Blowback, Provocation, and Perpetual War

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures, Dr. Johnson informs us. In a somewhat similar vein,  the Regime's post-9/11 "counter-terrorism" stings have avoided the official fiction that Muslim terrorism is inspired by a hatred for our "freedom." The preferred bait to lure marginalized Muslims -- many of whom have little commitment to the faith, no detectable terrorism-related skills, and abundant personal problems -- is outrage over the Regime's imperial foreign policy. 


As Scott Horton of the invaluable Antiwar Radio has pointed out, the scripted patter of federal provocateurs doesn't focus on America's refusal to submit to Sharia, or our decadent popular culture. In seeking to attract potential recruits, the Regime's agents invoke the plight of besieged Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, the West Bank, and elsewhere -- people whose sufferings are either inflicted or underwritten by Washington.

A key admission of this fact is found in the official press release announcing the arrest of the so-called "Newburgh 4," a group of ex-convicts from New York accused of plotting to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx and attack military aircraft at a nearby Air National Guard base. 

The four accused in the plot -- James Cromitie, Onta Williams, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were approached by veteran federal agent provocateur Shahed Hussein, a career criminal with convictions in both the U.S. and his native Pakistan. Hussein was paid a huge sum by the federal government to act as a terrorism "facilitator" -- a term that was actually used by assistant U.S. Attorney in his opening statement at the ongoing trial of the "Newburgh 4." 

As attorney Steven Downs points out in a study of the "preemptive prosecution" of Muslims by the federal government, when Hussein (who called himself "Maqsood") materialized at the Newburgh mosque in June 2008, "His con was so obvious that the real Muslims there would have nothing to do with him, but he was able to attract Cromitie (and later the other three) with offers of money and friendship." 

Following the Federal script: "Terrorist" James Cromitie in custody.

 
Despite the fact that Cromitie wasn't particularly devout, Hussein was able to radicalize him by dwelling on the human cost of Washington's war on Afghanistan.  

 According to the Feds, Cromitie "explained to the informant that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and that he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the United States Military forces. [He] expressed interest in returning to Afghanistan and spoke to [the provocateur] about how if he, Cromitie, were to die a martyr, he would go to `paradise.'"


It's reasonable to suspect that the devotion expressed by Cromitie and his friends had at least something to do with the material blandishments offered by Hussein, such as at least $25,000 apiece (and as much as $250,000 to one of them) if they cooperated in his plot to plant a bomb at a synagogue and fire Stinger missiles at military planes. 

Posing as a wealthy terrorist recruiter, Hussein cut an impressive figure: He drove a BMW and other federally provided luxury vehicles, and his targets were understandably eager to catch some of the money he was willing to throw around. They had no money, no jobs, no cars, and no training. One was a drug addict, another being treated for mental illness. Cromitie, who had been sent to prison for drug dealing, was working a series of low-paying odd jobs.

The devoted Muslims attending the mosque wisely shunned Hussein's company after he described himself as a representative of a Pakistani terrorist group called Jaish-e-Mohammed. The four guys he managed to snag as patsies appeared to know next to nothing about the Muslim religion. 

In fact, it was the petty crook the Regime hired to be a provocateur who had to teach Cromitie how to lead the members of his "jihadist cell" in prayer. 


"Should I do that real quick?" asked "cell leader" Cromitie in a recorded exchange with Hussein.


"Lead it loud, so everybody can understand," replied Hussein, who was actually directing a performance rather than gathering evidence of a criminal conspiracy. 


In similar fashion, Hussein "often seemed eager in the recordings to remind the men of their extremist sponsors while discouraging the idea that money should motivate them," observes a New York Times report of the trial.  During meetings in the house rented by the FBI to serve as a mise-en-scene for the federally scripted production, Hussein repeatedly invoked Jaish-e-Mohammed, an organization completely unknown to  the "conspirators" before the provocateur brought it up. 


"It's not about money," insisted the Pakistani crook to the people he had targeted. "It's about Jaish-e-Mohammed." Actually, for Cromitie and the others, it was "about the money. They had no interest in, or inclination toward, terrorism until they had been seduced by promises of easy money to be earned in "paying back" those they considered responsible for attacking Muslims abroad. 

