA@co.clark.nv.us
ccdistB@co.clark.nv.us
ccdistC@co.clark.nv.us
ccdistD@co.clark.nv.us
ccdistE@co.clark.nv.us
ccdistF@co.clark.nv.us
ccdistG@co.clark.nv.us
ccmgr@co.clark.nv.us


SAMPLE LETTER - COPY AND PASTE

Dear County Commissioners,

I respectfully request that you change the Clark County Coroner's Inquest process to ensure ALL facts surrounding the death of any victim killed by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers are presented fairly at the deceased's hearing. To that end, I request your immediate action to ensure the family's attorney can:

Cross-examine all witnesses presented by the District Attorney, including the Metro officers involved.

Challenge evidence presented by the District Attorney.

Present witnesses on behalf of the victim's family.


Present additional evidence.

Require the Coroner, District Attorney and Metro police officials to disclose key evidence to the family's attorney prior to the inquest hearing, including homicide investigators' reports and the coroner's autopsy and toxicology reports.

Further, the District Attorney must not be involved in the inquest process, because the DA is not an independent party.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department detectives should not be allowed to investigate officer-involved incidents that result in death. Instead, an independent third party, which has no relationship or involvement with any Police Protective Association (PPA), should investigate all officer-involved shootings, accidents, etc.

All findings of the third-party investigation must be shared with the victim's family, its attorney and representatives of the PPA at a pre-inquest meeting, prior to the formal hearing.

The PPA should have its attorney at that meeting to assist in reviewing evidence and facts.

In addition to the jury, members of an independent citizen's review board should be present at all inquest-related hearings, empowered to make inputs and evaluations. Its primary objective would be to ensure better training and avoid the use of excessive force by Metro officers.

Jury instructions must be written and presented to jury members prior to the initiation of the formal inquest hearing.

The inquest hearing should always be televised and video-streamed via Internet, enabling interested parties in the community to monitor all hearing proceedings.

Not implementing these changes virtually guarantees that a victim's hearing will be extremely one-sided, only carefully selected "facts" and data will be presented, and the DA's and Metro's focus will be on assassinating a victim's character, not on answering questions surrounding how and why the person was killed.

As it stands today, the ordinance governing the conduct of any Clark County Coroner's Inquest proceeding violates any reasonable interpretation of constitutional "due process." Thank you for ensuring it is changed immediately.

Regards,

your name here

Related: America is Not Safe for Elders, for Anyone?

America is not Safe for Elders for Anyone? Patriot Erik Scott is Publicly Executed

It is alarming that police are moving from tasering citizens to outright public executions, it's bad enough that based on un confirmed information elders can lose their civil rights be isolated, medicated and their property sold off and distributed in an act of IRA, Involuntary Redistribution of Assets.

What is more alarming is when based on un confirmed report by a 21 year old un experienced security guard gives police the right to be judge , jury and executioner.

One Hollow point 45 ACP at close range has enough stopping power to stop anyone, 7 such shots when this patriot and accomplished American was gunned down in cold blood needlessly shot 5 times through the back in what can only be described as a blood lust execution and if this doesn't make you cringe then nothing will.

Read the story below the fold and be afraid, very afraid:

Erik Scott was a West Point graduate,he ran with the bulls in Pamplona and jumped out of airplanes while training to be a paratrooper.A West Point graduate who commanded battle tanks Army veteran, MBA graduate of Duke University, and a medical sales rep for Boston Scientific. He was gunned down by three Las Vegas police officers after they responded to a 911 call by Costco store employees reporting a man with a gun, possibly on narcotics, behaving erratically.

Scott was 38 years old, shopping with his girlfriend for items they needed as they moved in together. Unfortunately, those are the only details of the story on which anyone agrees.
To hear the side of the story presented by Scott’s family, friends, and some eyewitnesses, Erik Scott’s death was the result of ignorance and embellishment on the part of the Costco staff, and a combative, deterministic mindset from responding officers.

Other witnesses and the police claim that Eric Scott was armed and acting irrationally, and that his own actions led to his shooting.

What we know for certain is that Scott was in the camping section of the store taking bottles out of their packaging, attempting to determine how many of the bottles would fit in a cooler he was thinking of purchasing. At some point he bent over and his shirt rode up, exposing the pistol he had concealed at the small of his back.

A Costco employee saw the holstered sidearm and told Scott he was not allowed to have the weapon in the store. Scott replied that he had a permit and the right to carry his weapon. He then went back to shopping. The employee called over a manager, who informed a 20-something security guard, who made a 911 call to police.

We do not know precisely what was said in that important call, because the police have refused to release it. We do, however, know from police radio traffic picked up by a scanner that the guard had told police that Erik Scott was armed with a gun, was acting aggressively and erratically, and that he may have been under the influence of drugs.

It must have been a frightening tale: over a dozen police officers responded, along with a helicopter, ambulance, and competing incident command teams.

As the police began to form a massive perimeter outside, Costco managers began evacuating the entire store without apparently explaining why to anyone. As Scott and his girlfriend exited the store he was identified to police officers, who were waiting with guns drawn outside the front door.

