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Jerry Weinstock, M.D., Psychiatry, commented on parts of yesterday’s a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, and other road and sea side attractions launching out of Key West post at www.goodmorningkeywest.com:
Sloan: I have to read your Blog thoroughly latter to-night as I am writing today—-it will be read with the Sunday NY Times which I get about 9:00PM.. I have always been impressed with Rick Boettger, a fine writer, good mind , a good guy—-today also doing research with my writing.
My best guess is their is a vaccine in the works for the Ebola virus—
fairly soon, all the best -Jerry
I replied:
I read online, after USA brought two American ebola patients, foreign missionaries, from west Africa to CDC in Atlanta, that there was an experimental vaccine a company had made, which was given to those to patients, but it was all the vaccine the company had and there would be a long time making more of it.
They have known of ebola a long time. Given its extreme danger and capability of spreading, fast, I’m surprised they didn’t develop a vaccine sooner.
ebola victim
Well, priorities have to be honored. War tops the hit parade.
It’s a gruesome thought, but perhaps the planet, or Mother Nature, had enough, and, in self defense, intends to use ebola and other awful micro nature creations to thin down the destructive species considerably. I could see the angels aligned with that scenario, and I could see the angels helping a vaccine be developed.
Jerry wrote:
Sloan: should they have a vaccine—which I have heard and read about that as well;
duplicating it should not be that difficult even in quantity. Yes you are completely correct, they have had the virus for a very long time in laboratory isolation -known about the disease seems like forever. [ we will hope for the best ] sincerely, Jerry
I replied:
I would think if they have a vaccine, they already would have made gobs of it and it already would be in those three west African countries being administered profusely. If Ebola gets loose, that just might redefine human politics and life as it is known today.
P.S.
So far, I heard nothing back from Rick Boettger. I was especially interested in learning how much money he and his wife had donated, which ended up at Florida Keys Outreach Coalition. I asked Steve Braddock, and he said I’d have to ask Rick about that. I submitted Rick’s email to me, and my reply, as comments under my comment to Rick’s article in the current edition of www.thebluepaper.com (Key West the Newspaper), and the submission was deleted from moderation by Naja Girard, without comment. She deleted without comment, a comment I submitted under the Dennis Reeves Cooper article, too.
Today might prove to be heap of fun at www.goodmorningkeywest.com. Other stuff that came up yesterday, including some woo woo signals, also indicated such might be the case today. All those soaring and circling man o’ war birds you reported seeing the other day also alerted me to big bad stuff coming in. For years, when I see a man o’ war bird, that heralds spiritual warfare headed in pronto, and also good fishing, in a cosmic humor sense 
Jerry wrote this morning, just after I published this post:
Sloan: There must be a delivery system for anything resembling a vaccine;
Doctors, nurses, technicians -etc. hospital space -not only
overcrowded but NON_EXISTENT—-no money chronically, abysmally
UNDERFUNDED—-many people will get better with supportive medical therapy which is NON-EXISTENT : “WHO” part of the United Nations —is blackballed by the tea party and republicans in general…. I am not sure we even paid any dues or the proper amount due.—last I read we were behind -we owed $$$$ to the United Nations WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION which is practically BROKE -we can not deliver gobs of water let alone VACCINE —-reality!!!!—-Jerry
I replied:
Hi, Jerry - something as explosive and dangerous as ebola, heck, I don’t cut the UN a millimeter of slack. Nor President Obama, either. The US has habitually by-passed the UN when the UN didn’t suit the US. Obama should have “boots on the ground”, or at least bomber drops in those west African countries, of giant vats of ebola vaccine (which I ain’t yet convinced even exists). Ebola escaped could nearly wipe out humanity, while Obama is trying to trim back ISIS, which is Mary Poppins compared to ebola. Well, that’s how I sees it. Sloan
Dennis Reeves Cooper’s blue paper article requires yet another hijacking:
JOURNALISM AS A CONTACT SPORT
BLUE WALL OF SILENCE COST CITY ALMOST $300,000!
BY DENNIS REEVES COOPER
By now, you have probably read in the daily paper or heard on the radio that the City of Key West has agreed to pay former Key West cop Matt Klosowski $ 287,500 to settle a six-year-old whistle-blower lawsuit. But you probably don’t know the rest of the story. The real significance of this story is that the Mayor and City Commissioners now know that the Blue Wall of Silence is alive and well inside the Key West Police Department. The Mayor and Commissioners now know for sure that Police Chief Donie Lee’s department is corrupt. That is basically what City Attorney Shawn Smith had to admit when he recommended that the City settle out of court.
If you are a regular reader of this publication, you know that the Blue Wall of Silence is that unwritten “commandment” in law enforcement that says a cop does not rat on a fellow cop– even if the fellow cop has committed a crime– no matter how serious that crime may be. In recent weeks, and for years before that, I and others have written here about the Blue Wall of Silence. Just a few weeks ago, John Donnelly wrote that “on the firing line of life, in combat settings with a murderous element, the lines of decency can be blurred. However, crossing these lines is improper and unacceptable. It breeds a culture of corruption whereby officers can become judge, jury and executioner– an alarming and outlawed proposition.”