As Hussein's FBI handler Robert Fuller noted, by way of reassuring security personnel at Stewart Air Force Base, Cromitie "would never try anything without the informant with him." Nonetheless, Hussein did everything he could to push a balking and puzzled Cromitie into an out-front role as the "leader" of the supposed plot.


"I'm not running the show, he's running the show," Hussein repeatedly told the others with respect to Cromitie's purported leadership.


"Ain't nobody running the show," an annoyed Cromitie exclaimed at one point in a recorded conversation. "Why do you keep saying that?"

Cromitie's sense of unease grew to such an extent that he actually wanted to bail out of the plot when he detected a federal "tail" while en route to pick up the (disabled) Stinger missiles. He was aware that he and his colleagues were being watched. However, for some reason Cromitie didn't connect that fact to the way he had been cast as the "leader" by the big-talking stranger who pushed him to the front of the supposed plot. 

Despite the efforts to "brand" this supposed plot as a Jaish-e-Mohammed operation, the Feds now admit that none of the people involved had ties to actual terrorists. As the trial began, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin conceded that the case is "not going to be about al-Qaeda, and it's not going to be about foreign terrorist organizations." 

What this means, of course, is that the Feds are, once again, prosecuting people for allegedly taking part in a "plot" created by the Feds -- a plot they were invited to join by a Federal asset who urged people to be angry over atrocities being committed overseas by the same Federal Government.

The "Ft. Dix Five."

The "Newburgh 4" plot is so obviously an FBI production that U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, who is presiding over the trial, admits to referring to it as "the un-terrorist case." It is hardly unique: This little melodrama was created from the same template used to create the "Fort Dix 5," the "Miami 6," the "Liberty City Seven," the  so-called Michigan "Ummah" conspiracy, and other groups. 

In each of those cases, the Feds dipped into their vast pool of criminally compromised informant-provocateurs, rented a meeting place, supplied the funding and hardware, and gathered a handful of pathetic flunkies into a telegenic terrorist "threat." Most importantly, the Feds, by way of their hired provocateurs, selected a grievance they knew would radicalize their recruits -- a jihad to avenge the deaths of innocent Muslims abroad, not to punish infidels at home for their refusal to submit to Islamic rule. 


In ritualized remembrances of Black Tuesday, no mention is made of what happened on that date eleven years before "The Day the World Changed." On that date the first President George Bush, invoking the supposed authority of the UN Security Council, outlined his vision of a "new world order" in an address before a joint session of Congress.

The path to global hegemony, as described by Bush pere, would run through the Middle East, and following it would mean slaughtering tens or hundreds of thousands of Muslims -- through invasions, embargoes, and intermittent bombing campaigns. It also meant absorbing huge populations of Muslim refugees from Somalia, Iraq, and other countries blessed by Washington's peculiar armed humanitarianism. 

Interview with a Patsy: Brother Corey of the "Seas of David."

 One predictable result, as noted in a report on "homegrown terrorism" compiled for the Bipartisan Policy Center by veteran Establishment drones Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, is "the increasingly prominent role in planning and operations that U.S. citizens and residents have played" in jihad-related activities. 

This doesn't refer only to the FBI's prefabricated terrorist "plots," but also to involvement by American Muslims in foreign armed insurgencies against the U.S. military and Washington's proxies. 


"The conventional wisdom has long been that America was immune to the heady currents of radicalization affecting both immigrant and indigenous Muslim communities elsewhere in the West," observes the report. "That has now been shattered by the succession of cases that have recently come to light of terrorist radicalization and recruitment occurring in the United States.... As the ranks of U.S. recruits have grown, the new frontlines have become the streets of Bridgeport, Denver, Minneapolis, and other big and small communities across America."

Referring to the abortive Times Square car bombing, Hamilton and Kean insist that it "was not a `one-off' event perpetrated by a `lone wolf' but rather is part of an emerging pattern of terrorism that directly threatens the United States and presents new challenges to our national security." 


