Getting out of jury duty…

Jury duty is fine for the folks who work for government or corporations that can be counted on to pay them while they do their civic duty. For the truly retired with too much time on their hands jury duty can be fascinating. I’ve spent endless hours in courtrooms and have found that people who love jury duty are the same folks who watch The Jerry Springer Show. Too many civil and criminal trials offer an inside view of America’s trashiest trailer parks.

But for real folks with their own businesses, jury duty can be a nightmare of inconvenience, lost business opportunities, clients and expense. People with a life have nothing to gain by sitting on some jury and a lot to lose.

Because I’m an ex-cop and still work as a private investigator both prosecutors and defense attorneys are afraid to have me judge their criminal cases. In civil cases the reasoning is somewhat different but they don’t want me there either. If I’m called for this service I get shuffled around to courtroom after courtroom and eventually sent home. For me the jury selection auditions are a giant pain in the ass.

I’ve learned one thing about jury duty over the years. People who serve on juries want to be there, (YIKES!) or they’re just not smart enough to get out of serving. The folks that are finally selected for trials are always the last people I’d want to judge me or anyone else that I care about.

I have a friend I consider very bright who came up with a novel way to shirk his jury duty. Whenever he gets a jury duty questionnaire in the mail he borrows a set a crayons from his daughter and uses them to fill out the form. Next he draws little pictures on this form of stick figures hanging from a gallows and such. The jury commissioners always promptly send him an excused notice.

You shot someone in self-defense, what’s next?

For starters you’ll wish you were somewhere else and could somehow avoided the mess you’re in. Always remember that conflict avoidance is the best policy…

You survived the shooting, now you must survive the criminal justice system. These are ten rules for you to follow:

1. Do not take risks by hanging around because you may still be in REAL DANGER. If you are in no danger, render first aid to your attacker. Remember you only wanted to stop him, not kill him. More than 60% of people who are shot actually live and can be counted on to tell whopping lies about you in court.

2. If you can, take any weapons that were used against you because those weapons will grow legs and run away. You’ll need them for evidence!

3. Don’t call 911 yourself, instead ask someone else to do that for you. The 911 operator will always ask you 20 questions you are far better off not answering. Those calls are always tape-recorded.

4. Call an experienced CRIMINAL lawyer! Get a good licensed private investigator on the scene to find and interview witnesses and look for evidence.

5. When the cops come to you, and they will. Remember four simple words! I WANT A LAWYER. You may add, that you will be happy to cooperate but you want a lawyer present when that happens. Now zip that mouth shut tight! You will want to scream about how you were in fear of your life. DON’T DO THAT!

6. The cops are going to take your clothing, weapons holsters, perhaps even your cell phone too. If your car is somehow involved they will impound it and send it to the crime lab. Your home, office and storage facilities may be searched too.

7. DON’T TAMPER WITH EVIDENCE OR TELL LIES, unless a long prison term is something you always wanted.

8. Turn over all recovered weapons to your lawyer or private investigator for safekeeping.

9. Don’t talk to the media unless your lawyer tells you to do so.

10. Don’t talk to anyone about the case except your lawyer and investigator. That includes family members!

Fraud in the background investigation business…

If you want to learn about someone’s background, those pay Internet sites run by unlicensed “investigators” are hardly more than useless. They will offer a 50 state, “police check” for a really low fee. They lead you to believe they have the real inside information. When they vouch for the person you’ve requested information about, they leave you with confidence that this is a stellar person you can allow to hold your wallet. For the most part I’ve learned these unlicensed, so called information brokers are crooks and clowns that don’t know the first thing about conducting a background investigation.

Criminal records are kept in several places:
The FBI
State police agencies
Local police agencies
City, County, State and Federal Courts
Departments of Corrections
Sex offender registration databases

Records maintained by the law enforcement agencies are protected by numerous laws, which make certain types of unauthorized disclosures a felony. In the old days cops were never caught passing record information around. Today these requests are carefully tracked and many cops have been prosecuted for these crimes. No cop in his right mind will try this these days.