But I and others have pointed out that the impact of the Blue Wall game goes beyond just lying cops. The careers of honest officers who refuse to play the game can be– and often are destroyed by fellow officers and police management. More often than not, police management punishes whistle-blowers, rather than protecting them. Do you need proof of this truth? The Matt Klosowski case is right there in your face!
Here is what the Mayor and Commissioners knew before approving a payment of more than a quarter of a million dollars to Klosowski: On the evening of May 28, 2007, Officer Klosowski was on routine patrol. He responded to a call for backup by fellow cop Pablo Rodriguez. Rodriguez, in his patrol car, was pursuing a burglary suspect, who was racing away on a bicycle on the sidewalk. Rodriguez reportedly drove his patrol car over the curb and hit the bicyclist, knocking him to the ground and running over the bicycle. Now, I am not an expert on police policy, but I hardly think that it’s okay for a cop to use his patrol car as a weapon to stop a fleeing suspect. Rodriguez apparently agreed. When he got out of his car and confronted the suspect, he found him bleeding on the sidewalk, with possibly an injured leg. So he called the paramedics, right? Wrong. He couldn’t allow the guy to tell investigators that he had been run over by a cop car. So he told the suspect to get lost– and the the guy limped off into the night, never to be heard from again.
Unfortunately for Rodriguez, Officer Klosowski– who had responded as backup– had captured the entire incident on his dashboard video camera. When Rodriguez learned about the video, he told Klosowski to “melt it, make it go away,” Now try to put yourself in Klosowski’s position. Young cop, only three years out of the police academy. Rodriguez, his senior officer, was telling him to destroy evidence– a crime. He knew about the Blue Wall of Silence, of course– but he wanted to be an honest cop. Imagine that concept. So (gasp!), he reported the incident up the chain of command. Surely, he would not be expected to break the law, would he? But that is exactly what he found that police management– then-Police Chief Bill Mauldin and then-Captain Donie Lee– expected him to do.
According to Klosowski’s lawsuit, Mauldin and Lee allowed a campaign of harassment and retribution to be conducted against Klosowski for years. He was consistently given the most undesirable assignments and was denied job assignments for which he was qualified. Finally, he resigned, reading an emotional statement at the City Commission meeting on March 4, 2008.
There were also a couple of other things the Mayor and Commissioners knew before approving the settlement: They knew that Rodriquez had been cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal investigation. Cops investigating cops. Why do you think that our city fathers and mothers– or anybody else– might not give the results of such an investigation much credibility? If there was really no wrongdoing, why did the Mayor and Commissioners agree to settle? But the Mayor and Commissioners apparently did believe City Attorney Shawn Smith when he told them that, if the the case went to trial, a jury might give Klosowski as much as $600,000!
So, isn’t it about time that our Mayor and City Commissioners start asking the question that many citizens here have been asking for years? “Why can’t we expect our police officers to simply be honest– to do the right thing and tell the truth? Why should that be an unreasonable expectation?” And then a followup question: If Donie Lee can’t or won’t build an honest police department, then isn’t it time to hire a police chief who can and will? The Klosowski case documents the fact that police management protects bad cops by punishing honest cops. How many six-figure payouts is it going to take before the City Commission takes action.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dennis Reeves Cooper founded Key West The Newspaper in 1994 and was editor and publisher until he retired in 2012.
Key West The Newspaper [The Blue Paper] encourages spirited, open debate in comments on our stories. We do ask that you refrain from profanity, personal attacks and remarks that are off point. Please join the conversation!
2 COMMENTS ON “BLUE WALL OF SILENCE COST CITY ALMOST $300,000!”
ALEX SYMINGTON SEPTEMBER 19, 2014 AT 6:57 AM
It gets more and more difficult to say “it’s just a couple of bad apples on the force” when the good guys are silent…The Eimers case is going to cost the city much more than $287,500…
REPLY
JOHN DONNELLY SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 AT 12:54 AM
Great Read…Fantastic Article…
I emailed John Donnelly, so far, nothing back from him on that:
Just now saw your comment under Dennis Coopers’ article.
Here below is the comment I submitted yesterday, which Naja deleted without contacting me. She does that from time to time. Below my comment are some thoughts I wrote down yesterday about the deletion.
SLOAN BASHINSKY YOUR COMMENT IS AWAITING MODERATION.
SEPTEMBER 19, 2014 AT 3:59 PM
Thanks for airing this out further, Dennis. From the Key West Citizen edition, in which the Klosowsky story broke this past Wednesday:
“At the trial, former Judge Tegan Slaton stopped everything after attorney Barnes, during closing arguments, said something to jurors that had been ruled inadmissible.
“Smith [Shawn Smith, KW City Attorney] said he spoke to two of the jurors after the mistrial. One told him the jury had agreed to give Klosowski even more money than he had asked for and another “commented negatively” on the credibility of some of the city’s witnesses.”