During a June 2010 court appearance in New York City, Faisal Shahzad, the accused would-be Times Square bomber, described himself as a "Muslim soldier" driven to violence as an "answer to the U.S. terrorizing Muslim nations and the Muslim people," continues the report. "He further promised that if Washington did not cease invading Muslim lands and did not withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim countries, more attacks on the United States would follow. Americans, Shahzad explained, `don't see the drones killing children in Afghanistan.... [They] only care about their people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die.' In his view, this means that attacks on children and innocents are both justified and should be expected."



"While it is perhaps tempting to dismiss Shahzad's threats as the irrelevant ranting of an incompetent wannabe terrorist, he and his likely successors present the most serious challenge to the security of the U.S. and the safety of its citizens since the September 11, 2001 attacks," conclude Hamilton and Kean. 


We shouldn't be surprised that Hamilton and Kean studiously avoid the obvious: The people running the Regime's security organs agree with Shahzad's analysis completely. They know that it is Washington's foreign policy, not the Koran, that inspires contemporary Muslim terrorism. Those people understand how to create and exploit enemies.  


The all-but-unspeakable truth we should ponder on today's grim anniversary is that the Regime is willing to permit those enemies to slaughter Americans by the thousands in the service of its interests.



 Once again, thank you for supporting Pro Libertate!

Tune in each Saturday night from 8:00-11:00 Mountain Time for Pro Libertate Radio on on the Liberty News Radio Network.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Gypsies, Tramps and Thugs

Would-be murder weapon: Fred Ensminger's pickup.

 "This guy ...  just tried to run my husband over!" exclaimed Arkansas  resident Cindy Nelson in a frantic  911 call on July 21. "Oh, my God -- he's shooting at us! Oh, my God!"

A few minutes later, Fred Ensminger -- the deranged assailant -- placed a 911 call of his own.

"This is Diamondhead 1106," Ensminger told the suddenly swamped dispatcher. I have been shot and I need medical at my front gate ASAP."

Ensminger is a recidivist criminal. Thanks to the fact that practically any bipedal simian with a pulse can become a police officer in Arkansas, Ensminger -- who just barely meets those criteria -- is employed by the Police Department of Diamondhead Arkansas, a gated community located south of Hot Springs.

A few minutes before Cindy Nelson told the 911 dispatcher that a "guy with a badge" was trying to murder her husband, she had passed Ensminger's pickup truck, which  was parked by the side of the road.

 

As Nelson started to go around the truck, Ensminger -- whose penchant for abusive behavior was notorious in Diamondhead -- pulled out in front of her. According to an eyewitness, Ensminger "stopped suddenly," causing Nelson to slam on her brakes to avoid a collision.

According to the witness, Ensminger climbed out of his pickup truck and began to harangue Nelson. She reacted by pulling around him and proceeding down the road. An infuriated Ensminger followed in close pursuit.

 With Ensinger's pickup truck looming in her rear-view, Nelson called her husband, Jerry Chambliss, and told him that she was being followed. She had no idea at this point that her stalker was an off-duty police officer.

After Nelson entered the gated community, Chambliss went into the driveway "with my arms up, palms out, hollering stop, stop, stop, what are you doing?" he later told investigators.

Ensminger gunned the pickup forward, striking Chambliss and knocking him down. He then compounded that act of attempted vehicular homicide by grabbing his 40 caliber Glock and firing several rounds into the garage. At some point Ensminger punctuated his acts of attempted criminal homicide by flashing his state-issued costume jewelry.

Chambliss raced into the house and retrieved a loaded 9mm handgun and returned fire, striking Ensminger in the shoulder and forcing the assailant to withdraw.

After Ensminger called for backup, Nelson made a second 911 call requesting a police officer. When the dispatcher replied that an officer was already on the premises, Nelson suggested that it might be worthwhile to send someone other than the person who had just perforated her home with gunfire.

"She [the dispatcher] kept telling me, `He's not the shooter-- he's a cop,'" Cindy Nelson related in an interview with Pro Libertate.  "I kept trying to convince her that's what was happening -- that this cop just opened fire on our home. They never did send anyone to help us, even though they did send people after he [Ensminger] called 911."