A blog from Erik’s family described what happened next:

Erik turned to find three officers facing him, guns drawn, and all three shouting different commands: “Get on the ground!” “Drop your weapon!” “Keep your hands up!” Erik held his hands up, spoke calmly, told them he DID have a concealed firearm and a legal CCW and was an ex-Army officer. His girlfriend was screaming about Erik being a West Point grad, former Army officer, etc. Erik leaned to his left, hands still up, to expose the pistol, and repeated, “I am disarming; I am disarming.” Witnesses say he started to lower his right hand, palm OUT, perhaps intending to remove holster and gun together — but never got the hand below his shoulder, when one of the cops (believed to be William Mosher, who had committed a fatal shooting in 2006) shot Erik in the chest with a .45-caliber semi-automatic weapon. Erik dropped to his knees, clearly in shock, his face a picture of disbelief. He was shot a second time and collapsed. The rest is ugly. The three officers unloaded again, firing a total of seven hollow-point rounds. At least four, possibly five, hit Erik in the back, after he was on the ground and dying.

Two experts hired by Scott’s family examined his body. They claim that of the seven .45 ACP hollowpoint bullets fired into Scott’s body, one was fired through his armpit, suggesting his arm was raised at the time. Four remaining shots were fired into his back. There were no exit wounds, making it all but impossible for police to claim that investigators misread through-and-through wounds.

Witness statements: Robert Garcia directly was close enough to see this guy’s face, and to see his hands, and to see his body go down.Walking just ten feet in front of Erik Scott, Garcia exited the Costco to see officers with guns drawn. He heard an officer yell: “Put it down! Get down!”Then he claims four shots were fired, and he instantly turned towards the victim:After hearing the shots I see the guy going down. I looked at — I saw his hands. His hands had no gun in it. I looked on the ground because — just, I just did that. I looked down and I didn’t see a gun. I saw what I thought were maybe sunglasses. And a pen.This matches up with several other eyewitness claims that officers William Mosher, Joshua Stark, and Thomas Mendiola fired nearly immediately after shouting conflicting commands at Scott, giving him little or no time to respond. Four other witnesses within 20 feet of the store’s entrance all agree that Scott never brandished a weapon or made a move that could be interpreted as brandishing a weapon.

In an ongoing search for the truth, Erik’s family and friends have banded together. They have created a few Facebook Pages as well as a website where people can go to find and share information ErikBScott.com contains links to the Facebook account, photos, and discussion forums along with a way to make donations and contact the family. To further spread the word, there are currently 7 billboards in the Las Vegas area and 16 more going up within the next week or so. A plane towing a banner which read “Vegas Police cover up? R. I. P. Erik B Scott.com” was flown over Huntington Beach, CA during the U.S. Open of Surfing on Sunday
August 8th, 2010.

I believe the majority of people in America do not think what happened to Erik Scott should have ever happened. Furthermore, a lot of us feel that if it happened to Erik, it can happen to anyone.

Read and cringe=>>Source

Related: Pregnant woman shot by WSP detective gives birth

Please comment on Erik's Facebook page=>>here

Please donate and show support to Erik's family by E mailing mcb.480.mcb@gmail.com and visiting :

Erik Scott Memorial Blog

Resistance May Be Futile - Police Use Tasers Against Elderly Citizens

Excessive Force - Police Use Tasers Against Elderly Citizens With Dementia

"They did a commendable job in using a minimal amount of force"

A quote from the detective himself when an 87 year old woman with dementia was shot by police with a taser gun and died.

When 87 year old Phyllis Owens returned home from the hospital she was suffering from dementia. In addition she wore a pacemaker for her heart.

Hearing noises outside her home at approximately 2:30 PM she picked up a gun and waved it at a construction worker asking him what he was doing there "that time of night."

Terrified of an obviously confused little old lady waving a gun, the construction worker called police who was successful in talking her into putting down the gun. When she picked it up once again the taser was used on her.

Sadly, Mrs Owens died that evening.

After her death it was found that her "gun" was not a real gun after all - just a pellet gun.

A Doctor from the state medical examiners office said, "Owens had a history of heart disease and that was the cause of death."

Not So Surprising; when Journalists showed up, they were ordered to leave.

"A Commendable Job In Using A Minimal Amount of Force,"

on an 87 year old lady with Dementia?

ref=>>here

Related:Please Don't taser my grandmother

Man Pleads: "Don't Taze my Granny!"

By Sarah FosterNewsWithViews.com

EL RENO, Oklahoma – Police officers involved in the tasing of an elderly bedridden grandmother into unconsciousness at her apartment last Dec. 22 are being sued in federal court by the woman and her grandson for violations of their civil rights.

“It seems to me using some sort of high voltage on an 86-year-old woman seems inappropriate,” said attorney Brian Dell, after filing the Complaint June 21 in Oklahoma City on behalf of his clients, Lona Varner and her grandson, Lonnie Tinsley, 47. “The whole purpose of this lawsuit is they used the force on an elderly woman.”

The Complaint is more specific, stating Varner was “cruelly injured with a Taser and imprisoned for several days without probable cause,” while both she and her grandson were “wrongfully seized, assaulted [and] battered.”

The action has been brought pursuant to Title 42, U.S. Code, Sections 1983 and 1989, and the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Police officers -- Thomas Duran, Frank Tinga, Joseph Sandberg and other unknown police officers – are not the only defendants. The city of El Reno is also named for having a policy of “deliberate indifference” towards training and disciplining its police officers “concerning the rights of citizens” and for failing to sanction and discipline officers who violate those constitutional rights.