It might have gone much worse for the city, if Mick Barnes, your buddy and once, perhaps still, your attorney, had not caused the mistrial.
When I saw Mick at the recent city commission meeting, I had the dickens getting him to even tell me why he was there. Finally, he told me the Klosowski item, and nothing more.
I looked at the printed agenda for the meeting, saw Klowoski was the next to last item, and it was an add-on, meaning, I think, it had not been pre-advertised with the rest of the agenda, so that item required unanimous approval by the mayor and city commissioners to be heard Wednesday night.
Not knowing what the Kowloski item was about, I left the meeting early after speaking to the two budget items at the front of the printed agenda.
On reading the Citizen report the next morning, I thought it might have been an add on, to sneak it as quietly as possible under the radar, but the Citizen, perhaps uncharacteristically, made a lot of hay with it the next morning. Or, it might well have snuck under the radar?
Publicly, in plain view and sunshine now, the mayor and city commissioners and city manager are on “official” notice that there is plenty rotten in the KWPD, as you have known for years, Dennis. Me, too. Others, as well. Especially, homeless people.
Actually, the mayor and city commissioners and city manager knew all along there was something rotten in their KWPD, and they have not behaved as if they were inclined to do anything about it. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, like before hell freezes over, but perhaps they will surprise me.
I was the only of the three candidates in the recent mayor’s race, who made the KWPD a campaign issue. Mayor Craig Cates, who was reelected without a runoff, and Margaret Romero, also a Key West native, Conchs they are called – whenever I got a chance to challenge them publicly, they backed KWPD, no problems there.
What that all told me, Dennis, is 97 percent of the voters in that race, I got 3 percent of the votes, were okay with KWPD. That’s pretty darn encouraging, don’t you think? No question mark really needed, the question is facetious.
I found myself wondering after reading your article, why you let Mick Barnes skate? Was that a kinda of civilian blue line thing? If Mick had not caused the mistrial, the city probably would have gotten clobbered a lot worse, then would become the predictable appeals and assertions from Shawn Smith and Mayor Cates and maybe city commissioners and the city manager and the police chief that there was nothing to the case, the city would win it, no problem.
Moving back in time, I wonder why you let Judge Wayne Miller skate in that case where Police Chief Buz Dillon had a warrant written up for your arrest, after you broke in the blue paper an Internal Affairs investigation, and the warrant was taken to Judge Miller, who approved and signed the warrant. But for that, the warrant could not have been served on you and you taken to jail.
You beat Buz Dillion up over that in the blue paper, back when you owned it and were its publisher. You sued the city over what Buz did, and that case eventually settled for a few hundred thou$and in your and Mick Barnes’ favor, yes? But you did not sue Judge Miller for what he did; you did not beat him up in the blue paper. Was that some kind of civilian thin blue line thing? Or, did you want a judge beholden to you?
Later, when you were arrested and jailed for D.U.I., after leaving the VFW wasn’t it, by Officer Pablo Rodriguez, wasn’t it [the same nice police officer in the Klowoski case], that case got assigned to Judge Miller. You claimed it was a set up, and the angels running me told me they agreed that Rodriguez, or whichever officer had lain in wait for you outside the VFW, had set you up. But the jury convicted you, and Judge Miller put you on probation, with certain conditions.
Later, you wrote Judge Miller a note saying you had satisfied the conditions of your probation, and then he released you from probation, but I saw nothing in the court file of that case indicating Judge Miller had spoken with your probation officer. It looked like Judge Miller took you at your word and ended your probation. Perhaps rightfully, but it looked odd, and perhaps the fine and court cost Judge Miller levied against you looked a bit low, too. Less than the cost of prosecuting you.
I got involved in digging into that after receiving a tip from an anonymous email correspondent, who kept tipping me to this and that, and telling me where to look in the court file and what to look for. It was all there, just as the whistleblower had said it would be. I suppose he, or she, wanted to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation, but not from the KWPD, which, I suppose, might have enjoyed reading my posts about that at http://www.goodmorningkeywest.com.
As I recall, I tried to get the blue paper interested in that matter with you and Judge Miller. You being the blue paper’s founder, perhaps that was another blue line situation.
———————————————
Sloan thoughts written down yesterday:
I came out of a dream around 3:30 a.m. today, in which I was told something to do with a woman had been lost and other ways to make up for it were available.
I dragged myself out of bed, went online, and refreshed Dennis Cooper’s article at the blue paper website, and saw Naja Girard, who handles the IT part of the blue paper, had deleted my comment without comment to me via email. I supposed two things.
Thing one. Naja and Dennis Reeves Cooper do not really believe Journalism is a contact sport, when it comes to blue paper journalists being roughed up over what they publish (I knew that already, this was further proof).
Thing two. Naja and Dennis really are no different from police who protect their own.
Actually, there is a third thing. The angels did not care for my comment being deleted. But that’s between them and Naja, I’m just the angels’ reporter.