After the police arrived, Nelson continues, "they had us on the ground in handcuffs for thirty minutes. They also spent six hours searching our house -- with our consent, I guess. After that they didn't even take my husband with them; they just said `We'll call you if we need to ask some more questions.'"

Note well that right from the beginning it was clear that Chambliss had acted legally, and that Ensminger, the assailant, had committed a criminal offense. Despite this, the official stance of the Diamondhead Police Department was that Chambliss was a "suspect," and that Ensminger had fallen heroically in the line of duty.

The shootout between Ensinger and Chambliss was originally described by the Diamondhead Police and the local media as growing out of a "domestic dispute." Chief Pat Mahoney and Garland County Deputy Judy Daniel told Little Rock's Fox 16 News that they were concerned about their injured comrade, who had been stricken in the line of duty as he was "investigating" a purported episode of domestic violence.

That official lie is indigestibly rich in irony, given the fact that Ensminger -- a "gypsy cop" who has been repeatedly fired and punished for disciplinary infractions and criminal acts -- was himself arrested on a domestic violence charge in 2006. The victim in that assault, which took place in front of the police station in Alexander, Arkansas, was a female police officer.

"We are very happy that the officer is OK and extremely glad that the suspect is in custody," stated Deputy Daniel shortly after that heroic defender of public order tried to murder Jerry Chambliss. "It just makes it easier on everybody, the other officers, his family."

Note how this description of  "everybody" refers exclusively to those employed as agents of government coercion. The "civilian" who used righteous force to repel Ensminger's criminal assault apparently didn't count. Mere Mundanes never do.

"Gypsy Cop" John Frederick Ensminger.

Following surgery to remove the bullet he had received as a consolation prize for finishing second in a shoot-out, Ensminger filed the predictably perjurious official report. 

Like too many others in his profession, Ensminger couples functional illiteracy with an unexpected gift for storytelling. He claimed to have observed Nelson driving erratically, and that she attempted to run him over when he displayed the trinket denoting his supposed authority. 

That claim was demolished by contradictory eyewitness testimony, which established that while Ensminger screamed at Nelson and wagged a finger in her direction, he never flashed his badge.

Ensminger offered a similarly mendacious version of his encounter with Chambliss. In the officer's account, he was confronted by an "angry unknown man" who slammed his hands on the hood of his car telling him to get out of the driveway.

In this depiction, Chambliss shot Ensminger without provocation, and the off-duty cop returned fire in self-defense. Once again, that account couldn't be reconciled with the evidence assembled during an investigation by the Arkansas State Police.

In his official report, state Prosecuting Attorney Steve Oliver concluded that Chambliss "was justified in using deadly physical force in the defense of himself and his wife on July 21, 2010.... Under Arkansas law, Mr. Chambliss was not required to retreat if he was not the original aggressor."

This of necessity means that Fred Ensminger, the "original aggressor," committed multiple acts of criminal assault, and thus be subject to prosecution -- correct?

Well, no.

Oliver ruled that Ensminger displayed "poor judgment in his aggressive pursuit of Ms. Nelson to her residence but he acted with the belief that he was justified under color of law."

This unsupportable, invalid  "belief" appears sufficient to exculpate Ensminger's repeated attempts to murder Jerry Chambliss. Oliver doesn't provide any other explanation for his decision not to file criminal charges of any kind against Ensminger, who not only remains free but (at least as of September 7) is reportedly still employed by the Diamondhead Police Department, even though he is currently enjoying a paid vacation (aka "administrative leave").

"Just because he has a badge he does not have the right to come down and kill citizens," Chambliss complained to Little Rock's Fox affiliate. According to Oliver, that state-issued bauble does indeed confer the authority to commit acts of discretionary murder. Oliver's report clearly suggests that if Ensminger had displayed his chintzy totem of official privilege during the highway confrontation with Cindy Nelson, Chambliss would be facing criminal charges.

