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Camera Shows Cops Cooking Up Lies

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After Buyout, AP Veteran Will Help Cherokees

On NBC’s “Today” show, Ann Curry reports on allegations that police falsified documents and conspired to cover up a rear-end collision apparently caused by an officer. (Video)

A Lesson for News Media After Gates Case?

As the nation attempts to “move on” from the incident involving Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Cambridge, Mass., police comes this story from Hollywood, Fla.:

“Four Hollywood police officers were caught on tape discussing ways to falsely pin an officer-involved crash on the other driver involved, who later was arrested on drunken driving charges,” in the words of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

“The case has thrown into question several other court cases in which the officers previously testified, officials said. The Hollywood Police Department launched an internal investigation this week and put the officers in question on administrative duty.” The police chief said¬†a crime scene technician is also being scrutinized for her role in the incident.

The tape of the officers plotting how to falsify their report was broadcast not only in South Florida media, but nationally Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show.

“The incident, which was caught on the officer’s dashboard camera, led to allegations that the officers involved falsified documents and conspired to cover up a rear-end collision apparently caused by officer Joel Francisco,” WPLG-TV in Miami reported on Friday.

“The officers charged the other driver, Alexandra Torrensvilas, with the crash, saying she swerved into Francisco’s cruiser on Sheridan Street. Her attorney, however, said it was Torrensvilas who was rear-ended by the police cruiser at a traffic light.

“According to police, blood tests reportedly showed Torrensvilas was under the influence at the time of the crash. Those findings, however, are in question. But because the officers allegedly falsified the details of the collision, the state attorney dropped all the charges against her.”

Officer.com, founded by a police sergeant and devoted to law enforcement, quoted Sgt. Dewey Pressley, a 21-year veteran of the force, on the tape:

“‘Well, I don’t lie and make things up ever because it’s wrong,’ Pressley said. ‘But if I need to bend it a little to protect a cop, I’m gonna.’

“‘I will write the narrative out for you. I will tell you exactly how to word it so it can get him off the hook. You see the angle of her car? You see the way it’s like this? As far as I’m concerned, I am going to word it she is in the left hand lane. We will do a little Walt Disney to protect the cop, because it wouldn’t matter because she was drunk anyway,’ Pressley said.”

The Florida incident assumes added significance in light of the Gates incident, in which there were also discrepancies between the police account and those of the citizens involved. President Obama was upbraided by some commentators, such as Juan Williams of Fox News and National Public Radio, for speaking “without having looked at the police report, without knowing the facts of the case.”

Among the most glaring discrepancies was the police statement that the woman who called 911 said she had seen two black men with backpacks. A recording of the 911 call later showed she never said that.

Nevertheless, polls taken over the controversy showed Obama losing support among white voters, particularly, after he said the police acted “stupidly,” a statement he later called a mistake.

In the president’s efforts to move the story from the headlines, Gates and the Cambridge officer, Sgt. James Crowley, met at the White House for a beer on Thursday night. No attempt was made to resolve the discrepancies. Crowley told reporters that he and Gates “agreed to disagree.”

But the story is greater than that of a disagreement between two men.

Ronald Hampton, who heads the National Black Police Association, based in Washington, said he was not surprised by the apparent attempt by the Hollywood, Fla., police to falsify information.

For the men and women in blue, “this is routine for them,” he said. Cadets are taught in the police academy that “the elements of a crime” must be present when arrests are made, he said. “So what happens is they make the arrest, and then when they write the report, they put in the elements of a crime.”

For example, Hampton recalled the 1999 case of Abner Louima, whom police sodomized with a plunger in a restroom at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn, N.Y.

As the New York Times said in reporting the trial of the one of the officers, Michael Bellomo, “prosecutors introduced his police reports and his statements to the F.B.I., which prosecutors said contained information that he knew was false.”

Hampton quoted Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who has written that police themselves have a term for deflecting the truth: “testilying.”