And sometimes hijacker.
Below theblue paper “cartoon” on the demise of Charles’ Eimers is a directly-related beauty in today’s Citizen, keysnews.com, my pleasant thoughts in italics.
Ten minutes before he turned blue beneath a pile of Key West police officers Nov. 28, Charles Eimers blew through an intersection by zooming around a patrol car that was waiting for a traffic light to turn green.
“Blew through an intersection by zooming around a patrol car” was in the officer’s incident report? In the officer’s interview with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement? In the officer’s testimony before the Grand Jury?” Or is that Gwen Filosa’s interpretation?
Officer Gary Celcer immediately hit his lights and pulled over the silver PT Cruiser that had emerged from the left turn only lane at Kennedy Drive and North Roosevelt Boulevard to illegally pass his marked Key West Police cruiser.
Inside the car with Michigan license plates, Eimers stank of tobacco and wore a blank stare, Celcer later reported.
Lots of people in Key West stink of tobacco and wear blank stares. Just walk up and down Duval Street and see for yourself.
Eimers wore a denim jacket over blue paper “suicide scrubs,” the kind often handed out to patients at mental wards, Celcer would tell state investigators reviewing what became technically an in-custody death probe. A white hospital band was affixed to Eimers’ wrist.
Those details — paper scrubs that veteran street officers recognized as mental hospital wear and the hospital bracelet — don’t appear in Celcer’s incident report or the 33-page investigative summary by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
However, they are in interview notes that are part of the FDLE’s “full file,” obtained by the State Attorney’s Office this week.
This week? The State Attorney’s Office should have had everything FDLE had on the Eimers case, long before the State Attorney convened the Grand Jury.
Nine DVDs in all, the collection of evidence includes dashboard camera footage from six officers’ police cruisers and an hour-long recording from Officer Gary Lee Lovette’s Taser stun gun, which he pulled on Eimers but stopped short of firing, he said, because another’s — Officer Gabriel Garrido — finger had gotten stuck in the handcuffs and he feared the Taser would shock more than just the suspect.
“I was about to pull the trigger,” Lovette says, referring to his Taser.
Near the end of the recording, Lovette is apparently at home and tells someone, “Gabe was screaming like a girl,” over his trapped finger.
The police “dash cam” footage shows various officers responding to the end of Duval Street outside the Southernmost Beach Cafe, where Eimers drove onto the beach and stopped when his car got stuck, police say.
None of the video, though, shows a direct shot of the police’s beach struggle with Eimers.
Eimers was caught on a passerby’s cell phone video dropping to his knees and surrendering with his arms raised.
Once on the ground, though, officers say Eimers was propped up on his elbows and turning his head from side to side. Then, they told FDLE, he began to kick and fight several uniformed officers.
Paramedics arrived to find a suspect without a pulse. They took him to the hospital on Stock Island, where emergency room staff cut off Eimers’ hospital band and threw it away, police said. A photograph of the band on his wrist remains, though.
I think I recall reading in the blue paper that the police did not tell the paramedics what had happened on the beach before Eimers turned blue and became unresponsive.
Eimers, 61, died Dec. 4 when his family asked staff at Lower Keys Medical Center to remove him from life support. The county medical examiner later ruled the death an accident and a grand jury recently cleared all 13 police officers involved of any criminal wrongdoing.
But those officers and the city of Key West aren’t free of the Eimers case.
A federal lawsuit by the Michigan man’s family is set for trial April 6 before Judge Jose Martinez in Key West, where lawyers on behalf of son Treavor Eimers plan to argue that officers went too far with their facedown-on-the-beach restraint of an unarmed suspect and caused the death.
Unlike the criminal court realm, which has the most difficult burden of proof at beyond a reasonable doubt, the civil court standard is best described as more likely than not.
The city hired attorney Michael Burke, of Fort Lauderdale, to handle the case. Burke is arguing in court motions that the officers have “qualified immunity” from such lawsuits, a privilege granted to ensure police can do their jobs without threat of legal retaliation.
On Sept. 10, a new lawyer came aboard to represent only one of the 13 officers named in the suit: Lovette, whose voice is recorded on his Taser stun gun saying, “It’d be easier just to bury him,” while other officers are applying a defibrillator to an unconscious Eimers.
Lyman Reynolds Jr., of West Palm Beach, was retained to represent Lovette.
“I do not discuss pending litigation,” Reynolds wrote in an email Friday, when asked if the police union, the city or Lovette himself had hired him.
Reynolds, who started out in New Orleans, bills himself as an expert trial lawyer.
“With more than 32 years of litigation experience, Mr. Reynolds has tried more than 100 cases to verdict,” his website biography reads. “He specializes in handling cases with large exposure and complicated issues. Mr. Reynolds is known for his impressive trial presentation and presence in the courtroom.”
This ex-lawyer would like to know Reynolds’ won-loss percentage in the courtroom - that will tell me how good he is.
On Thursday, the Eimers family’s lawyers, led by Key West attorney Darren Horan, filed a witness list with 66 names.