"We've never had trouble of any kind with law enforcement before," Cindy Nelson remarked to Pro Libertate. "We're well-known here, and we've always been upstanding citizens. I'm a nurse, and my husband -- who served in the Navy -- has been a Real Estate broker and a candidate for office. My husband suffered severe bruising and other injuries after being run down. We never used to lock our doors, now we have three locks on every door and keep our cars locked at all times."

Chambliss is also undergoing treatment for what appears to be post-traumatic stress disorder. "This guy simply terrorized us," Cindy summarizes. She and her husband have some unfortunate company in Diamondhead.

"We're scared to have him in the community, quite frankly," commented Diamondhead resident Kimberly Gilsinger, whose children were threatened by the officer while swimming in a local lake. 

Hot Springs Officer Joey Williams assaults skateboarder.

In late June, just weeks before Ensminger attempted to murder Jerry Chambliss, Gilsinger and her husband filed a complaint alleging that the officer had threatened to kill her son and five other local boys, the youngest of whom was ten years old. 

Specifically, Ensminger allegedly said that "he would get in the water and drown every one of them if they didn't get out," Gilsinger recalled. The complaint also stated that Ensminger made a vague but unmistakable threat to shoot the kids. 

(Arkansas police seem to attract child predators: Three years ago a tonsured thug named Joey Williams was captured on video choking and otherwise assaulting several young skateboarders on the streets of Hot Springs. His employer, the Hot Springs PD, ruled that his felonious assault was "justified," not that the suspense was unbearable.)

Ray Massey, President of the Diamondhead Property Association, told the Little Rock CBS affiliate that Ensminger "got a verbal reprimand and a warning" after committing what Gilsinger correctly describes as a "felony" by threatening to "harm or kill our children."

This was hardly the first criminal act Ensminger has committed in a career in law enforcement that began seven years ago.

Ensminger was fired little more than a year of being hired by the Shannon Hills Police Department. During that time he managed to shoot a suspect under dubious circumstances (the act was ruled "justified," as nearly all such shootings are) and a property theft charge. During that same busy 14-month span, reports THV-TV, "his record shows an assault case, which included a false statement to the police on Ensminger's part. That case eventually led to his firing."

He then migrated to the Alexander Police Department, where he was arrested on a domestic battery charge after he manhandled his girlfriend -- a fellow police officer named April Tirado -- outside the police station. Ensminger wasn't fired from that position; he was permitted to resign instead. Approximately a year later he was hired by the Diamondhead Police Department.

The Diamondhead PD refuses to release Ensminger's record, claiming that it is exempt from freedom of information laws because it is employed by a private entity, the Diamondhead Property Owners Association. It is more accurate to describe the POA as a "public-private" or corporatist body, since its police department -- as prosecutor Steve Oliver points out -- presumes to exercise coercive "authority" under "color of law," rather than simply protecting property rights pursuant to contract. If Ensminger were a Paul Blart-style private security guard, he would most likely be facing criminal charges.

John Frederick Ensminger, petty criminal and itinerant police officer, should be made the poster child for the problem of "Gypsy Cops" -- corrupt, abusive officers who drift from one agency to another, enjoying both immunity from prosecution and unassailable job security. This problem is particularly acute in Arkansas, where no certification of any kind is required to become a police officer.

To become a licensed practicing cosmetologist in the State of Arkansas, an applicant must pass a state board examination and complete 2,000 hours of specialized training. For an investment of 600 hours an applicant can qualify to work as a manicurist or instructor.

While Arkansas strictly regulates those who cut hair or paint nails in private, voluntary transactions, it imposes no training or licensing standards whatsoever on armed people clothed in government-issued costumes and the supposed authority to inflict lethal violence on others.

Another view of the heroic Joey Williams in action.

"The second night I ever put on a badge and gun I was riding in my own car," recalls Crittenden County Chief Deputy Tommy Martin. At the time, Martin was 21 years old and hadn't spent so much as a minute inside a police academy classroom, notes Jill Monier of Memphis's Fox News affiliate.