If you want to learn about the background of someone start with a LICENSED PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, preferably one who was a former or retired cop. The investigator will search the records of the courts, department of corrections, and sex offenders registrations along with limited access to some police agencies and get you the best possible information. A professional investigator will give you a copy of any records he captures along the way.

I’ll never understand why a federal conviction database is not maintained as a true public record. All convicted criminals have earned the Mark of Cain or that Scarlet Letter. That’s part of the punishment for the crime. Names can always be removed should pardons be issued or convictions later get reversed by some court.

Also read http://crimefilenews.blogspot.com/2006/01/if-i-get-caught-ill-just-tellem-im.html

If I get caught, I’ll just tell’em I’m Bill Clinton!

What’s in a name? If I ever get arrested for some disgusting or notorious crime I’m going to tell the cops that my name is William Jefferson Clinton. That may sound cute, but the cops will book me under whatever name I give, and throughout that entire case the name will be attached to that record. Somewhere they may attach other names to the record I have used in the past, but they will never remove William Jefferson Clinton from that record. What’s even more fun is that I happen to know former President Clinton’s date of birth and social security number and they will incorporate this information into the record too. So much for a public criminal court record being proof of anything at all!

So how can anyone tell who is who? The way the cops do this is through numerical values assigned to a full set of 10 fingerprints on an inked card or scan file. That’s a fingerprint classification number that you will see in the upper right corner of a set of fingerprints taken from convicted criminal, Malcolm Little also know as Malcolm X.

Fingerprint classification values are unique enough to separate of the real William Jefferson Clinton from his pretenders. Once a fingerprint classification is made, a unique number that forever identifies person assigned by the FBI. Another unique number is created by the state police agency for their files.

FUN WITH FINGERPRINTS!

Fingerprinting by local cops was too often a disaster. Many local cops did not collect the prints correctly and the fingerprints could not be classified at all. A person could be arrested for a felony, give a phony name and if he got less than a prison term he may never be fingerprinted again! This has gotten better with improved training.

CHANGING FINGERPRINTS…

When the fingerprint system was established criminals tried to defeat it with acid, sandpaper and even cutting the skin. The results made their prints even more unique and identifiable. Bank robber, John Dillinger found this out the hard way.

There is a way to change your fingerprints for good. A person seeking to hide is identity for good can have the skin re-transplanted on his fingers with skin from his toes. The fingerprint technicians can be easily fooled by simply re-transplanting only one or two fingers.

A former client of mine, known at least for a while as, David Pecard actually performed this surgery on himself and spent a couple of decades as a world class imposter who masqueraded as an Army General, medical doctor, lawyer, and was even appointed as a Deputy Sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona despite a prior felony arrest record.

DNA will soon be the new standard to supplement fingerprints. That will prove to be entertaining too as scientists are working on ways to change people’s DNA to avoid diseases.

Here is a case where a doctor admitted changing a fugitive's fingerprints.

Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio does it again!

America’s self-proclaimed, toughest sheriff never met a TV camera he didn’t love. I’m sure he stays up at night figuring out ways to hold yet another press conference to unveil some new way he’s found to humiliate, deprive or otherwise cause suffering to his jail inmates. I’ve never really had a problem with this except for one not so minor detail. A portion of his inmates are not criminals, but people simply waiting for a day in court to prove their innocence. Criminal allegations can stem from mere finger pointing by a mistaken or prevaricating witness. Some innocent people have had to sit in jail for as long as three years waiting for their trials because their bail was set too high for them to post and be released pending trial.

Sheriff Joe is the guy who put his prisoners in striped uniforms, pink underwear and confiscated their girly magazines. Along the way Joe also established chain gangs for the hapless men and women who reside year around in tents.

I’ve known Sheriff Joe since before he was Sheriff and found him to be personable and even enjoyable to be around. His diabolical sense of humor is truly unique and entertaining. In another life Joe could return as a successful comedian.

Sheriff Joe has his detractors who have vented their frustrations to the Phoenix New Times. The allegations and lawsuits against Sheriff Joe and his administration have been ugly, expensive and avoidable.