The Eimers children and other relatives are on the list, along with three local paramedics, a manager of the Southernmost Beach Cafe, three Key West doctors and four registered nurses, Police Chief Donie Lee, all 13 police officers named in the suit and a few doctors from other states.
Two doctors from the McLaren Bay Regional Hospital in Bay City, Mich., where Eimers was treated in October, are on the witness list, along with staff from the Parkview Hospital Randalia in Fort Wayne, Ind..
The grand jury that cleared Key West police heard testimony from former county medical examiner, Dr. E Hunt Scheuerman, who told them Eimers could have died in his sleep he was so ill at the time of his arrest.
‘I dropped the bomb’
At one hour and four minutes long, the Taser recording appears to have recorded Lovette unaware. He uses some rough language, jokes about Eimers and at one point instructs someone at home where to find the sour cream and Velveeta in the fridge.
Eimers fought as if he were lit up on some drug, Lovette says at one point while on the phone recalling his Thanksgiving morning so far.
“Gary (Celcer) thinks he ingested something,” Lovette told someone over the phone later that day, according to an audio recording made on the Taser stun gun that switched on when he unholstered it.
“There’s a letter in his car about scripture writing and all this crazy shit,” Lovette says. “I almost Tased the guy.”
Eimers was “angel dust, acid strong,” fighting six officers at once, Lovette says on the audio recording. “He was fighting, fighting, fighting. Then all of a sudden, nothing.”
Lovette matter-of-factly mentions that he expects an internal affairs investigation.
“I was one of them, I’ll be going to IA,” he says. “So we have a police-involved death.”
On Thanksgiving Day, Lovette was captured on the Taser recording speaking of the Eimers arrest as if it were already a death.
“Well the good news is our entire shift is probably going to go on administrative leave while we’re being investigated for an in-custody murder,” Lovette says at 43 minutes, 37 seconds into the recording.
That’s what should have happened.
About one minute later, Lovette enters a house while saying, “That would be funny if we just killed someone.”
The black and white footage from the Taser recorded only the tiled floor where various feet and two small dogs, including a pug, scamper about.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” he says. “We just killed someone.”
Lovette explains that a suspect was talking about being on a “mission from God.”
On the beach, Lovette says, he got his licks in during the struggle.
He says he committed “blunt trauma to the head.”
Don’t say that, a woman tells him.
“Me, I dropped the f—ing bomb on his head,” Lovette tells the group. “I was that close to Tasing him. I’m glad I didn’t … We’re all going to be investigated now.”
Someone asks if the suspect was “a black guy,” to which Lovette replies, “Crazy white guy.”
Lovette says the officers “were fighting him” and having a difficult time restraining him.
“He went from beating the s— out of six of us to (nothing),” Lovette says, punctuating the sentence with a raspberry.
Someone asks if the suspect was “a homeless guy.” Lovette says the man was in a PT Cruiser with a bunch of clothes inside.
I think I recall reading in the blue paper that Lovette used “bum” to describe Eimers. In Key West, bum is synonymous with homeless person. I think I recall reading in the blue paper that the officer who made the traffic stop described Eimers as appearing to live in his vehicle.
“He had that strength that you shouldn’t have, any human being,” Lovette says. “We’re all big guys and he was bucking us around like nothing.”
Lovette then takes a phone call.
“Hello? Yeah well, we killed him so you don’t have to worry about it,” Lovette says. “I don’t know. We don’t know. He drove his car onto the beach…”
Eimers had “some manifesto” on his dashboard, Lovette says.
“He was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” Lovette says.
Lovette says that after Eimers, officers were called to Roosevelt Boulevard for a report that a man dressed in all black was pointing a gun at various cars.
The call turned out to be a man aiming a hand exerciser at people as if it were a gun.
The Taser recording ends with Lovette speaking again about the incident with Eimers.
Someone is talking about an upcoming event and Lovette says, “Unless I’m being criminally investigated, I’ll be there.”
Also in the Citizen today is this directly-related editorial - good for the Citizen not sticking its head miles deep into the sand like the mayor, city commissioners, city manager and police chief did, and still are doing:
Video cameras: they are everywhere nowadays and the video they capture is changing our society. Nowhere is this change more evident than when it comes to law enforcement.
Dramatic video of police interactions with the public have become almost weekly occurrences in today’s news-hungry world. What often makes the videos we see newsworthy is that they tend to contradict scenarios described by police officers in their reports. These apparent contradictions are sometimes caused by the fact that the video is taken by bystanders at a bit of a distance, and thus the videos lack the detail necessary to know what is happening and what is being said by those directly involved.
Very recently our own Chief of Police Donnie Lee was given a demonstration of so called “body cameras.” There are a few different styles but basically, these are cameras worn on an offer’s person. They record everything the officer does and says when he or she is interacting with the public.
Use of these cameras has been reported to dramatically reduce public complaints about the behavior of law enforcement officers.