"According to Arkansas state law, officers do not have to be certified for up to a year after they're hired," observes Monier. "The Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training says they can get an 8 month extension on top of that. So for almost 2 years, an officer can patrol the streets, by his or herself, and enforce the law without having any kind of training."

Understandably, this system is a boon to  "gypsy" cops. Each time a "gypsy" cop finds a new gig in Arkansas, his 12- to 20-month grace period begins all over again; in this way, officers can be enforcing the "law" for years without receiving certification of any kind.

Ensminger, who couldn't legally cut hair or manicure nails in Arkansas, remains licensed to kill. 

Incidentally ...

... Scott Horton, who hosts the indispensable AntiWar Radio program, was kind enough to invite me on as a guest last Friday.

Once again: Thank you.

I continue to be amazed and humbled by the generosity so many of you have shown to me and my family. Thank you so much! 

Join me each Saturday evening from 8:00-11:00 Mountain Time for Pro Libertate Radio on the Liberty News Radio Network.

Dum spiro, pugno!

"Criminals With Badges": Denver's Militarized Police

 

"I been forced to write my own laws, and you violated one in there. I just have to find you guilty of contempt of cop."

Bumper Morgan, Joseph Wambaugh's eponymous Blue Knight, justifying his brutal assault on a young man who had casually insulted him.  


Jared Lunn, a 21-year-old volunteer firefighter from Brighton, Colorado, visited Denver's LoDo district to celebrate a friend's birthday. The evening was quite pleasant until Jared, who was carrying a pizza and minding his own business, was suddenly punched in the face and knocked flat by someone he had never met.

Shortly after the assailant scurried away the police arrived, and Jared's night took a pronounced turn for the worse. 

Perhaps Jared was unaware of the axiom that it is never a good idea to ask the police for help.
Perhaps the fact that he is involved in a "public safety" role led Jared to assume that the police would treat him with courtesy and professionalism. In any case, Jared told Officer Eric Sellers that he had just been assaulted and that he wanted to press charges. Sellers told the victim to go home, and he wasn't impressed when Jared appealed to him as a fellow "public servant."

"Way to `protect and serve,'" muttered Jared in disgust as he walked away. 


A violent assault on a mere Mundane is a trivial matter -- but this was a clear-cut case of "contempt of cop," and it could not go unpunished.

Sellers seized Jared and threw him to the ground. While screaming a steady stream of profanities at the terrified young man, Sellers beat him and applied a vicious choke hold. After Jared's body went limp, Sellers wrenched his hands behind his back and handcuffed him with such violence that the victim wouldn't have full use of his hands for a week. 

This felonious assault took place in the presence of two other police officers who, in keeping with the oath-bound discipline of their brotherhood, refused to intervene. 

"This guy [Sellers] does this all the time," one of the bully's comrades told Chris Fuchs, an eyewitness to the November 23, 2008 assault, after Jared was released. "We don't know how he gets away with it." The obvious reply would be: "He gets away with it because of the guilty collaboration of `good cops' like you."  
  

"Street justice" in Denver's LoDo district.

Two months later, Sellers became annoyed with a young man named John Crespin,whose behavior struck the officer as "nosy." Sellers pulled up into the driveway of John's home and ordered the young man out of the car. 

As John complied, his shoulder brushed lightly against Sellers's arm. Infuriated that a Mundane had defiled his sanctified personage through incidental contact, Sellers inflicted a dose of summary "street justice" as an act of ritual purification.


Just as he did to Jared Lunn, Sellers put John in a chokehold while spitting obscenities in his face. After handcuffing the victim, Sellers used his police baton to lift the young man a couple of feet from the ground, then dropped him face-first into the driveway.  The representative of the Denver city government's punitive priesthood dragged the bloodied man off the pavement, draped him over the hood of his police car, and administered the laying on of hands.


"He started punching me in the sides while I was already handcuffed," Crespin later told the local NBC affiliate. "I told him to quit, quit, and he wouldn't quit. He did it one more time and he grabbed my face and said, `Who the f*** do you think you are?'"

After being beaten into a lumpy mess, John Crespin -- despite the absence of a criminal history -- was charged with "felony menacing." Terrified and worried about being separated from his newborn child, Crespin accepted a plea bargain agreement that resulted in probation. 