Sometimes Sheriff Joe has a good idea that’s worthy of yet another press conference and this may be one of them. Of course, I’m going to take credit for the idea that I gave him sometime in 1997. Sheriff Joe took thousands of active arrest warrants and placed the database on the Sheriff’s website. The public is invited to check up on their family, friends, neighbors, and of course enemies. Should a fugitive be located on the database the idea is that Joe’s new "Techno-cop Posse" will drop a dime on the fugitives and Sheriff Joe can hand out more, green bologna sandwiches to his new tenants.

Not all warrants can be listed in this very public forum. Warrants issued as a result of a Grand Jury Indictment are secret until served on the suspect. Joe is working on getting changes made so that every warrant is listed.

What I like about the website is that parents looking for baby sitters, landlords screening prospective tenants and of course employers checking on new hires can be protected from criminal fugitives. This is a reasonable extension of the “Megan’s Law” concept that put the convicted sex offenders in Cyberspace.

Now the bad news, in Maricopa County alone there’s over 70,000 fugitives. If they were all caught in a day, week or even a month they’d have to use the largest sports stadium to house these folks. The courts would be absolutely crushed under the weight of all these cases. In any event I hope this idea spreads across the country.

Click here to read about the first two captures!

WHAT ABOUT THE VICTIMS?

DATELINE-San Jose, CA. Two “victims” were removed from our streets and sentenced to a California State Prison for nine and 12 year respectively for a plethora of fraud charges. They are 40 year-old, Anna Aylia and her husband, Jamie Plascencia, 44 of Las Vegas, Nevada.

They’re the geniuses that purchased a severed finger of a pal and later used it in a phony legal claim to extort money from the Wendy’s fast food company. Anna Aylia claimed she was eating her Wendy’s chili when she bit into the finger she alleged was a surprise ingredient. The rat then went on national television and put on a real show to bolster her phony claims.

Wendy’s went trough a public relations nightmare and a huge financial loss because of the get rich quick scam of Aylia and Plasencia. These rats had filed numerous claims in the past profiting as professional victims.

For the Victim’s Right’s advocates out there this is only the tip of the iceberg. Your victims are far too often not victims, but just plain sewer rats.

A free movie! WATERBOURNE A terror plot in L.A.

This is Gypsy. Enjoy a nice video...

A video of hate produced in Chicago.

My friends commenting at Secondcity.blogspot.com posted a link to a video produced by some the trash that still occupy what’s left of the aging and huge ghetto called Cabrini Green. I must warn you that it’s both sickening and offensive. With surveillance cameras, loads of cops and the Chicago handgun ban there’s no stopping this bunch. Too many good cops heve been gunned down in this war zone.

I can’t imagine that any cure can possibly exist for this race-based disease.

Mayor Daley needs a stronger gun ban on the law-abiding folks in Chicago so these sewer rats can victimize others in safety.

Here is the link: http://www.gangstacity.net/

If you saw the problem, here's the solution:

Let's go kill a cripple!

The killing of a 76 year-old, man who’s blind, nearly deaf and confined to a wheelchair is on the agenda for our society. There’s no question that the soon to be killed senior, Clarence Ray Allen is vile sort who earned his fate. The reality is that someone like this is long past being a danger to anyone.

I can’t help but believe it’s a cowardly act to take a helpless human being, strap him down and kill him. Add to this that the man is a blind, deaf and a cripple makes this killing especially shameful.

There can be a real need to kill a person. Sometimes one’s own survival depends on the killing or there can be a need to prevent harm to in innocent person. Eighteen years ago I had to shoot another in order to live. There is never a need to kill a sick and helpless old man.

Clarence Ray Allen who faces execution at San Quentin on January 17, 2006, suffered a major heart attack last September, has advanced diabetes and can’t last much longer anyway.

What a grand example we can use to demonstrate kindness or that killing others is somehow a bad idea to our children.

No I won’t mourn Clarence Ray Allen. However, I will morn for the humanity we will all lose here.

This link is to the California Attorney General's Office documents that defend Killing Clarence Ray Allen: http://ag.ca.gov/victimservices/pdf/CAllenPressPackE2.pdf

An update:

San Quentin, January 17, 2006. Clarence Ray Allen was put to death the day after his 76th birthday amid controversy over whether the state should kill a diabetic old man who, his attorneys said, could barely see, hear or walk. Supported by four large correctional officers, he shuffled from his wheelchair to the gurney where he was executed.