We feel Chief Lee and the city commission should join the trend in law enforcement across the country and implement the use of the body cameras.
The Key West Citizens Review Board, which is the civilian group which examines complaints against the police department, has been urging the adoption of these cameras since last year.
CRB Executive Director Larry Beaver summed it up well.
Beaver is a retired cop, from the mainland.
“The board believes body cameras would in fact cut down on citizens’ complaints because a police officer would be more aware of his actions, and the citizen more aware of actions being recorded,” Beaver said. “It helps both parties tremendously when they have documentation.”
Actually, it drives police departments nuts when video cameras catch officers doing what they ought not to be doing, and not doing what they ought to be doing. Plaintiff lawyers have the exact opposite response, of course, when video cameras catch officers doing what they ought not to be doing, and not doing what they ought to be doing. If Donnie Lee wanted to know what his officers are doing, he would have pushed hard before now to get these cameras installed on his officers.
The cameras are estimated to cost in the area of $100,000. That cost is a relatively minor one for the city, especially if it brings the department’s video system up to current standards.
Spending $100 grand seems like a bargain in light of the recent legal settlement in which the city had to pay a former officer $287,000.
The main claim of that lawsuit was that the former officer was retaliated against after he refused to destroy an in-car video recording. The video was of another officer’s altercation with a citizen. That citizen was injured severely by the other officer, yet the citizen was never even charged.
Along with the incident mentioned above, readers may also remember an incident not too long ago where an officer was disciplined for turning off the in-car cameras when he pulled over a fellow officer on suspicion of DUI.
In most any law enforcement related case, tampering with evidence is a crime. Video and audio recordings are most certainly evidence and need to be protected. Any video system must start recording automatically and be immune to tampering. To prevent these kind of issues in the future, any tampering with recording devices should be a terminal offense.
Tampering with and covering up evidence is common practice after police officers do what they ought not to have done, and don’t do what they ought to have done. That happened in the very case the city just settled for $287,000. There was plenty of tampering and covering up after Charles Eimers died. I can’t imagine KWPD, ie. Donnie Lee, pushing to get these cameras. Nor can I imagine the mayor, city commissioners and city manager pushing to get these cameras. They don’t think prevention. They think getting away with it. Maybe they will surprise me. Maybe I’m not holding my breath.
Another local example of the importance of video is the recent in-custody death of Charles Eimers. A bystander’s video seemed to show rough handling of Eimers, possibly contributing to his demise. After looking at all the facts available, a grand jury concluded that the police did, in fact, use reasonable force in the altercation.
As I recall reading in the blue paper, the bystanders’ video contradicted the officers’ incident reports of what happened when Charles Eimers; not knowing of the bystander’s video, the officers wrote that Eimers had tried to run and had resisted arrest at South Beach; the bystander’s video refuted that.
Interestingly, the only first-person recording of the many officers on hand that was available was recorded by the taser one officer unholstered, which started the video and audio recording. After the taster was reholstered, the audio kept recording and picked up many dramatic and extremely embarrassing and inappropriate statements by the officer.
All of which surely thrilled that officer, Lovette, his fellow officers, Donie Lee, the mayor, city commissioners, city manager, Chamber of Commerce, Tourist Development Council, and the plaintiff lawyers.
Needless to say, any discussion of whether the Key West Police Department, along with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, should be using body cameras should be a short one. The decision is a no brainer, as years from now body cameras will be as standard as in-car cameras are today.
I’m still not holding my breath.
— The Citizen
Moving laterally,
Sanity Clause, self-styled Taoist, U.S. Constitution expert and bearer of glad tidings, and I continued our amicable hijacked Facebook discussion reported in yesterday’s a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, and other road and sea side attractions launching out of Key West post at www.goodmorningkeywest.com. For continuity’s sake, this begins with the ending parts of what was reported yesterday.
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Sanity Clause You wrote: “The sacred feminine is absent from this planet”?! If that were true Sloan B. would not have been on this planet to write it. -
Sloan Bashinsky Do not equate women with the sacred feminine, Sanity Clause. Two entirely different things. The Holy Spirit, to use Christendom’s lingo, is the sacred feminine. Although Christendom doesn’t know that. Its all male trinity ignores half of God.
Being infused with the sacred feminine is a seriously life-changing experience, be you male human, or be you female human.
Ciao maim, the beatings will continue until morale improves
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Sanity Clause The Yang cannot and never does exist without the Yin; regardless of whether or not the Yin is perceivable. There is no real division extant in Allah-ha {transliteration of Aramaic word for God}. God is not schizo-. I do not belong to any group of Age of Aquarius Believers and I resent being put in such a cubbyhole. Have an ice day.
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Sloan Bashinsky My apology, you mentioned that cubby hole … Okay, the yin is not perceivable, in the main, because she is suppressed, in the main, by human beings, their societies. Laotzu, credited with founding Taoism, Tao, the Great Mother, must be amazed over how little of yin is operational in China and other parts of Asia where he once had great influence. The French had some understanding when they sent this to America …
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Sanity Clause “Lao TZU” is generic Chinese meaning “old man”, not anyone’s name.