Sellers was later found to have used "inappropriate force" against Jared Lunn. The same review found that the officer had compounded that offense through the "commission of a deceptive act" -- that is, lying to internal affairs investigators. According to the Denver PD's existing disciplinary guidelines, this is cause for "presumptive termination." Yet Sellers continues to draw a paycheck as a member of the police force afflicting Denver. 

In fact, Sellers -- who, according to his colleagues, commits criminal assaults against innocent people "all the time" -- complained in a court filing that the disciplinary action against him was "excessive," because it specified that another episode of that kind would result in immediate termination. 

Denver's Citizen Oversight Board insists, correctly, that Sellers should have been fired already (and prosecuted as well). The Denver Police Protective Association -- that is, local armed tax-feeder union -- has Sellers's back, of course. 

This isn't surprising, given that in September 2008 -- just weeks before Sellers assaulted Jared Lunn -- the Denver police union distributed t-shirts to its members depicting a baton-wielding riot cop rising ominously about the city's skyline.

"We get up early, to BEAT the crowds," gloated the inscription. Each member of the Denver PD received one of the commemorative t-shirts, which were created in anticipation of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. 


Sellers apparently perceived that ill-advised pun as a directive and took it to what passes for his heart. Interestingly, Sellers owes his continued employment to a figure who played a critical role in the militarized security preparations for the 2008 convention: Ron Perea, who until recently was Manager of Safety for the City of Denver.

Perea was the Secret Service Special Agent in Charge during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. His previous experience included a stint as head of the Denver Field Office for the Secret Service, a position on the executive board of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Los Angeles, and five years on the Albuquerque Police Department. 

It's difficult to imagine someone whose career offers a better core sample of contemporary law enforcement at all levels. So it's quite significant that Perea, as Safety Manager, defined his job in terms of protecting the career prospects of abusive police, rather than protecting the public. As Safety Manager, Perea had the final say regarding complaints of excessive force. His decisions reflected an obvious desire to placate the demands of the police union, rather than holding abusive cops accountable for their offenses.

Perea resigned his post on August 31, barely three months into his $152,000-a-year job, because of rising public disgust over his handling of several recent episodes of criminal violence by the Denver PD.  In addition to the leniency he had displayed toward Sellers, Perea refused to discipline Officer Devin Sparks, who severely beat Michael DeHerrera on a LoDo street corner in April 2009. 

DeHerrera's friend, Shawn Johnson, had been ejected from a local club after an altercation with a bouncer. When the police arrived, they "arrested" Johnson so violently that DeHerrera made a frantic phone call to his father, Pueblo County Sheriff's Deputy Anthony DeHerrera.

"They're beating up Shawn -- what do I do?" a panicked Herrera asked his father. This apparently is what provoked Sparks to blind-side Herrera, slamming him to the sidewalk and repeatedly beating him with a leather-shrouded metal club called a "sap." 

This much is captured by one of the Panopticon-style High Activity Location Observation (HALO) cameras scattered throughout that section of Denver. However, just as Sparks lays into Hererra, the camera -- which was operated by a Denver PD officer in real time -- suddenly pans up and away from the scene. 

Detective John White, a spokesman for the Denver PD, insists that this wasn't an Orwellian "rectification" in real time, but rather a result of a camera following a pre-set program. Whether or not this is true, there is compelling evidence that Sparks and his partner, Corporal Randy Murr, took immediate action to cover up the crime. That evidence, interestingly, comes from an unimpeachable law enforcement source -- Deputy Anthony DeHerrera, who overheard the officers via his son's still-active cell phone.


"The last thing we [the elder DeHerrera and his wife] heard was, `We've got to get rid of the phone, they're recording us.'" The phone went dead -- leaving Michael's parents to wonder if the same was true of their son.

After being beaten unconscious, DeHerrera was charged with "resisting" and "interfering" with the officers, but those charges were eventually dismissed. 

