As part of that report, I mentioned two murders that occurred of those who documented governmental misconduct, of Sunny Shue in 2010 and Adam Rupeka in 2016 (see blogs here and here), whistleblowers of governmental misconduct - judicial and police misconduct in Sunny Shue's case and police misconduct in Adam Rupeka's case.
There are no efforts to even investigate those murders.
I also wrote about several attempts at murder of my friend Barbara O'Sullivan:
first, Delaware County Sheriff's Deputy Derek Bowie tried to run her over while she was videotaping his mishandling of Barbara's daughter - yet, he was not able to either kill Barbara or destroy the tablet with the video evidence in it.
Derek Bowie is the local "blue blood" since his uncle Jeff Bowie is a longtime investigator for the Delaware County District Attorney's Office, NY, and where many other relatives of Derek Bowie are or were longtime employees of the Delaware County - so nobody prosecuted him, and instead he started a criminal prosecution of Barbara and her daughter, and was allowed to remain on the case and arrest both Barbara and her daughter on charges he fabricated.
Then, Derek Bowie came to Barbara's house at night a week after his first murder attempt, arrested Barbara and her daughter on fabricated warrants (fabrication of the warrant of arrest is confirmed through testimony of Delhi Town Court judge Richard Gumo), attempted to kill her dog, took the dog out of the house and searched the now empty house for the tablet with video evidence of his misconduct.
Only the tablet was hidden well, and Bowie did not find it.
Then, Barbara was put in jail and I, as her attorney at that time at the beginning of the criminal proceedings, was not allowed to see her unless I would allow to search my attorney file - and I, naturally, refused to submit my privileged attorney file to the search as a condition of seeing my client in jail. I guess, they wanted that tablet or what was in it that badly.
The case against Barbara, which the District Attorney's office disgracefully pursued for the benefit of the nephew of their long-time employee, while doing nothing to prosecute Derek Bowie for attempted murder of Barbara - was dismissed.
The case against her daughter was doggedly prosecuted by the District Attorney's office employing Derek Bowie's uncle, until a jury trial which Barbara's daughter stoically withstood while being nearly 7 months pregnant - and was acquitted by the jury.
At the time of Derek Bowie's testimony at Barbara's daughter's trial, Derek Bowie was no longer employed by Delaware County, the DA knew, through a lawsuit against Derek Bowie by his girlfriend that Derek Bowie was never a legitimate Deputy Sheriff in Delaware County since he did not satisfy residency credentials, but the DA's office elicited perjury from Derek Bowie stating that he was a legitimate Deputy Sheriff anyway.
Both charges against Barbara and Alecia were brought by Derek Bowie and were illegal since Derek Bowie was not a legitimate Deputy Sheriff - which did not prevent the DA's office, the DA Richard Northrup (now Delaware County judge) and the now Acting District Attorney John Hubbard, to pursue those illegitimate charges.
Moreover, the DA's office engaged in fabrication of evidence during proceedings, brought the felony case against Barbara to the point of trial and agreed to the dismissal only when faced with evidence that the arrest warrant against Barbara which was the basis of the felony charges was fabricated by Delhi Town Court Judge Richard Gumo's personnel and was never signed by the judge himself, as required by law.
After the dismissal, Barbara's dog was killed under circumstances suggesting intentional killing, and then Barbara's house was blown up and burnt down by a burning projectile thrown into her pregnant daughter's room in the middle of the night, her daughter was not at home and thus survived unscathed, Barbara was able to save herself and managed to save two out of three dogs who were in the house at the time of the fire, but one dog (a 2nd dog) was killed.
Derek Bowie was quietly let go from the Delaware County Sheriff's Department, and is now toiling as a police officer, as far as I know, for the village of Deposit, operating together with his uncle Jeff Bowie.
The Delaware County Acting District Attorney is aware of the two murder attempts on Barbara O'Sullivan, and one murder attempt on her pregnant daughter, but refuse to investigate that and to prosecute Derek Bowie for the first murder attempt - the vehicular assault upon Barbara O'Sullivan.
Instead, the Delaware County continues to spend taxpayer money to defend Bowie in two lawsuits by two lookalike women - Barbara and Bowie's former girlfriend who was also assaulted by Bowie, beaten up and suffered serious injuries at his hands and refuses to prosecute Derek Bowie.
So, the first murder attempt upon Barbara O'Sullivan sought to destroy video evidence of police misconduct on her tablet.
The second murder attempt burnt down Barbara's house and effectively destroyed the tablet.
Delaware County Acting DA Hubbard who is running for the office of the Delaware County District Attorney this coming November, so far refused to investigate the arson of Barbara's house and the attempted murder of Barbara, her daughter and her then-unborn grandchild.
That is the account of what is happening to people who document police misconduct in New York.
Other parts of the country are, as we know, no different.
As an example, recently as yesterday, now in the state of Maryland, the armed police came to the residence of a black African American 23-year-old mother of two #KorrynGaines, in order to serve upon her an arrest warrant based on a traffic ticket, and without carrying on them the required body cameras, engaged in an armed standoff with Korryn Gaines, went so far as asked Facebook to disable her Facebook and Instagram accounts where she was posting video evidence of standoff - and shot her dead.
#KorrynGaines in Baltimore.
A beautiful young woman, a mother of two young children, a 1-year-old and a 5-year old, is dead because she did not want to come to court to appear on fabricated charges stemming from a traffic stop because she did not have a license plate on her car and because her car did not have a required emission test.
And because she videotaped the armed police standoff and could testify against the police as a witness.