The face of a stone cold killer...

This pretty, innocent looking little girl is really a diabolical, homicidal maniac. Her Name is Rhoda Penmark. You can catch her in the act here: http://www.theatrepalisades.org/

East Valley Tribune quotes Paul Huebl on road rage and other highway shootings.

If the medical examiners and coroners across the country put all the bodies in one place of people killed in connection with this juvenile gesture they’d call it a holocaust. Read about it in the East Valley Tribune.

The East Valley tribune covers all of the East side of Phoenix, AZ and it's neighboring communities such as Scottsdale, Mesa and Chandler.

Here's the link: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=56971

The undisputed King of Chicagoland’s crime reporters.

TV news journalist, Edward R. Murrow became the default, cookie-cutter image of television news broadcasters. Murrow was smart, well educated and well traveled. Murrow was and is the original pioneer the new medium of television news.

TV news is a place where everyone does everything almost exactly the same. Originality in TV news broadcasting was killed the day after Morrow’s image hit the tube. Nobody dares to stray from the format, the teases or the delivery. The good thing about Murrow was that his style and methods were easy to copy. TV news is not a place for individuals that dare to be different. That was the case until the King of Chicagoland’s crime reporters came along.

This King did not come out of any cookie cutter! He’s Chicago’s incomparable, John Drummond who has been a TV news, crime reporter for nearly 40 years. During that time, Drummond has learned more about police work and investigation than most street cops. He is considered as one of the boys in any police station within the Chicago market area.

Along with being far more informative than his peers, Drummond’s reports are fair and accurate to a fault. That, more than anything else earned Drummond the hard won respect and trust of the rank and file cops throughout Chicagoland. Cops are always the first to notice when any reporter gets a crime story wrong.

Drummond came to the Chicago television market after earning his reporting chops at a Rockford Illinois TV station. After a short stint as a radio reporter at, WIND in Chicago, where he covered a nasty 1967 Northlake, IL Bank robbery that resulted in the brutal murders of two cops. Drummond was quickly hired by WBBM-TV in 1969. Drummond began as a general assignment reporter and soon found a home reporting on the crime and courts beat. Drummond has covered nearly every riot, major crime, and court or police scandal since.

It was on n a really cold Chicago December 4th morning around 4:15 A.M., when a squad of Chicago police officers assigned to the Cook County State’s Attorneys office raided a West side flat. A horrific firefight ensued that resulted in the deaths of Black Panthers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. A catch of deadly weapons was recovered. The surviving occupants of the flat were arrested on a variety of charges. The controversy surrounding this raid has never really ended.

A Cook County Special Prosecutor was named and 14 officers along with the Cook County State’s Attorney, Edward V. Hanrahan were soon indicted by a Grand Jury on various state charges. The cops and Hanrahan were eventually cleared in criminal court.

How that case was resolved was beyond astonishing. A bizarre deal was reached in 1972 where charges against the surviving Black Panthers inside the apartment were dropped along with the charges against Hanrahan and his raiders. This was the beginning of an uneasy truce between the cops and Panthers.

It took more than an entire decade before the civil suit against Hanrahan was finally settled. Nearly two million dollars were handed over to nine plaintiffs. This internationally reported story typecast Drummond as a hard-hitting crime reporter for life.

Drummond has crossed the line from life to art as an actor playing a TV reporter. He can be seen in fellow Chicagoian, Andrew Davis productions, The Fugitive, Chain Reaction and Above The Law. With any luck Drummond will play himself this time in my film, Come Friday about Chicago policewoman Ann Leybourne.

I wrote two scenes for Drummond who actually delivered several reports on both the serial rape investigations and the later justifiable killing of the Friday Night Rapist by his intended victim. War hero Audie Murphy played himself in films, and so can Chicago’s King of crime reporters, John Drummond.

If I was a entertainment executive at a place like my friends of at Grammnet Productions at Paramount Pictures, I’d be gunning to open the very next TV season with 13 episodes of John Drummond, Crime Reporter. Who knows, maybe someone over there likes that idea.