“DELIBERATE INDIFFERENCE”

It was this “deliberate indifference” on the part of city officials that led police to engage in the “unlawful conduct” described in the lawsuit – conduct that has been likened by online commenters to Reno 911, the television series that recalls the old Keystone Kops comedies. Indeed, the scenario is so bizarre that some thought it couldn’t be true but must have been a spoof piece created by the staff at the The Onion.

It involved a dozen or so cops storming Varner’s apartment against her wishes, deploying a Tazer to “subdue” her in response to a few verbal threats she may or may not have made, handcuffing her while she was unconscious, cutting her arm, and after a few hours at Parkview Emergency Room, hauling her 20 miles east to a psychiatric hospital in Oklahoma City where she was kept through Christmas and several days following.

The incident began when Tinsley, at the request of his father, drove to his grandmother’s apartment which is less than two miles from his own. Because Varner has had several strokes, she takes various medications – just what or how many she’d taken that afternoon Tinsley did not know and she could not or would not, tell him. He was concerned that she might have overdosed deliberately. He couldn’t be sure.

So he did what we’re supposed to do in such emergencies – he called 911, requesting paramedics to come and check on Varner and make sure she was alright.
"She says … her life is over. She wants to end it. … She's taken some medicine. I don't know what she's taken," Tinsley said in the 911 call. "I can't get her to tell me what she took. … She's kind of upset and everything else."

That was at about 6:30 in the evening.

The dispatcher said an ambulance was started, but instead of an emergency medical team, an armed police officer, Thomas Duran, showed up. Tinsley met him outside and warned him that Varner would not want him to enter her home.

Varner’s small apartment is on the ground floor, and she has her hospital-style bed set up in the living room. That way she can watch the front door, and she has her phone, table, television, and the oxygen concentrator upon which she depends for easier breathing.
When attorney Roger Everett, co-counsel, was approached to take the case he could hardly believe that the police had actually used a tazer on Varner, in part because of her age, but also because of the potential danger of using such a device in a room where there’s an oxygen concentrator.

“On the front door there’s a piece of paper that says there’s oxygen in use here, that’s so we don’t have people bringing in any kind of flammable stuff or smoking,” he said. “You’d think if you saw that on the door you’d figure it might not be a good idea to shoot this gizmo that zaps electricity. You’d think that the police would think twice about shooting somebody 86 years old – that would be enough to give somebody a heart attack.”

Duran, the lead officer, apparently never saw the notice. In his narrative report he writes: As I started to enter the residence I heard a voice say, ‘Get out of here. I don’t want your help.’ I looked around the corner and observed Varner lying on a bed in the living room.”
Duran continues: “I observed Varner pull a kitchen knife from under the pillow and grasp it in a fashion commonly used to stab or slash. Varner looked at me and said, ‘I want to die, I did not call you so get the (expletive) out of my house.’”

HOW BIG A KNIFE?

The knife figures in this story, but Duran does not report how big it was, only that it was a “kitchen knife” – which could mean anything from a small paring knife to an 8” or larger chef’s chopping knife. The first is most likely, according to Varner’s attorneys.
“The reason she had a knife – she likes to eat fruit, particularly oranges,” explained Everett. “She had a piece of fruit she was going to use the knife on. That’s why she had it. I haven’t seen the knife, but it was the kind you’d use to peel an orange. That size.”

In other words: probably about three or four inches.
Duran called the dispatch for backup saying he had a “subject with a knife and needed more units.”

Meanwhile, Tinsley was trying to reach his grandmother and Duran was ordering him “numerous times” to back away and not come near her.
As he tells it: Duran tried to “calm her down, but nothing would work. Varner told me she was in control of her life and I could not do anything to stop her. Varner looked me in the eyes and said, ‘If you try and get the knife I will stab you and kill you.’ Varner said, “I killed four japs in World War II and I would not bat an eye killing you.’”

Duran writes that he was “in fear for the safety of Lonnie, Varner and myself.”
Both Dell and Everett have told NewsWithViews that Varner and Tinsley deny any threats were made. But even if Varner had made threats, what is the likelihood she would have been able to follow through? She’s in marginal health, blind in one eye from her strokes, unable to walk without assistance (she uses an electric chair to get around her apartment), and dependant on oxygen.

In any case, help was on the way – Officers Frank Tinga and Joseph Sandberg arrived to help “calm the situation.” Duran neglects to say that some 10 additional officers – over a third of the city’s police force -- swarmed into the tiny apartment, which must have terrified the woman. However, she held her own, or tried to.

“When Varner saw Officer Tinga and Officer Sandberg enter, she took a more aggressive posture on the bed, raised the knife above her head, and said ‘If you come any closer your [sic] getting the knife.’”

AGGRESSIVE OR DEFENSIVE?

Aggressive posture? What Duran calls an “aggressive posture” could just as well be described as “defensive.”