Please, don't tell me that the investigation is not yet complete, and it will be fairly investigated.
Because you may be assured that there will be no fairness from the moment when the police started an armed standoff with a 23-year old black woman and her 5-year old child without wearing their required body cameras and asking Facebook to shut off her ability to share her own videos of what was going on.
And then they shot her dead (and they wounded her son).
Of course, who wants to be charged with murder based on a video-recording - as the white officer Michael T. Slager was in South Carolina last year for shooting and killing an African American Walter Scott.
Better eliminate the possibility of such videos being created - along with the witnesses who can create them.
By the way, Korryn Gaines son who the police wounded was taught by Korryn Gaines to record the police - which is clearly reflected in the video posted by Gaines and that was available to the police before the armed standoff. I guess, the 5-year-old boy was also a dangerous person whose life was forfeit because he was taught how to record the police.
The police preferred to rather risk the boy's life and fire into the house where he was with his mother, back off their "service of an arrest warrant" to appear in court on fabricated charges.
Since recently a strange epidemic of deaths in jail of young black women arrested after traffic stops, see here and here, and an epidemic of police killing of black people in general and of black women specifically, it was understandable that Korryn Gaines was prepared for an armed resistance to the police force trying to serve an arrest warrant to her based on a fabricated ticket.
Korryn Gaines had a reason to believe she had worse risk of death in jail than in armed resistance because in jail she would be more helpless than in her own home and with a legally issued weapon near her.
And the traffic ticket was, in the first place, because of her 1st Amendment stance on the issue of constitutionality of driver licenses, in which her ideas were only slightly, but not entirely, different, from the U.S. Supreme Court's - that the right to travel is a fundamental right not to be infringed upon unreasonably by the government.
Here is what #KorrynGaines was stopped, issued a ticket, issued an arrest warrant, SWAT-teamed - and shot dead for:
"After being told she would be arrested if she did not produce a driver's license, Gaines gave one to police. The vehicle was listed as hers, but police found no record of license plates, and the car had not undergone a required emissions check."
She had a driver's license - so nobody can claim she was driving without knowing how to do that or authority to drive, and that she was a hazard on the road, but she did not have license plates on her car and her car was not checked for the level of emissions.
That's all.
That's what she was shot dead for.
The police now is reported to say allegedly that:
"The 23-year-old mother was armed with a shotgun, and police say she threatened to kill an officer if he didn’t leave her alone, causing the officer to open fire. She shot back, police say, and was killed in a second round of fire by officers. Her son was shot during the exchange, but police said they do not know if he was shot by Gaines or by an officer. The investigation into the shooting is ongoing and the officers have not yet been identified publicly."
Of course, the police can now say anything they want.
They shot one witness and wounded - and deadly scared - another, a 5-year-old.
There are no other witnesses.
The police did not wear body cameras, as they were supposed to.
The police caused the alternative source of evidence - Korryn Gaines' own videos - to be disabled.
So, at this time whatever the officers are going to say will be forever tainted by their efforts, from the very beginning, not to create their own evidence of the standoff and to prevent the only adult non-police witness of what occurred - first by disabling her social media account, and then by shooting her dead.
23-year-old African American mother #KorrynGaines expressed the same ideas through civil disobedience - carrying a cardboard "plate" instead of a license plate on her vehicle which reportedly said:
"Any Government official who compromises this pursuit to happiness and right to travel will be held criminally responsible and fined, as this is a natural right or freedom" on the back and "Free Traveler" on the front.
Korryn Gaines was
- stopped by the police for having the signs instead of license plates,
- given a traffic ticket for it,
- did not appear in court,
- an arrest warrant was issued to bring her to court,
- then a SWAT team came to her house to serve her with an arrest warrant on the traffic ticket,
- she opposed such a manner of service by arming herself with a lawfully issued gun, refusing to surrender, and telling her 5-year-old son who was with her that the police is going to kill them, which the boy repeated on tape.
Korryn Gaines was also trying to document the standoff by taking videos by her cell phone and posting them on her Facebook page.
Despite policy to wear body cameras, the police was not wearing such cameras at the time of serving the arrest warrant and standoff.
And, the police asked Facebook to "temporarily" deactivate accounts of Korryn Gaines so that she would not be able to present to the world the evidence of what the police is doing to her - without their required body cameras.
As a result, Gaines is shot dead. Her son is shot, but expected to recover.
And we are all the worse off for it, because now we know that Apple invented an application that can block recording of the police, but that Facebook and Instagram can block you from sharing the evidence of police misconduct that may save your life or be used in the future to hold police officers committing misconduct accountable.
We all the worse for the secrecy of court recording, (it's a misdemeanor in New York to record court proceedings), for the secrecy of police misconduct (access to disciplinary records of law enforcement officers is not allowed in New York and many other states).
And those pesky body cameras seem to be fragile pieces of equipment - they either malfunction, or are shut off or police officers forget to take them with them, or to switch them on.
Anything to prevent recording of what you do to your own people.
By the way, those police officers in the SWAT-team who were outside Korryn Gaines' residence, reportedly had body cameras - only those who were in direct contact with her and were shooting at her and her child, did not have body cameras.
Which suggests that the decision not to record what was happening between the police and Korryn Gaines was deliberate - and, coupled with the extraordinary request to Facebook to block Korryn Gaines from reporting to the people what was happening to her, too - smacks of misconduct.
Now we have an "honest" investigation by those who killed the woman, with body cameras off.
Very honest.
#SayHerName #KorrynGaines
#SayHisName #SunnyShue
#SayHisName #Adam Rupeka
#SayTheirNames
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