I should have guessed there was a John Drummond book out there. My copy is on its way to me as we speak (Thanks John!). The book is available from Amazon.com


Watch an interview od the Bulldog here!

Pardon

When Is A Pardon Really A Pardon?

It’s a rare day in America when someone is pardoned for a notorious crime. It’s even more unusual for an offender to be pardoned and forgiven in our world these days. Habitual armed robber and convicted killer, Mehmet Ali Agca is about to be freed. Agca is now 46 and may be released as early as tomorrow. That’s what's been reported by, the Anatolia news agency. Agca’s most infamous act was the 1981 shooting of the saintly, Pope John Paul II inside St. Peter’s Square. Agca shot the Pope while on the lam after breaking out of prison where he was serving a ten-year sentence for killing a Turkish journalist.

Just one of the bizarre parts of this story is that Agca will immediately be drafted into the Turkish military. I guess the Turkish Army must need people experienced with guns and grenades.

Extraordinary and truly amazing was the visit Pope John Paul II made to Agca’s prison cell to personally forgive this papal assailant. I think the Pope was trying to set an example that people can change no matter how evil they once were. I can only guess that an offender’s change for the better may be somewhat easier when genuine forgiveness has been granted by a victim the crime.

A similar act occurred when victim, Mary Jo Buttafucco forgave the infamous, Long Island Lolita, Amy Fisher for shooting her in the face with a pistol. Mrs. Buttafucco personally asked that Fischer be paroled from a New York prison. The interesting part of that story is that since her parole, Fischer has apparently behaved a lot better than Mrs. Buttafucco’s former husband, Joey Buttafucco who has been supporting bail bondsmen and criminal lawyers these days with his repeated scrapes with the law.

America’s prisons are well on their way to becoming nursing homes with the aging of our criminals. We have thousands of incarcerated prisoners who need their diapers changed, are confined to wheelchairs or bed-ridden. America is too enamored with revenge to release these now harmless criminals back into society. Some of them arn't even aware they're in prison.

We need to watch and learn from the release of, Mehmet Ali Agca. I suspect that if he gets into the slightest legal jam it will make worldwide news. I guess I’m betting with the Pope on this one. Good luck, Mr. Agca.

I have my own amazing story to tell about my own experiences with Pope John Paul II that will be posted in this blog in the future.

An update with lots of details, January 12, 2006: http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=1497668

Another update:
ANKARA (Reuters) - Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, has been detained and is set to return to jail after Turkey's Supreme Court on Friday overturned a decision to release him.

Following the ruling, security forces seized Agca from an address in Istanbul and took him to police headquarters, Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said on the NTV news channel.

Making new friends in L.A.

Okay boys, eat your hearts out! This is my new friend, Jill Hennesy! She's that cutie pie star of Crossing Jordan.

Click on the picture to see it full size.

Dykes And Domestic Violence Laws

Okay, I confess to not understanding the lesbian community on a couple of issues. First of all, I have nothing against lesbians. I am just like them in that I prefer women any day to men!

Let me start with the National Organization of Women. Yes, they are misnamed. They should rightly call themselves the National Organization of Dykes. That’s not intended as an insult or slur in any way. The plain truth is that NOW is a lesbian outfit.

Why is it that the dykes demanded abortion rights and fought so hard for draconian laws against domestic violence? No lesbian can get pregnant without the help of a really friendly fellow. No lesbian can get beaten by her husband, unless of course she has one. That may sound simple, but it’s not.

By supporting these anti-men platforms the reality is our lesbian ladies can win the trust of the pregnant and abused women to better seduce them. Comfort and companionship is always needed by these victims of men’s foul deeds. The dykes are always ready and waiting!

It was little more than two decades ago when I watched a large demonstration against domestic violence. More than a hundred, dumpy and homely dykes who all had crew cuts and wore men’s clothing, ranted and raved about men beating their wives. They demanded new laws. The laws against assault, battery and murder were in place in all 50 states. I’m sorry, I could not then nor do I now see any problem. You could not get any women in this bunch to live with a man on a bet! I don’t know too many men that would fall in love with these bulls either.