His backup having arrived, Duran decided it was time to deploy his tazer against the “aggressive” senior. Here’s how he tells it (emphasis added):

“I told Varner if she did not drop the knife she’d force us to use our Taser’s [sic]. Varner continued to be aggressive and furthered my fear of injury to other’s [sic] and myself. I deployed my department issued Taser (208930) using cartridge number T08-2070595. One of the Taser prongs made contact with Varner’s upper chest but the other imbedded into a blanket Varner had around her abdomen. The Taser did not make the contact and did not affect Varner. Varner stared at me and continued to hold the knife up in an aggressive manner. I told officer Sandburg who was next to me that my Taser was not working. Officer Sandburg deployed his Tazer with both prongs making contact. The Taser rendered Varner incapable of any further aggressive action and officers were able to remove the knife from Varner’s hand and secure it safely. When the Taser was being used Lonnie became very upset and tried to interfere with officers. Officer Tinga and Officer Gore detained Lonnie. Lonnie calmed down and understood officers had to use force.

“While controlling Varner’s arm and removing the knife, she received a laceration from her elbow to her wrist. Parkview staff later told me it was a very common occurrence for elderly subjects to receive bad lacerations with the slightest of contact with objects due to the thin nature of their skin.

DON’T TAZE MY GRANNY

That’s not how Tinsley recalls the scene. According to the Complaint:
“Lonnie Tinsley told them, ‘Don’t taze my Granny.’ To which they responded they would tazer him; instead they took him down to the floor, handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a patrol car.”

With Tinsley out of the way, the police proceeded to “deploy” their tazer – but first one or several of the officers stepped on her oxygen hose, “until she began to suffer oxygen deprivation.” When the first tazing didn’t work, they fired a second, “striking her to the right and left of the midline of her upper chest and applied high voltage, causing burns to her chest, extreme pain and to pass out.

"The police then grabbed Ms. Varner by her forearms and jerked hands together, causing her soft flesh to tear and bleed on her bed; they then handcuffed her."
The Emergency Medical Team had by then arrived, and was allowed in to take Varner to the hospital to have the prongs removed and her burns and laceration treated. Tinsley was un-handcuffed and allowed to accompany his grandmother in the ambulance.
Several hours later, after midnight, she was taken to Oklahoma where was committed to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
Dell told NewsWithViews: “After keeping her for six days they figured they didn’t have any reason to keep her so they cut her loose.”
A city attorney, Roger Rinehart, said the city had no comment. Assistant Police Chief Kevin Wilkerson said, "With the federal lawsuit, we can't make any comment on it right now."

WHERE WAS THE MEDIA?

Not surprisingly the story has created a storm on the Internet – but this did not happen until the case was filed in U.S. District Court, six months after it happened. A short piece appeared in the El Reno Tribune in early January, but there was no follow up by the paper, even though the police had been castigated a year earlier for tazing a man whom they thought was a drunk driver, but instead was having a diabetic seizure.

Dell told NWV that in the Varner case, a local reporter picked it up because he covers federal court and he saw a copy of the petition and called Dell, who then talked to him.
“Then I started getting calls and found out it had been picked up on www.courthousenews.com,” Dell recalled. “I’ve been getting phone calls and emails and everything else from everybody all over. In fact, if you Google “Taser granny” – I got 416,000 hits (June 25). There’s been the Daily Mail, an Irish newspaper, a Nigerian newspaper, the India Times.” (By June 29 it was 668,000)

CIRCLING THEIR WAGONS

The 65-year-old NewsWithViews.com editor Paul Walter was shocked when he learned of the events described here, and said it hit him especially hard since he was born in a communist country and did not come to the United States until he was 15. So he’s seen this kind of behavior by police before.

“The only difference between what I saw there and cases like this one is that the cops in Yugoslavia didn’t have tasers,” he said.
"I wonder if those cops would like that done to their mothers? Or, to themselves for that matter when they reach old age? Didn't Jesus teach us to treat others the same way we would like to be treated ourselves?

“The real problem is not the wicked cops. The real problem is the management: the police chief, city manager, the mayor and perhaps the city council for condoning such behavior and not setting down proper rules of conduct.

"I guarantee you as sure as I'm writing this, that the city management will circle their wagons to protect their mean-spirited and out-of-control cops."

Source=>>US Obserber

Monroe County Sheriff Dept Falsefies Report to Cover Up Elder Abuse

Monroe County,Florida USA...by Ray Fernandez

OFFENSE REPORT MONROE COUNTY SHERIFFS OFFICE
MCS0050FF0079I7 Printed On: 09/28/2005 15:42

MR. RAUL FERNANDEZ ADVISED THAT HE WILL BE PURSUING THIS MATTER CIVILLY WITH HIS ATTORNEY. (false)

9/1/2005 10:35 S-UPPLEMENT HAMILTON, HENRY B Si55 S6897 9/1/2005 1-0- -:3--7
THIS INVESTIGATOR DISCUSSED THE CASE WITH ASA J.T. GORMAN OF THE STATES ATTORNEY OFFICE AND AGREED WITH THIS INVESTIGATOR ON THE STATUS OF THE CASE, SINCE THERE WERE NO PHYSICAL SIGNS OF ABUSE AND THE MATTER SHOULD BE HANDLED CIVILLY BETWEEN THE BROTHERS.

