gandalf23

Even before there was a United States, the land we call America was a different place. In America, a peasant could own land. A slave could fight — literally — for his freedom. An Irish cop could arrest an English criminal.

In America, a Russian could speak his mind, an Italian could renounce the Pope, a Serbian could marry a Turk, an Asian or an Indian could find space to move, a Catholic could get divorced, a Jew could eat bacon, and a housewife could get a job. A … well, pretty much anyone could do most anything. Maybe not at first, and certainly not without ridicule if you chose do something really silly — but the choice was yours.

In America, you were free.

Here was a New World. No kings, no knights, no dukes, no earls. No titles, no shackles, no pales of settlement. Some of us, shamefully, owned slaves. But when push came to shove, Americans were willing to kill and die to make other men free. It was true in the Civil War. It was true in World War Two. It remains true today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We were never perfect, but we were always working on it — at least when we weren’t trying to make a buck, or maybe just trying to avoid attention. America was the land of promise, and the land that delivered on that promise.

American freedom was a huge, sprawling, messy, brawling thing. It consumed everything and anything, and spewed out an unimaginable bounty. For some, the freedom was about growing their business and making money. For others, it was about growing their hair and making love. But it was always here, for anyone willing to risk the journey and leave behind the Old World and its old ways.

But now that we have this wonderful place, this precious idea — what are we doing with it?

Already, the government runs our children’s education and our parents’ retirement. Now we’re allowing it to usurp our banks and nationalize what remains of our auto industries. Within weeks, Washington promises a plan to dictate our health care. To do all this, we’ve let Washington run up enough red ink to impoverish our grandchildren. As if all that weren’t enough, the president still found the time to kick our friends in London and Tel Aviv while courting a genocidal, election-stealing maniac in Tehran. He even gave a speech in Cairo — that oppressed, impoverished Old World megalopolis — in which he assured the world that America really is no better than anywhere else.

So I once again went to Jess Bachman at Wallstats. I gave him my list of expenditures (inflation adjusted of course!) and he went to work. This early Bailout Nation graphic shows the the total costs to the taxpayer of all the monies spent, lent, consumed, borrowed, printed, guaranteed, assumed or otherwise committed.

It is nothing short of astonishing.

It includes the total outlay for all the bailouts to date. In just about one short year (March 2008 - March 2009), the bailouts managed to spend far in excess of nearly every major one time expenditure of the USA, including WW1&2 (omitted from graphic), the moon shot, the New Deal, total NASA budgets (omitted from graphic), Iraq, Viet Nam and Korean wars — COMBINED.

According to the Texas Automobile Dealers Association, there are 415 franchised GM auto dealers in the State of Texas. These largely family-owned businesses generate billions of dollars in annual sales and employ almost 27,000 Texans.

Under the new dealership agreements GM is seeking to, among other things:

· Free itself from Texas law limiting GM’s ability to dictate that a franchise be modified or terminated

· Skirt Texas laws regarding new vehicle inventory by forcing dealers to order new GM vehicles from the manufacturer – even if a dealer does not believe those cars will sell

· Deny Texas dealers their legal right to market other brands

· Alter Texas law (or skirt around existing law) regarding dealer locations

· Limit dealers’ warranty claims under Texas law

States’ legal rights to establish a structure for auto dealerships has been long-standing and unquestioned. The United States Supreme Court recognized that States are “empowered to subordinate the franchise rights of automobile manufacturers to the conflicting rights of their franchisees where necessary to prevent unfair or oppressive trade practices.” (New Motor Vehicle Board of Cal. V. Orrin W. Fox Co. 439 U.S. 96 (1978)).

Trooper Daniel Martin, who was responding to a stolen car report, came up behind the ambulance on a two-lane country road. In Oklahoma, those shoulders are notoriously tricky for even a car to pull off onto. But there’s another factor involved.

As the dash cam clearly shows, a car is on the right-hand shoulder, partially obstructing the highway. Just as the highway patrol pulls up behind the ambulance, the medical unit must swing out to avoid colliding with the parked car.

Let me repeat that, because it’s important: if the ambulance’s driver, Paul Franks, had immediately pulled over when the racing trooper came up behind him, he would have created an accident. It is impossible to safely pull over while slamming into another vehicle.

After the ambulance gets past the parked vehicle, Franks slows and safely pulls over for the trooper. As Martin zooms by–at a speed that I would call excessive for just a stolen car report–he uses the radio to reprimand the ambulance for not pulling over.