I don’t want to be seen in the light of supporting men who beat women. Those cowards need to be Severely dealt with by conventional laws. Unfortunately women are sometimes injured or even killed by their abusive partners. Too often some domestic violence victims fall in to a bizarre, victim mode where every partner they choose beats them. I won’t even try to explain that one.

The politicians all listened carefully and soon crafted new domestic violence laws that exacted punishment from the accused even without a criminal conviction. The only needed law that made sense to me was one prohibiting a man who beats his wife from having a wife. The politicians somehow overlooked that idea.

The Unintended Consequences

Yep, men were soon arrested by the boatload. Trees were killed all over America for use in making paper for Orders of Protection. Our courts began handing them out like candy to anyone and everyone. Probable cause or proof is not needed to obtain such an order. Congress even went so far as to prohibit as a felony, the possession of a firearm for life of anyone convicted in the past of threatening or assaulting a domestic partner. The hapless people served with a domestic violence order are even required to surrender any and all firearms for the duration of the order.

Then something strange happened. Lesbians soon found themselves behind bars for; you guessed it, domestic violence. It seems that lesbians have their little spats too. We can only hope that our higher courts can undo some of the silliness brought on by America’s dykes.

The strange case of Howard Morgan

Police work is dangerous. Life and death decisions must be made in split seconds. Survival dictates that if cops error they do so on the side of self-protection at the expense of suspected offenders. There are no second place winners in gunfights.

We are an unforgiving society when our cops make mistakes involving their own survival. An error on the side of survival can sometimes cause a good cop to be disgraced, fired and even imprisoned. Political or racial overtones sometimes can set justice aside and destroy the lives of honorable cops.

Cops by their basic nature are the good guys. They chose a life where they can protect their friends and neighbors from harm. Background checks before hiring and a strict program of observation during training and a probationary period work to insure only the good guys can wear the police star.

No matter what view you take of this case, it’s as ugly as ugly can get. It’s a story about a deadly battle between who we like to call, the good guys.

It all happened on February 21, 2005, on a near, South side Chicago Street. Beat officers on routine patrol observed a moving vehicle with its headlights off just before 1:00 a.m. This is an area where whores and drugs can be found. Officers are rightly on their toes when making stops of anyone in this neighborhood at night.

What happens next is anyone’s guess if you choose to believe the good guys. The problem is they’re all good guys here. The patrol officers pull over the offending driver, Howard Morgan. In a flash Morgan is shot 25 times by the patrol officers. Two patrol officers are also shot. Presumably, Howard Morgan shot them.

Howard Morgan, 51, is also a cop. Morgan was a Chicago police officer who after eight years abandoned that position over a requirement that all Chicago police officers live within that city’s boundaries. Morgan secured a well paying position as a railroad cop that would let him live wherever he wanted. Morgan has no known criminal history.

One of the unspoken but real perks of being a cop is an end to receiving citations for traffic infractions. Traffic stops between cops are really more like a social visit. Unless the offending cops is drunk, combative or involved in other criminal activity such a stop would never make the Six O’clock News.

The official police version came from Pat Camden the Chicago police spokesman. The mêlée began when Morgan identified himself as a cop as he was being frisked. Camden said, Morgan pulled his semi-automatic pistol and fired it at the officers and the officers returned fire.

The officers returned a lot of fire. 25 rounds struck Howard Morgan. This is not surprising considering the Chicago Police Department insisted their officers carry a really weak choice of a nine millimeter service round. These bullets are incredibly ineffective for police work.

What’s missing from this story? Let’s begin with a motive. Try as I might I can’t think of one here. Did Morgan simply snap without reason? That’s just not likely. No drugs, whores or other criminal evidence has ever surfaced in this mix.

What about intoxication? Were drugs or alcohol is Morgan’s bloodstream? Yes they did examine Morgan’s blood for these things. The results of such testing have not yet surfaced. I would expect that if the tests were positive that information would have made the news for sure.

Howard spent nearly a year in the Cook County jail unable to post the 10% requirement of his $2 million-dollar bond. That all changed when an anonymous donor provided nearly the entire bail amount. Emotions ran high on both side of this mess as Morgan was allowed to wait for his day in court at home. I don’t think Morgan who is still recovering from his injuries is a flight risk.