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Sloan Bashinsky sans yin - you
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Sanity Clause Recommended reading for you Sloan: “The Way And Its Power: A Study Of The Tao Te Ching And Its Place In Chinese Thought” – by Arthur Waley. Unlike previous translations, this translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Tê Ching is based not on the medieval commentaries but on a close study of the whole of early Chinese literature. First published in 1934.
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Sloan Bashinsky That’s the left brain, intellectual approach - yang. Tao is a way of being, it cannot be learned by reading a book; it can only be learned by living it. That’s what Lautzu did. Reminds me of a Texas celebrity of sorts, who was African descent, saying: going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in your garage makes you an automobile.
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Sanity Clause The “left vs right” brain paradigm is the same Yang Yang Yang divide and conquer BS as republican vs democrat hype. Arthur Waley was more scowler than scholar and took no prisoners including his own humble self in his introduction to the Tao Te Ching, which is more than half the book. And like the generic “old man” Lao Tzu, Waley is never so arrogant as to try to define what the unvarying Tao is; unlike you, Sloan… I doubt you have ever read any translation, or will ever read the one I recommended. Get out of my face with your pedantic know it all arrogance.
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Sloan Bashinsky Get out of your face, my goodness! Just about every FB comment I see you make is in somebody’s face. No, I won’t read that book, nor any book on Tao. I did my spiritual text reading decades ago, even as the living it commenced. Very different, living it. Unimaginable, the difference. Your demeanor on FB is yang. I sniff no yin. Perhaps you are hiding her on purpose. Perhaps that is a strategy the Anglo Waley, he was Anglo, yes?, recommended? Just joking. You cannot live Tao by reading a book. You cannot live Jesus by reading a book. You cannot live Buddha by reading a book. But, oh, do many people try doing it that way. Tao is a way of being. You can check out of this conversation anytime, Sanity Clause. Nobody’s twisting your arm to stay in it, but you..
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Sanity Clause If I were The Ip Man I might ask, “What’s your style?” Instead, I think it more appropriate to inquire, ‘What was your diagnosis?’
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Sloan Bashinsky I gave the diagnosis: absence of operative feminine in humanity, in the main. I provided a way for any person to reverse that internally. Basically, quit pointing the finger, quit crusading, quit reacting to what doesn’t suit them, and do that for a solid year; and also, stand in front of a mirror that entire year and point the finger at all the different parts of themselves they don’ t want to deal with, or don’t even know are there. The easier way would be a Divine Intervention of the sacred feminine into all humans where it is not operating well, if at all, which, based on what I see in and hear from this world, is about 99.99 of the species. I keep getting nudged by the angels who boss me around to ask you two questions. The first question is, are you willing to bet your life and your soul on 9/11 having been an inside job, as opposed to Osama bin Laden and his sect’s doing? Know, if you make that bet, it is cast into stone, and if you are mistaken, your soul is forfeit to something considerably bigger than you. Not something bad, and what it does with you is not mine to know. The second question is, are you willing to be taught, steered and corrected by Jesus, Archangel Michael and Magdalene-Melchizedek? That’s who I imagine you will lose the bet to, if you make it. And, that sort of indicates my “style”, in the martial arts sense of that word, but it’s not of this world, even though it is applied to what happens on this world. I imagine one thing right off they might tell you is to drop the anonymous handle and put your name, rank and serial number on your public statements.
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Sanity Clause “They” are fully aware of who I am, and that’s enough. You, can find out by reading my Web Domain www.sanityclause.com which has been on the Internet since the first day it was opened for public use.
SanityClause.comwww.sanityclause.comWelcome to SanityClause.com -
Sloan Bashinsky Of course they are fully aware of who you are, but just now checking parts of your website, I don’t see your name, rank and serial number, which allows other people to know who you are, although I doubt F.B.I. NSA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security would have any trouble getting your name, rank and serial number, if they felt like doing that. I agree with the intent of your “Declaration of Disgust and CLAIM OF RIGHT’ page, specifically paragraph 4 thereof, decrying America’s war on terrorism, but my reasons for decrying are broader than the US Constitution. You also did not answer either of the 2 questions I was told told to ask you, which dodge, coupled with your not providing your name, rank and serial number, provides heaps of information on you. I been ruminating on the Ebola situation in western Africa. If that thing gets loose, it just might render moot human politics and life as they are known today.
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Sanity Clause Poor Sloan: to be infused with all them high holy people and to still be living in fear. -sigh-
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Sloan Bashinsky Fear? You, who bravely hides behind a fake name, twists what I wrote into me being afraid of Ebola? I would view a world-wide scourge of humanity, by Ebola, as horrible, but also understandable, given the direction humanity is headed. Perhaps the surviving humans would behave differently thereafter, perhaps not. But there would be a lot less of them to cause so much destruction to themselves and to this planet.