9/1/2005 14:47 SUPPLEMENT MORFFI, JOR(;E LUIS 11-2-3-
123 S7795 9/1/2005 15:04

THIS WRITER RESPONDED TO 5525 COLLEGE RI) / M.C.S.O HEAD QUARTERS.
UPON ARRIVAL I MET WITH A LAURA WHO INFORMED ME THAT A CLARA FERNANDEZ WAS AN ELDERLY PERSON WHO WAS AT THE LOBBY AT OUR HEAD QUARTERS. LAURA SAID THAT DETECTIVE HAMLTON NEEDED A DEPUTY TO SWEAR IN CLARA FERNANDEZ AND HAVE HER SIGN IT AND THE DEPUTY SIGN IT.
I MET WITH CLARA FERNANDEZ THE VICTIM AT THE LOBBY THERE I READ A STATEMENT. I INFORMED VICTIM TO RAISE HER
RIGHT HAND SO I CAN SWEAR HER IN. THE VICTIM WAS SWORN IN.
I TOLD VICTIM TO SIGN ON THE PROPER BOX AND DATE IT. THE VICTIM HAD A HARD TIME SIGNING ON THE LINE AND HER HAND SHOOK CONTINOULYS. IT WOULD BE HARD FOR THE VICTIM TO TYPE SAID 2 PAGE LETTER SINCE SHE IS AN ELDERLY PERSON AND HAD A HARD TIME SIGNING THE STATEMENT.


Date Entered NCIC: Date Removed NCIC:
Supervisor APPROVED
BOBBY RANDOLPH
No Concur No
Date Time No Pt1F/U No
09/05/2005 09:04 No lnvF/U Yes
Case Screening Supv. BOBBY RANDOLIH
Date Time
08/25/2005 07:54
Investigator
S155
HAMILTON, HENRY B
Report Last Modified 09/05/2005 09:04 WITNESS STATEMENT
Last First Middle Title H R S DOB
MCCLAIN ANGELA N W F 10/27/1927
I have known Clara at least 15 years and saw her often several times a week, most times On August 2004 Clara suddenly disappeared without ever giving any indication she wanted to leave.
Attempts to contact or speak with Clara were blocked by Al Fernandez and Bill Hart, who did not allow me to talk with her .

MCS005OFF007917 Page 6 of 7 [S7889 08/23/2005 15:10

Monroe County Sheriff Dept Fudges Police Report to Cover Up Elder Abuse

Monroe County,Florida USA...by Ray Fernandez

OFFENSE REPORT MONROE COUNTY SHERIFFS OFFICE
MCS0050FF0079I7 Printed On: 09/28/2005 15:42

MR. RAUL FERNANDEZ ADVISED THAT HE WILL BE PURSUING THIS MATTER CIVILLY WITH HIS ATTORNEY.

9/1/2005 10:35 SUPPLEMENT HAMILTON, HENRY B Si55 S6897 9/1/2005 1-0- -:3--7
THIS INVESTIGATOR DISCUSSED THE CASE WITH ASA J.T. GORMAN OF THE STATES ATTORNEY OFFICE AND AGREED WITH THIS INVESTIGATOR ON THE STATUS OF THE CASE, SINCE THERE WERE NO PHYSICAL SIGNS OF ABUSE AND THE MATTER SHOULD BE HANDLED CIVILLY BETWEEN THE BROTHERS.

9/1/2005 14:47 SUPPLEMENT MORFFI, JOR(;E LUIS 11-2-3-
123 S7795 9/1/2005 15:04

THIS WRITER RESPONDED TO 5525 COLLEGE RI) / M.C.S.O HEAD QUARTERS.
UPON ARRIVAL I MET WITH A LAURA WHO INFORMED ME THAT A CLARA FERNANDEZ WAS AN ELDERLY PERSON WHO WAS AT THE LOBBY AT OUR HEAD QUARTERS. LAURA SAID THAT DETECTIVE HAMLTON NEEDED A DEPUTY TO SWEAR IN CLARA FERNANDEZ AND HAVE HER SIGN IT AND THE DEPUTY SIGN IT.
I MET WITH CLARA FERNANDEZ THE VICTIM AT THE LOBBY THERE I READ A STATEMENT. I INFORMED VICTIM TO RAISE HER
RIGHT HAND SO I CAN SWEAR HER IN. THE VICTIM WAS SWORN IN.
I TOLD VICTIM TO SIGN ON THE PROPER BOX AND DATE IT. THE VICTIM HAD A HARD TIME SIGNING ON THE LINE AND HER HAND SHOOK CONTINOULYS. IT WOULD BE HARD FOR THE VICTIM TO TYPE SAID 2 PAGE LETTER SINCE SHE IS AN ELDERLY PERSON AND HAD A HARD TIME SIGNING THE STATEMENT.


Date Entered NCIC: Date Removed NCIC:
Supervisor APPROVED
BOBBY RANDOLPH
No Concur No
Date Time No Pt1F/U No
09/05/2005 09:04 No lnvF/U Yes
Case Screening Supv. BOBBY RANDOLIH
Date Time
08/25/2005 07:54
Investigator
S155
HAMILTON, HENRY B
Report Last Modified 09/05/2005 09:04 WITNESS STATEMENT
Last First Middle Title H R S DOB
MCCLAIN ANGELA N W F 10/27/1927
I have known Clara at least 15 years and saw her often several times a week, most times On August 2004 Clara suddenly disappeared without ever giving any indication she wanted to leave.
Attempts to contact or speak with Clara were blocked by Al Fernandez and Bill Hart, who did not allow me to talk with her .