This case may seem to be fueled by race issues, but I don’t think that’s the case here. Only the participants of this encounter know whatever really happened. No matter who was right, or wrong, everyone involved regrets the result.

Crimefile will be watching these case and reporting new developments.
WMAQ-TV report: http://www.nbc5.com/news/5840876/detail.html?z=dp&dpswid=2265994&dppid=65193

Update: 1/27/12 Seven years after the shooting a retrial ended convicting Morgan. I don't think he will live to see freedom again. From the FOP Lodge 7 Website: For a second day in a row, in separate cases, a Cook County Jury listened to the evidence presented by ASAs Dan Groth and Phyllis Warren and delivered justice for our own. Howard Morgan was found guilty this evening on all counts for the attempted murders of Officers John Wrigley, Tim Finley, Eric White and Nick Olsen.

Sergeant Roy Swanson is a lifesaver…

I have been through lots of firearms training throughout my life. It all began in Junior ROTC at Chicago’s Senn High School, then continued through The U.S. Army, The Chicago Police Department, and the Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor’s Development School just to name only a few of the highlights.

I’ve had firearms instructors, lots of them. I’m thankful for each and every one of them for keeping me safe and for the things they enabled me to teach others. The result of all that training is that innocent lives were and are still being protected.

Of all my instructors the legendary, Chicago police sergeant, Roy Swanson stands out as the best of the best. I say that because during the time I was a cop I never had to fire my service weapon at another human being. The training Roy and the others gave me helped keep me focused and in control tactically.

Then one warm October night while working in Arizona as a private detective, a drunken white-collar criminal who was armed with a Colt Gold Cup, .45, in near total darkness, confronted me. This, after I served his wife a court summons for eviction. He unexpectedly pistol-whipped me cutting open my scalp. I was stunned, went down on one knee as blood rushed out of the wound blinding me in one eye.

In an instant I had a guardian angel at my side. I heard the unmistakable clear and calm voice of Sgt. Roy Swanson, “Stay calm, and keep control!” Things were happening in slow motion. I drew my little .38 Smith & Wesson five shot Bodyguard. Rose to my feet and commanded my attacker to drop his weapon. The gunman walked backwards, then stopped, pointed his gun at me while saying, “I’ll kill you first!” I could not see the sights of my revolver and only the outline of my assailant. Instead of panicking, I squeezed off all five shots. I cold hear Swanson saying, “Take your time! Squeeze that trigger!”

All of my shots hit the armed thug. Three of the bullets struck critical areas of his body. One bullet traversed his arm interrupting the nerves between his brain and trigger finger. He never fell and I had no way of telling he had been hit or otherwise incapacitated. I did not stop to reload, but instead fled to safety. Because of prompt modern medical attention, the miscreant lived.

Because of my training and my guardian angel, Sgt. Roy Swanson I’m able to write this tribute to him so many years later. Sergeant Swanson, you’re a real hero to the thousands of officers you’ve trained!

ACLU plans a CATCH-A-COP-ON-CAMERA, anti-brutality campaign.

The St. Louis MO. Branch of the ACLU announced they were planning to give away video cameras so that people prone to police brutality victimization could tape the cops beating them. Forgive me for being skeptical of this ACLU brainstorm but I think it’s both comical and a waste of their donor’s money.

There’s a nervous buzz about this among my Chicago cop friends who fear that video scenes taken out of context could land them on the other side of the prison bars. I guess this is some sort of retaliation for the installation of the Chicago Police Ghettocams in high crime neighborhoods. Wait a second! This is happening in St. Louis, not in Chicago.

Smile! You're on GHETTOCAM!

But what if they do this, catch-a-cop-on-camera crap here? Officer Wallupemgood put that question to me. I told him I thought that this was a tit for tat situation, just don’t get caught on camera dishing out too much tat!

Okay, being the wise man I am, I figured out the reality of this situation. If the ACLU hands out the cameras to responsible people in these neighborhoods where the brutality complaints are being made, that’s the end of the problem. Responsible people work at jobs and need to sleep at night when this stuff supposedly happens. The camera operators and the cameras will be, in bed, snug as a bug in the rug. There will be no incriminating video popping up on the Six O’clock News.