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Sloan Bashinsky I could view something like that as yin Mother Nature and the planet defending themselves, with concurrence and even assistance from the angels, while at the same time trying to get yang-driven humanity’s undivided attention. Right now, we have thousands of bikers in Key West, lots of big motorcycles without mufflers making lots of that special testosterone sound. Perhaps providing a title for today’s ravings at www.goodmorningkeywest.com, which will include your and my most recent amicables. Below is a drawing of one of my “wives”, the Hindu goddess of destruction and rebirth.
Kali
For some time I have viewed Kali as sort of like a female Jesus, speaking of whom, and Mary Magdalene-Melchizedek,
Virginia, of Jupiter Beach, Florida, and I have had recent email discussion.
She wrote:
Have you ever read Autobiography of a Yogi. I read it at 14 and had read Genesis at 12 and the remainder of the Bible over my teens. The similarity between the Yoga training, spending 40 days in the desert or on a mountain in meditation, healing abilities, speaking in parables, similarity goes on and on. I always felt Jesus went to India during his lost years from 12 to 30 as trade between Bahrain and India by boat since 3000 BC or trade routes through Iraq, Iran To India.
Virginia
I replied:
In the early 1990s, I read about half of Yogananda’s book, which is how I knew what you meant about Jesus doing something similar. My “info” is Jesus went from Palestine to India, after the near-death experience and wrapping up his duties to his disciples, known in the Gospels and not known there. Jesus asked Mary Magdalene to go with him eastward, but she didn’t want to leave her culture. Later, when it was a capital offense to be a Christian, Mary Magdalene went to the south of France, with her and Jesus’ child. The Cathar sect of Christendom celebrated the Jesus and Magdalene paring, and their child, but I don’t think they knew he was still alive, probably by then in India. Eventually, nation allies of the Vatican wiped out the Cathars, burned their churches and libraries, but by then the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was spreading around Europe. Today, that bloodline is all over this planet, and people in that bloodline really don’t feel like they are from here, and it’s not easy on most of them being here. I think it’s fair to say, though, that Jesus was a yogi, in the spirit sense, although I don’t think he was trained by yogis. Other sects knew things, which are not reported in the Bible, the Jewish Scriptures. Jesus told his disciples at one place in the Gospels, that he had other flocks of which they did not know. It says in the Gospels that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were secret disciples of Jesus. I suppose there were other secret disciples. Mary Magdalene was Melchizedek incarnated; she was not a disciple. Jesus recognized her on sight, when they first met. Recognized her spiritually. If she publicly washed his feet with her hair and tears, and anointed him with precious ointment she scarce could afford, what did she wash and anoint him with when they were in private? She was the one he told outside the tomb to go to the men disciples and tell them she had seen him and he had said he would be with them shortly, and boy did that upset Peter, that Jesus sent a woman to them with the good news. She was the first minister of the gospel, therefore.
Virginia wrote:
Your understanding of Jesus and Mary’s role as a disciple clarifies many things. I read that Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy family relative, a Uncle of Jesus, which explains why he would offer his tomb to Jesus. He was also knowledgeable about medicine, herbs, etc. I talked to my friends from India about the legend that Jesus went to Shinar in the Kashmir Valley and preached there til his death, and many Indians accept the history and say it’s common knowledge in the town. India has a history if holy men and the society takes care of them and doesn’t attack them.
I replied:
She was more than a disciple, she was his peer, and his wife, and the mother of their child. She was Melchizedek, incarnated.
In the Gospels, it says Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus went to Pilate to gain permission to take Jesus down from the cross the same day he was crucified, yes? Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus gained that permission, and then came back and took Jesus down off the cross and salved Jesus with 100 weight of aloes and myrrh, and then wrapped him in linen cloth, and then placed him in the tomb.
What was that about? Jews did not embalm their dead. Aloe and myrrh are not embalming herbs. Aloe is a powerful natural wound healer; myrrh greatly excites white blood cell count to fight infection. Linen was clean, a bandage.
Those two men risked their very lives in the Jewish community, by doing that; they gave up their lives in any event, in the Jewish community, by doing it. They had a reason for doing it, they were in on it; and they knew they would be on the lam, running for their lives, afterward; leaving nearly everything behind, which they’d had.
Jesus has the near-death experience, is visited by angels, of which we now know happens relatively frequently, but back then it was not so well known. The wounds on his body, however, needed special herbal medical attention. Today, different medical salves would be applied to such body wounds, to ward off and fight infection.
P.S., in the anonymous New Testament Letter to the Hebrews, which the angels told me was scribed by Mary Magdalene, Jesus is said to be High Priest in the Order Melchizedek. The angels said Magdalene did not put her name on it, because no man would have read it, if it was known a woman had scribed it. Melchizedek is described in that letter, and in Genesis, where a Melchizedek interacted with Abraham - described as an eternal being, which in Genesis took form as a human man; in the Gospels, another Melchizedek, or perhaps the same one, took form as a woman - Mary Magdalene.
Ciao maim, the wing beatings will continue until morale improves
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com