MCS005OFF007917 Page 6 of 7 [S7889 08/23/2005 15:10
----------------------------------------------

This police report raises some very disturbing issues and exemplifies what happens when elder abuse is reported.

Mr Raul Fernandez NEVER EVER thinks that elder abuse is a civil matter, and words were put into my mouth, which brings up the question : Does a citizen when attempting to report elder abuse have a right to be accurately quoted in a police report?

In spite of numerous witness that gave sworn statements that Mr. Willam A Hart and Mr Adalberto J Fernandez Jr had overmedicated the elder while cashing her accounts and had held her in strict isolation, when the victim herself accompanied by her best friend Angela McClain tried to file a report (herself) she was ridiculed and her report trashed because "her hand was shaking."

Way too often as exemplied by this case attempting to report elder abuse or file reports can not only be demeaning for the elder and their families but a big waste of time as well.

12 Year Old Badly Beaten by Police Files Lawsuit

Galveston,Texas USA

Radley Balko, senior editor at Reason, has an update on Dymond Milburn, the 12-year-old girl who was grabbed out of her front yard by three undercover police who accused her of being a prostitute and then beaten so badly she had to go to the hospital to get her head injuries treated.

Balko has learned that the lawsuit is real, not a hoax as some have suggested. Here's a copy (pdf) of the complaint. And here's a record of the filing in federal court.

Source=>>

Related=>> Open letter to the Tens of Thousands of Rogue Cops

Extra Judicial Killing by Police Sparks Civil Unrest

San Franscisco USA January 8th 2009

Recently we predicted civil unrest in major US Cities in a recent post under Ten Predictions for 2009. what we din't know that the prediction would happen so quickly.

An extra judicial killing of a youth caught on tape and witness by thousands sparked outraged, police ought to take some lessons from Fidel Castro who at least had the common sense to march the people behind a wall out of plain sight, however it seems the authorities no longer fear the citizens they are sworn to protect and and feel blazen to act whenever they like and wherever they like.

According to witnesses the execution went down like this: Grant was returning home to the East Bay on a BART train in the early hours of Jan. 1, after celebrating New Year's Eve in San Francisco. A fight broke out between two groups of riders on the train about 2 a.m.

Police met the train at Oakland's Fruitvale station and ordered passengers onto the platform. Grainy cellphone videos broadcast on television and viewed thousands of times on the Internet show Grant lying facedown on the platform.

Police Officer Johannes Mehserle stands over the young man. He reaches for his weapon and shoots Grant point-blank in the back. Grant was unarmed.

Grant, who has a 4-year-old daughter, was buried Wednesday morning.

Source=>>L.A. Times

How the California Justice System Covers up Crimes Against the Elderly

A Method to the Madness

By Janet C. Phelan

Note: The following report does not constitute what we have come to call “journalism” or “reportage.” Rather, it constitutes witnessing. As defined in our culture, journalism mandates the creation of a fiction, the “objective” reporter. In this paradigm, the reporter would be a camera, devoid of involvement or input in what she reports. As we know from physics, however, the very act of witnessing changes that which is witnessed. To the best of my ability, the following constitutes my witness—that justice in the United States of America is, with calculated and savage indifference, being dismantled by the very parties pledged to protect it.

I first became aware of how the California justice agencies were finessing crime reports against “protected parties,” including the C.A.R.E. conservatorship cabal, a few years back. This group is plundering the life savings of its elderly and disabled clients, as well as delivering a great number of them into a premature grave, through the denial of appropriate medical care. In 2006, Russell East and I had joined our separate reports, alleging criminal misconduct by Melodie Z. Scott (President of C.A.R.E.), her attorney J. David Horspool and others in the cabal, and sent the reports to the California Department of Justice.

The report was received by that agency on March 6, 2006 and put back into the mail to us the very same day. The letter by Senior Assistant Attorney General Mark Geiger (Special Crimes Unit) is attached below. While the Senior Assistant Attorney General of the Great State of California confessed to inadequate “criminal expertise” (didn’t he mean “legal expertise?”) to respond to the reports, he actually violated the procedures of his public office by failing to supply a complaint number.

Complaint numbers are always assigned to incoming reports, for purposes of tracking. If there is no record of the complaint being in the system, the complaint can be considered “disappeared” or put into a shadow file, or into the garbage.

When Geiger was informed of his omission, he stuck to his guns and simply refused to supply one. Presto Chango!! A carefully documented report , which implicated scores of public officials and officers of the court in colluding with the Melodie Scott cabal, was thus rendered non-existent.

I then reported Mark Geiger to his boss, Dane Gillette. Gillette failed to respond to the complaint. One can only assume that the complaint about Geiger went similarly untracked, and was thus removed from the system.

A Public Records Act request was then tendered to the California Attorney General’s office, requesting a copy of the part of the policies and procedures manual which specifies the procedures for recording incoming complaints from the public. This request was responded to by Dane Gillette, who stated that no such manual exists.

Reaction to the Gillette letter by several members of the legal profession revealed that Gillette lied.

Parenthetically, a similar PRA request, for the policies and procedures manual for the Riverside D.A.’s office, produced a similar response—that no such manual existed. The office of the Grand Jury in Riverside, however, has assured me that this manual is on file in that office.