All right, the ACLU is smarter than that. The ACLU will give the cameras to the neighborhood lads in the thick of the action. This should not create a care in the world! Let’s see, the ACLU hands out 10 cameras to the boyz in the hood. Five will be traded for crack or that AK they’ve been looking at. The other five will be in the hands of those too enamored with their new toys to give them up. These cameras will be working all the time! Of course they’ll start with the homemade porn flicks. Then they will use the cameras to tape each other in their colors and whip out firepower so they can see themselves on TV like their heroes, Tupac and Tookie.

Finally, the good part! Our boyz use these cameras donated by the good folks at the ACLU to document their next crime spree. Guess who will catch these guys and confiscate the cameras as evidence? You’ve got it! Yep, Officer Wallupemgood!

Cooking the crime statistics books

It's the end of the year and cities like Chicago will be releasing crime statistics to the egger news reporters who tell their viewers and readers how safe their city is or is not.

The FBI began collecting data about crimes sometime before 1970s in what's called the Uniform Crime Reports or UCR. Soon each state followed suit. The idea was to spot trends that could somehow be controlled by law enforcement. By default, this became a tool for local government to obtain more federal tax dollars. What we really got with the UCR was a Pandora's box filled with misleading and meaningless paper.

Police departments everywhere conformed their crime case report headers to match the UCR definitions of the involved crimes rather than the titles under the state laws that were violated. Police administrators would then transmit the numbers to the FBI. The idea was that data from each incident would be stored for later study and used to better deploy resources. Crimes were classified as to being the more serious, Part One crimes or the less serious Part Two crimes.

Along the way, local politicians found ways to exploit and abuse the UCR statistics to feather their incumbency. When the politicians had good numbers they would generate press releases taking credit. If the numbers were bad, challenging candidates running for office would issue their own pressers blaming the incumbents. The media soon began examining the numbers and to this day treat these statistics as fact.

Between incumbent politicians and their appointed police chief's, creativity would not be lost. They would soon conspire to subvert the entire concept of the reports to either look better in the public's eyes or to raid the federal treasury. The UCR lost its credibility along the way. Police administrators taught their officers clever and cute ways to skew the UCR statistics.

This is how it works. When an officer would respond to the scene of a residential structure where a door or window was broken and property was taken, the heading of the officer's report should be, Burglary. Then the crime is cleared by an arrest or not. That's simple enough. The problem is that burglaries are an ugly, Party One crime.

The officers are simply told that their reports will be classified as Criminal Damage to Property for the door or window breaking and Theft for the taking of property. They should steer clear of reporting the more serious burglaries. Instead they'd be reporting the softer, and more tolerable lesser Part Two crimes.

They soon added a little twist to this since showing no burglaries would raise red flags and quickly prove deceptive. They dictated to the officers, that if they made an arrest and cleared the crime, then the officer's report was classified as a Burglary. This way, they could show nearly a 100% clearance report for any and all burglaries!

The rank and file cops nearly always go along with the charade because it makes them and their fellow officers appear to be more effective crime fighters.

Murders are the most difficult of crimes to cover up. Cops can't simply run around hiding the bodies of homicide victims. A better way is to classify the report as a Death Investigation. This is playing with the variables such an accident, a suicide, natural causes or something else. This is really easy to do when the victims are marginal people with no families or friends scrutinizing the cop's actions. A perfect candidate for the cover-up would be dealing with a dead whore found in the dumpster with needle tracks all over her arms. This is the most difficult kind of case to solve anyway. The idea is that the Death Investigation can be reclassified if an arrest is made or not.

Will the news reporters be able to prove the deception? The work involved would bust the budget and resources of any news organization in a large city. But with homicide cases there's a simpler way to uncover the chicanery.

Using public records, and freedom of information laws reporters can obtain the names, dates, locations, cause and manner of death statistics from the county medical examiner or coroner's offices. Then they can match the numbers with the "official police" offering and they may just have some really tough questions for your local police chief about cooking the crime statistic books.

The best tool used to kill crime these days is a pencil. Making the crime statistics of the community match the desired results sought by elected officials, to fool the public and media is a snap.