***



***

The official report filed by Sparks claimed that as Corporal Murr was detaining Shawn Johnson, DeHerrera "was about 1 ft. away and began yelling and screaming at the officers. I advised him numerous times to get back and he refused. I then attempted to detain the defendant at which time he tensed up, made a fist and bladed his body. He then spun to his left attempting to strike me in the face with a closed right fist. I then took him to the ground where he attempted to strike me again...."

In his analysis of the video and other evidence, Richard Rosenthal, Denver's Independent Police Monitor,concluded that the beating was an unwarranted act of violence and that the report filed by Sparks and Murr was "pure fiction."

"In fact, the video shows that the complainant [DeHerrera] did not make any aggressive moves toward [Sparks]," wrote Rosenthal in his review of the case. "Although the complainant was not complying with [Sparks's] orders to get on the ground, the complainant did not make any attempt to strike [Sparks], either before being taken to the ground or upon being taken to the ground." In fact, as Rosenthal observes, the reports filed by Sparks and Murr were completely untainted by the truth.

Perea, claiming that unspecified "witness testimony" substantiated the claim that DeHerrera had threatened the officers, insisted that the "totality" of circumstances justified the beating. 
Despite finding Sparks and Murr guilty of falsifying official reports, Perea claimed that they were guilty of "inconsistencies" and "misperceptions," rather than "`willful, intentional, or knowing deception,'" and thus weren't subject to summary termination. 

Rather than cashiering the perjurious police officers, Perea merely suspended them three days and "fined" one of them the equivalent of three days' pay. In a footnote to his summary, Rosenthal notes that one of the officers (most likely Sparks) "received more serious discipline because that officer had a prior disciplinary history." 

In other words, he was a recidivist and proven perjurer. Nonetheless, Perea perversely insisted that he was still qualified to prowl the streets of Denver armed with various implements of violence and clothed in the supposed authority to inflict lethal violence on anyone who refused to comply with his whims. 

Shortly before Perea's resignation, video footage surfaced of another police beat-down as summary punishment for "interference and resistance," this one involving a hapless pedestrian named Mark Ashford. 

A Denver cop strikes a pose after he and a boyfriend beat up pedestrian Mark Ashford.

  


















While walking his dogs in downtown Denver last March 16, Ashford saw an officer pull over a motorist for supposedly running a stop sign. 

Acting out of a commendable civic concern, Ashford tapped on the windshield and told the driver he'd be willing to testify that the motorist had actually come to a full stop. This provoked the officer to demand that Ashford provide ID -- a spurious, vindictive, and unwarranted order.


Ashford complied, and then quite sensibly began to record the incident with his cellphone camera. This prompted the heroic officer to call for backup. The two tax-fattened bullies -- later identified as Officers John Diaz and Jeff Cook -- then shoved the slightly built pedestrian up against a bridge railing, repeatedly punching him and trying to steal the camera. 

After beating Ashford into submission, the officers left him handcuffed in a crumpled heap. After being booked on spurious charges -- which were immediately dropped -- Ashford was hospitalized with a concussion and a cut over his right eye.




Seeking to placate growing public concern regarding criminal assaults by Denver police, Chief Gerald Whitman told the local NBC affiliate that "the police department is under control" and that it actually receives fewer use-of-force complaints than departments in most other major cities. 


Jared Lunn, who eventually settled his lawsuit against the department, offers a different view.

"Denver police, to me, are basically criminals with badges," he told the Denver Post.  "I have no respect for them [and] I somewhat fear them...."


Oddly enough, both Whitman and Lunn are correct: The militarized criminal syndicate called the Denver Police Department is not measurably worse than its counterparts in most major U.S. cities. 

Video Extra: My New Anthem ...

... courtesy of the incomparable goofball guitar virtuoso Paul Gilbert:

Once again: Thank You

My deepest and most heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been so generous to me and my family over the past two weeks. As time permits I will express my gratitude to each of you personally, but I want to take this opportunity to let you know how much we appreciate your help. God bless you!

Be sure to tune in each Saturday evening from 8:00-11:00 Mountain Time for Pro Libertate Radio on the Liberty News Radio Network.











Dum spiro, pugno!