The initial response by Mark Geiger had also stated that other members of the AG’s office had evaluated the situation surrounding my mother, Dr. Amalie Phelan, who had been a conservatee of Melodie Scott, and had found no issue. Paula Seiberlich of the San Diego AG’s office had, in fact, conducted that investigation. However, the AG’s office also had refused to supply a tracking or complaint number to that investigation, as well.

Local police agencies have also apparently adopted the “no number, no report” method of disappearing complaints about the Melodie Scott and her gang, while maintaining the illusion of impartial pursuit of justice. In the Spring of 2008 I contacted the Redlands Police Department and the San Bernardino District Attorney’s office, for the purpose of reporting theft of the William Burke estate by conservator Lawrence Dean, who works out of the C.A.R.E. offices, and by his attorney, Sheri Kastilahn.

Briefly, Dean and Kastilahn had reported to the San Bernardino Probate Court that they had been unable to locate the sole heir to the Burke estate, one Lester Lorge. In fact, two years passed before Kastilahn was able to locate him. In the intervening years, Kastilahn petitioned the court to put a big chunk of the Burke estate into her own bank account. The court approved her request. I was unable to find any documentation in the court file that this money ever left Kastilahn’s account. Lorge then signed for his “full distributive share” of his inheritance. There was, peculiarly, no record in the court file of how much that might be.

I found Lorge within forty-eight hours. He disclosed to me that his “full distributive share” was around $26,000. This constituted a mere fraction of what Dean and Kastilahn had reported to the court as the remainders of the Burke estate.

Lorge, who is elderly, could thus be considered a victim of fiduciary elder abuse. When I contacted the Redlands Police department and the D.A. on his behalf, to report the theft, I was promptly informed that no crime had been committed against Lorge. Amazingly, the police officer assigned to this report reached this conclusion within two hours. When I asked Assistant District Attorney Lynne Poncin for the file number of the complaint I had made, she refused to supply it to me. Another member of that office revealed to me that neither Dean’s, Kastilahn’s or Lorge’s names could be found anywhere in the electronic file system. Once again, we see the method at work: no complaint number, no report.

More police misconduct concerning record keeping occurred when I contacted the Temecula Police Department, back in 2002, surrounding first the attempted murder of my mother at the hands of the Melodie Scott gang, and then concerning check forgery/fraud by my sister, Judith Phelan, now living in Northern California.

Strangely, the two criminal complaints, naming different perpetrators and different crimes, were assigned the same report number. The police report concerning the attempted murder, listing this as a “suspicious circumstance,” states that it has been sent over to the Riverside District Attorney’s office.

But no such complaint was ever received by that office, according to the clerks.

The Riverside D.A.’s office, Special Investigations Unit, also received a complaint from me, in November of 2002. That report alleged misconduct by the Temecula Police in failing to pursue the above mentioned crimes. That report, which has disappeared from the office files in that agency, was also never assigned a number.

The United States Constitution promises equal protection under the law. By removing complaints alleging or documenting crimes by “protected parties,” the justice agencies can maintain the illusion of defending justice, while ensuring that only certain people will ever get investigated or prosecuted for violations of law.

Download Attorney's General Ltr here=>>Ltr.pdf

Another Tale of Elder Financial Abuse"Despicable'

Apple Valley, CA: LawyersandSettlement.Com

Linda F suspected for a while that her father was a victim of financial elder abuse. Unfortunately, she couldn't get her father to see what was going on. Like so many parents who are victims of financial abuse at the hands of a child, Linda's father did not want to believe his daughter, Linda's sister, could treat him so poorly. But she did, and now he is not even allowed in his own home.

"This is just devastating. It [financial elder abuse] is out there, but it's hushed. It's despicable that a child could do this to a parent. She can't get her act together, so she abuses him. He wants to be home. He doesn't want to live like this. He told me once that he is supposed to get a blue pill in the morning. But my sister sometimes gave him 1 in the morning, sometimes 2 in the morning, sometimes 1 in the afternoon, sometimes she didn't give him any pill. She messed with his medication.

----------------------------

Yes it is despicable that a child could do this and much more to their parents , especially if this child harbors resentments from childhood or if there is money invoved , what is even more despicable is that the elders have no one to turn to as the authorities have decided that elder abuse are 'civil matters' an when approched for help do the 'circle jerk'.

Sadly elders and/or their families have no one to turn to for help.

"The Circle Jerk" What happens when an elder and or their families goes for help.

Some Police Departments Now Administering Drugs

For at least two years, the Nashville PD have been recklessly endangering citizens by using emergency medical personnel to forcibly inject Versed -- a powerful prescription medication with side effects including agitation and confusion -- into agitated, confused people. This potentially lethal stupidity is what we can expect when people who go to work with guns on their belt decide to play "doctor".

For almost two years, Metro police have had the option of calling for a needle loaded with a strong sedative to control the most unruly people they encounter on the street.

The Nashville cops try and justify setting themselves to forcibly administer powerful mind-altering drugs without judicial order (much less consent) by trundling out a local Emergency Services doc who tries to excuse away this insane practice by citing a diagnosis that doesn't even exist: "excited delirium".

Read it all here=>>

America’s Rank as the World’s No. 1 Incarcerator.