Later in the tape, it’s shown that the sheriff’s department is already on scene at the stolen car incident. Martin is released from any need to be at the scene.

Then he whips around, guns his car, and goes out hunting the ambulance. When he catches up with the ambulance, what happens next is a textbook case for bad judgment and abuse of power.

Before the encounter is over, Martin has assaulted the paramedic, frightened the patient, and created a neighborhood scene that is so unprofessional that it’s just about unbelievable. Enraged, he calls for backup, repeatedly threatens the unit’s operators, curses, chokes and slams White up against the ambulance several times–an action the patient later said rocked the unit, frightening her.

He also keeps screaming “you insulted me.” The trooper later says that Franks made an obscene hand gesture as Martin passed the ambulance, a charge Franks denies.

Martin plans a press conference on Monday, according to Fox 23. Martin, who had his wife in the patrol car with him for an as-yet unknown reason, later declared that he’d recently come back from service in Iraq, a fact the OHP has not yet addressed.

Although Martin’s on leave, it took awhile for the OHP to admit that, and then officials noted that the trooper had requested the paid administrative lead. It’s a tangled mess that never had to happen.

As a graduate of the Bartlesville Police Department’s Citizen Police Academy, I’m qualified to ride patrol with local officers, and have done so. I have seen three officers required to safely subdue and arrest a crazed, drunken multiple offender, with a track record for assaulting officers, who was in the middle of the road attacking cars while raging and cursing.

They accomplished the task without rage, profanity or violence. It’s just one example of how tense and dangerous situations are handled every day, on all three shifts.

The stress on officers is immense–but I have never seen one of our officers responding to actual threats and verbal abuse like Martin responded to another emergency responder on duty. Not only that, but as a non-law enforcement professional, I’ve also been cursed, threatened, and insulted.

In fact, I’ve had drunken offenders not only call me names while enroute to jail, but also describe, clearly, the sexual services they expect from me and intend to get. I didn’t lose my cool, nor did my patrol partner.

If a civilian can handle extreme duress and verbal abuse, why can’t a supposedly well-trained professional officer handle an ambulance’s driver choosing not to pull his unit into another vehicle while transporting a patient? What made it necessary for this trooper to hunt down the ambulance and escalate the situation into a public brawl rather than just going on?

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a serious problem–both with this trooper and within the agency. Their actions in stonewalling media and the public has set a bad example. Had a family member not been on hand with a cellphone camera during the episode, Martin’s actions in choking White would have been undocumented as they were out of range of the camera. Not only that, but the backup trooper turned off his dash cam, accrding to earlier reports.

My original story and the family’s cellphone video are here. The newly-released dash cam video follows below.

But proclaiming innocence wasn’t going to be good enough. The Dominican immigrants needed proof.

“I sat in the jail and thought … how could I prove this? What could I do?” Jose, 24, recalled in Spanish during a recent interview.

As he glanced around a holding cell, the answer came to him: Security cameras. Since then, a vindicating video from the club’s cameras has spared the brothers a possible prison term, resulted in two officers’ arrest and become the basis for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The officers, who are due back in court June 26, have pleaded not guilty, and New York Police Department officials have downplayed their case.

But the drug corruption case isn’t alone.

On May 13, another NYPD officer was arrested for plotting to invade a Manhattan apartment where he hoped to steal $900,000 in drug money. In another pending case, prosecutors in Brooklyn say officers were caught in a 2007 sting using seized drugs to reward a snitch for information. And in the Bronx, prosecutors have charged a detective with lying about a drug bust captured on a surveillance tape that contradicts her story.

Elsewhere, Philadelphia prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen drug and gun charges against a man last month when a narcotics officer was accused of making up information on search warrants.

The revelations in New York have triggered internal affairs inquiries, transfers of commanders and reviews of dozens of other arrests involving the accused officers. Many drug defendants’ cases have been tossed out. Others have won favorable plea deals.

The misconduct “strikes at the very heart of our system of justice and erodes public confidence in our courts,” said Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson.

Despite the fallout, authorities describe the corruption allegations as aberrations in a city where officers daily make hundreds of drugs arrests that routinely hold up in court. They also note none of the cases involved accusations of organized crews of officers using their badges to steal or extort drugs or money for personal gain — the story line of full-blown corruption scandals from bygone eras.

Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agrees the majority of narcotics officers probably are clean. But he also believes the city’s unending war on drugs will always invite corruption by some who don’t think twice about framing suspects they’re convinced are guilty anyway.