The lesson for the news media, where young reporters are trained always to secure a police account, is to “Look at it with more of a jaundiced eye,” Hampton said, “and be willing to be interested in more than just a sound bite. You need to drill down and get down in it.”

In the Gates case, “white folks say, ‘you don’t know what happened.'” he continued. “‘Black folks do know, ’cause it happens to them all the time.'”

Hampton pointed to a need to collect nationally racial data about stops involving those who police believe are people of color. Catch-all disorderly conduct statutes, which he said are disproportionately used against people of color, also need to be examined.  Gates was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, a charge later dropped.

Hampton spoke after reports surfaced about a Washington lawyer who was discussing the Gates case on a District of Columbia street. Pepin Tuma, 33, said he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct “seconds after a police officer overheard him telling two friends ‘jokingly’ and in a loud voice, ‘I hate the police,’ according to the Washington Blade and other accounts. Tuma, who is gay, was also told, “just shut up, faggot,” he said.

It turns out that the two friends are also lawyers. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has ordered an internal investigation.

Hampton was willing to bet the police report didn’t square with Tuma’s.

We might never know. With disorderly conduct charges, D.C. police told Journal-isms, officers file no public report.

Vice President Biden, President Obama, professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley met Thursday in the White House Rose Garden.  Should  Lynn Sweet, Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin have a similar event? (Credit: CBS)

Reporter Denies Planting Question, Suggests a Beer

“Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin are entitled to their opinions, which they have plenty of ‚Äî in this case about President Obama and his reaction to the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley,” Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, wrote¬†Wednesday on politicsdaily.com.

“They are not, however, to paraphrase the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan, entitled to their own facts, or entitled to invent a scenario in which the White House somehow prompted me to ask Obama about Gates at his press conference last week.

“Ann, Michelle, can we get a beer on this? I’ll pay. I’ll take an Amstel Light. What are your brews? Because gals, you need to look elsewhere for a new conspiracy. Coulter said on FOX News that Obama ‘had that question planted.’ She added, ‘I do have proof.’ On NBC’s ‘Today Show’ on Wednesday morning, host Matt Lauer, asked Malkin, ‘Do you think this was a planned question?’ Replied Malkin, ‘Absolutely do.’

“You are both wrong. The Obama White House did not have a clue what I would be asking. (And why again would they want to plant a question that would take him off his health-care message, a question that was likely to get him in hot water, and did?)”

Obama Approval Ratings Slip During Gates Coverage

“The public sharpened its focus on health care reform last week, following news about the debate in Washington more closely than any other story. Interest in health care reform has steadily increased in recent weeks as coverage ‚Äî including a prime-time presidential news conference ‚Äî has intensified,” the Pew Research Center reported¬†on Thursday.

“Nearly a third (31%) name the debate in Washington over health care reform as their top story, more than the share who cite the economy (19%) or the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. (17%).

“The developing story about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Barack Obama‚Äôs comments on the incident occurred while the latest Pew Research Center survey was being conducted,” a summary continued.¬†

“On the first night of interviewing, Wednesday, July 22, Barack Obama commented that the police had ‘acted stupidly’ in his prime-time press conference. By Friday, both Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley ‚Äî the police officer involved ‚Äî publicly commented on the issue, and on Friday afternoon Obama followed up on his original remarks by saying he had spoken with Crowley by phone, and had used an unfortunate ‘choice of words’ in his press conference.

“. . . An analysis of public responses over the course of the survey period suggests that Obama‚Äôs job approval and personal image may have slipped somewhat ‚Äî among whites ‚Äî over the five days the survey was conducted. In interviews conducted Wednesday and Thursday night ‚Äî largely before the analysis of Obama‚Äôs comments became the main part of the story ‚Äî 53% of white non-Hispanics approved of Obama‚Äôs overall job performance, compared with 46% of those interviewed Friday through Sunday. Disapproval among whites edged up from 36% on the first two nights to 42% Friday through Sunday. And the share of whites who say they like the kind of person Obama is slipped from 75% to 69% over the same period.”