“For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling,” the report said. “While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine.”
The racial disparity for women also is stark. One of every 355 white women aged 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one of every 100 black women in that age group.

The largest percentage increase - 12 percent - was in Kentucky, where Gov. Steve Beshear highlighted the cost of corrections in his budget speech last month. He noted that the state’s crime rate had increased only about 3 percent in the past 30 years, while the state’s inmate population has increased by 600 percent…
Record-high ratio of Americans in prison
By DAVID CRARY - AP National Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2008

For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.

Source=>>

F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin - "Protecting the Elderly from Financial Abuse."

The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin -
"©2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission."

Over the years, a shift in law enforcement priorities, as well as an increase in general awareness, has made most officers familiar with the concepts of spousal abuse and child abuse. Still, the term elder abuse raises questions among even the most seasoned law enforcement officers. From physical, emotional, or sexual abuse to financial exploitation, approximately 818,000 elderly individuals are victimized annually.

Furthermore, experts estimate that only 1 in 10 cases of elder abuse gets reported.(1) Many elderly citizens must contend with a variety of health problems that limit their physical or mental functioning. Some become bedridden and cut off from normal contact with the rest of the world. At the same time, mental limitations leave many older citizens highly vulnerable to various forms of abuse.

Please go to http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/1997/decleb.pdf

‘Elder Abuse Widespread’ When Elders Speak Out they are Sometimes Disregarded

Ireland,EU and Key West ,Florida.USA Recent figures on elder abuse in Ireland released by the HSE represent only a fraction of the cases in Ireland, according to a spokesperson for Age Action.
As the majority of the 26 elder abuse officers have been in their posts for less than 12 months, Mr Eamon Timmins, Age Action’s Head of Advocacy and Communications said the scale of the problem is likely to be much greater.

“Age Action had previously used the results of international studies, which showed that between three per cent and five per cent of the older population have been victims of elder abuse,” Mr Timmins told IMN.

“Applying this to Ireland, would mean that between 14,000 and 23,000 older people would have experienced elder abuse. The figures released show only a fraction of the problem. Because of the nature of the abuse, much of it goes unreported. Many people who are abused are afraid to speak out.”

However, Mr Timmins welcomed the release of figures for shining a light on what is an unreported problem. “They help break the taboo,” he said. “The figures show that this is a problem in Ireland. Hopefully, it will encourage more people to report cases of abuse. It’s hard to believe this is the first time we have statistics on elder abuse in this country.”

In particular, one figure that Mr Timmins noted was that while 92 per cent of alleged abusers in 2007 were family members, just 16 per cent of the cases were referred to the officers by other family members.

Paul Mulholland

Sometimes when they do speak out they are discredited, because of their advance age or other conditions and unless they have obvious physical signs of abuse are often not taken seriously especially if there are family members involved , which by now we know the majority of elder abuse happens at the hands of family members.

This police report dated 8-25-2005 states "
THIS INVESTIGATOR DID NOT OBSERVE ANY SIGNS OF PHYSICAL ABUSE OF MRS. CLARA FERNANDEZ AT THE TIME OF THIS INTERVIEW. " and no further action was taken to protect Mrs Fernandez

Here the police officer states "I TOLD VICTIM TO SIGN ON THE PROPER BOX AND DATE IT. THE VICTIM HAD A HARD TIME SIGNING ON THE LINE AND HER HAND SHOOK CONTINOULYS. IT WOULD BE HARD FOR THE VICTIM TO TYPE SAID PAGE LETTER SINCE SHE IS AN ELDERLY PERSON AND HAD A HARD TIME SIGNING THE STATEMENT."

The Victim statement which had been typed by her friends for greater clarity was dismissed........

Although we will painfully regret the incapacitation of our parent and the death of the other due to the stress of the situation the rest of our lives, we hope that their sacrifice has not been in vain and that the lessons learned will help authorities intervene in time and save other elder couples survive the sibling battles for control and power that too often seems to follow their advance into old age. Battles that seem so know no boundaries and that often spread out of control hurting and many innocent people and leaving a wake of death and destrucion that is un acceptable .

Elder Abuse Training For Law Enforcement Should Be Required in Florida Also !

Elder abuse training required some States
-Why Not in Florida ? Which has an elevated elderly population.

Every city police officer and deputy sheriff at a supervisory level and below who is assigned to field or investigative duties is required to complete an elder abuse training course certified by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. This mandate came about following the passage of Assembly Bill 870, sponsored by the Attorney General, in 1997 (Chapter 444).

Most Police Officers Aren't Aware of Their Role When it Comes to Dealing with Elder Abuse

BY RUTHANN ROBINSON rrobinson@nwitimes.com

SCHERERVILLE Lake County Adult Protective Services already investigated more reports of abuse this year than for all of 2006.

Nicky Ali Jackson urged attendees to watch for signs an elderly person is being abused such as a caregiver refusing to let the person be seen alone, the person becoming socially withdrawn or new names added on bank accounts.

An associate professor of criminal justice at Purdue University, Jackson said rocking, sucking and biting -- which often are seen as signs of dementia -- also can alert observers to possible emotional abuse.

Jackson said a national study by Police Executive Research Forum showed most police officers aren't aware of their role when it comes to dealing with elder abuse and want more training on the subject.

Abridged =>>