“Drugs are a dirty game,” Moskos said. “Once you realize it’s a game, then you start playing with the rules to win the game.”

Just ask the Colon brothers.

___

The brothers’ evening started much like any other.

Max’s friend worked at a bodega down the street from Delicias de Mi Tierra, where they’d sometimes drink and play pool in the evenings. This night, the pool table was closed. They instead sat at the bar. Security cameras ended up filming their every move.

The brothers barely moved from the same spot for about 90 minutes as the undercovers entered the bar and mixed with the crowd. Moments after the officers left, a backup team barged in and grabbed six men, including the brothers.

Paperwork signed by “UC 13200″ — Officer Henry Tavarez — claimed that he told a patron he wanted to buy cocaine. By his account, that man responded by approaching the 28-year-old Max, who then went over to the undercover and demanded to pat him down to make sure he wasn’t wearing a wire.

Max collected $100 from Tavarez, the report said. The officer claimed to see two bags of cocaine pass through the hands of three men, including Jose, before they were given to him.

Jose was released after a court appearance. His brother was shipped off to Riker’s Island until he could make bail.

“I was scared,” Max said of his time at Rikers. “I don’t get into trouble, and here I am with real criminals.”

___

The moment Jose walked out of the holding cell, he made a beeline for Delicias and asked for a copy of the security tapes from the night they were arrested, Jan. 4, 2008.

“I knew it would be the only way to defend myself, because I knew the police would not believe me,” he said.

The owner of Delicias queued up the tapes and the two waded through an entire day’s worth of surveillance — until they found the two hours the men spent in the club that night — supposedly selling drugs.

Jose quickly got the tape to defense attorney Rochelle Berliner, a former narcotics prosecutor. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“I almost threw up,” she said. “Because I must’ve prosecuted 1,500, 2,000 drug cases … and all felonies. And I think back, Oh my God, I believed everything everyone told me. Maybe a handful of times did something not sound right to me. I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic but I was like, sick.”

What the tape doesn’t show is striking: At no point did the officers interact with the undercovers, nor did the brothers appear to be involved in a drug deal with anyone else. Adding insult to injury, an outside camera taped the undercovers literally dancing down the street.

Berliner handed the tape over to the District Attorney’s integrity unit. It reviewed the images more than 100 times to make sure it wasn’t doctored by the defense before deciding to drop all charges against the brothers in June.

Six months later, Officer Tavarez and Detective Stephen Anderson pleaded not guilty to drug dealing and multiple other charges that their lawyers say were overblown.

Anderson’s attorney has described him as a seasoned investigator who had no reason to make a false arrest. Tavarez, his attorney said, was a novice undercover merely along for the ride.

___

Life quickly deteriorated for Max and Jose after their arrest.

They owned a successful convenience store in Jackson Heights, but lost their license to sell tobacco, alcohol and lottery tickets. The store closed a week before their case was dismissed.

“My life changed completely,” Jose said. “I had a life before, and I have a different existence now. … Now, I’m not able to afford to live in my own house or care for my children.”

Jose has found construction work, while Max commutes two hours to Philadelphia to work at a relative’s bodega. They stay away from the old neighborhood, where they say ugly rumors about them persist.

The brothers have filed a $10 million false arrest lawsuit against the police department, the officers involved and the city.

Claude Hendrickson III said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized his Douglas AD-4N Skyraider about six weeks ago at the Bessemer Municipal Airport hangar he leases.

“(ICE) basically said we smuggled the plane into the country. My question is how do you smuggle this into the country,” Hendrickson asked pointing to the single-engine aircraft that was commonly used as an attack bomber during the Vietnam War.

Hendrickson’s Skyraider is believed to be one of only four of its kind that remain in the U.S.

The airplane, which Hendrickson bought for $100,000 last May, since its seizure has been moved to another hangar at the Bessemer Airport.

Hendrickson said he is not allowed to fly the plane or perform any work on it until ICE agents release it.

ICE spokesman Temple Black on Tuesday declined comment on the case and forwarded questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Birmingham.

Officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined specifics on the matter, but said “ICE continues to investigate the case.”

Hendrickson said he was not trying to bring the plane into the country illegally. He said he believed he followed all steps to import the plane.

The 48-year-old businessman hired attorneys Joe Lassiter and Anthony Johnson. Hendrickson said his attorneys on Tuesday met with lawyers in the U.S. Attorneys in Birmingham regarding the plane.

Hendrickson said he has been advised that ICE had 60 days to file any criminal charges against him. He said the plane has already been impounded for about 45 days.

MISSED PAPERWORK:

Hendrickson, who lives in Shelby County, said he was in Texas on business when federal agents seized the plane at the Bessemer Airport in May.

He flew into the airport as soon as he heard about the seizure and briefly met with ICE agents.

Hendrickson said ICE agents told him then that he had failed to fill out a form required by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives when he imported the plane into the states from France.

Hendrickson said he was unaware he had to register the plane with ATF since he removed the aircraft’s artillery while it was still in France.

Hendrickson did register the plane with the FAA.

The FAA issued a certificate of registration on the airplane in September 2008, according to the agency’s Web site. The registered owner of the aircraft, according to the FAA, is Dixie Equipment LLC, the business Hendrickson owns.

IN HONOR OF FATHER:

Hendrickson’s father, Claude F. Hendrickson Jr., is a retired captain in the Navy. The elder Hendrickson flew planes like a Skyraider during his service.

It was his father’s service as a Naval pilot that sparked the younger Hendrickson’s fascination with airplanes. The younger Hendrickson owns several vintage military aircraft that he houses in Bessemer including the exact SNJ-4 warbird his father flew during his time in the military.

He and his father made the trip to France last year for the Skyraider. After inspecting the aircraft, the two men hired a pilot to fly a 15-day trip to get the plane from Europe to Buffalo, N.Y.

The Hendricksons planned to enter the plane in air shows across the country. Hendrickson already flies several of his military planes in air shows.

The younger Hendrickson said once the Skyraider had made a successful run in air shows, he planned to donate the aircraft in his father’s honor.

“Ultimately, my intentions from the beginning have been to fly this plane for five to 10 years in air shows and then donate it to the Southern Museum of Flight in my father’s name.”

Now, Hendrickson worries that the government will destroy the vintage aircraft.

He was proud as well of the life he built on Woodlawn Avenue — an unremarkable street set amid the gang violence and poverty of the city’s southern swath. It’s an odd place for a cop to live. But it was where a black kid from a Mississippi trailer park managed to buy a real house. It was where he turned an old, beat-up bungalow into a real home with dark red trim, marble fireplaces and trendy bamboo stalks along the edge of the lawn.

In the early morning darkness of May 25, 2006, Franklin’s two worlds — his life on Woodlawn and his life in the LAPD — collided.

The phone in his upstairs bedroom woke him from a dead sleep at 4 a.m. His wife was away visiting her family, and their two small children slept down the hall. The voice on the line identified himself as a lieutenant with the LAPD’s elite SWAT unit. The house, he told Franklin, was surrounded. Peering out of the bedroom window, Franklin saw it was no joke: a knot of heavily armed officers were pressed up against the house. Snipers were perched on the neighbor’s porch. A helicopter hovered overhead.

Franklin had no idea what his own Police Department would want with him. He asked for time to roust his 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. He had 20 minutes, the SWAT officer said, or police would come in and get him.

Before Franklin pulled open the front door and walked into the blinding glare of spotlights, he put himself between his little boy and girl and took their hands in his own. “I wanted the police to be able to see our hands,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to give them any reason to shoot us.”

Franklin is a tightly wound man. When he describes the LAPD’s six-hour search of his house, his jaw clenches and he seethes words like “degrading” and “humiliating.” He recalls how he was made to sit in the back of a police van with his children, guarded by someone wearing the same uniform he wore each day. He remembers how neighbors gathered to gawk as drug-sniffing dogs were led inside, dogs that left paw prints on his bed. He talks about the quiet fury he felt as his demands for an explanation were ignored.

“They came into my house,” he says. “That’s my family. My reputation.”

What happened that morning is not in dispute. Why it happened, however, is.

If the explanation of officers who oversaw the search is to be believed, the incident was an unfortunate mistake born of honest police work. However, Franklin, in a lawsuit and interviews, has alleged that the search was the culmination of a campaign of retaliation orchestrated by his supervisors, with whom he had feuded.

Agent Francesca Perot of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said the Austin Police Department contacted the agency after a man found the parts in a Dumpster on Swanee Drive, near Airport and Lamar boulevards. The parts were eight upper receivers for an AR-15 rifle worth about $500 each, Perot said.

The items have been recovered, and the ATF is investigating.