Chilling Account of Chauncey Bailey Killing

“The leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery embraced the men who had just told him they carried out orders to kill Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, telling them ‘I love y’all,’ according to the admitted gunman’s chilling grand jury account released Thursday,” Jaxon Van Derbeken wrote¬†Friday for the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The April testimony of confessed killer Devaughndre Broussard led to the indictment of onetime bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV, 23, in the 2007 slaying of Bailey and the killings of two other men. Also indicted in the three slayings was bakery follower Antoine Mackey, also 23.

“On Thursday, Bey and Mackey pleaded not guilty to murdering Bailey, 57, Odell Roberson Jr., 31, and Michael Wills, 36. The court also ordered the transcript of the grand jury hearing revealed.

“For more than a year, Broussard, 21, was the sole defendant charged in the Bailey killing and the other slayings were unsolved. In his grand jury account, the onetime bakery handyman described how he joined the bakery and then planned and executed the Bailey killing with the help of Mackey, who drove that day.”

“. . . At the end of his two days on the stand, Broussard explained why he decided to become a prosecution witness. He initially had confessed to acting alone after Bey IV visited with him in jail. He said he finally decided to cooperate, ‘because they left me for dead.'”

Thomas Peele of the Chauncey Bailey Project added¬†in the Oakland Tribune that defense lawyers, citing the project’s Web site, asked Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson to make a permanent and provisional gag order in the case.

“Gary Sirbu, Mackey’s lawyer, said he believed both defendants’ rights to a fair trial have been jeopardized.

“But Jacobson said the project’s work, ‘while very biased against’ Bey IV and Mackey, did not approach the level of ‘clear and present danger or imminent threat’ to their rights to a fair trial.

“‘I am unaware of a circus atmosphere,’ the judge said. ‘I am not seeing cars being burned in the street.'”

After Buyout, AP Veteran Will Help Cherokees

John Shurr, the former Associated Press bureau chief in Columbia, S.C., who was one of 100 AP employees who have accepted a voluntary buyout, says he will remain involved in activities of the Cherokee Nation.

Shurr, 62, told Journal-isms, “I’m staying involved in things that have always been important to me: I remain chairman of the South Carolina Press Association’s FOI Committee, a pro-bono role I’ve had now for 22 years, and I’m continuing to serve the Cherokee Nation as a member of the Editorial Board for The Cherokee Phoenix.

“In those roles, I’ve been able to improve and ward off attacks on open government statues in South Carolina and help the Cherokees with that mainstream experience by taking the SC FOI law and reworking it to fit an Indian tribe.

“Several of my bureau chief friends and others set up a scholarship fund with the tribe in my name and we now have our first recipient, who’s working for The Phoenix this summer. I’m also planning to sponsor a scholarship for a Cherokee combat veteran from any branch of service who wants to get a college degree in his or her choice of areas.

“I’m a brown water Navy combat vet who served in Vietnam in 1967-68, after which I went back to college to complete my degree. I wanted to help make the same thing possible for other combat veterans because I know the GI Bill only goes so far. Other than that, I plan to enjoy reading a lot of news on the Web and hope for the best for my friends and colleagues still working at newspapers, in AP bureaus and elsewhere in the news business.”

Professors Honored for Helping High-School Journalism

A South Dakota professor who produced a high school journalism program for Native American students in South Dakota and a University of North Carolina faculty member who created a one-week journalism workshop for high school students from across the country are to be honored at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Convention in Boston on Aug. 5, the association announced.

In the Innovative Outreach to Scholastic Journalism contest, Doris Giago of South Dakota State University won first place for her program, “the result of the request from teachers who work at high schools on South Dakota reservations who wanted a journalism curriculum from a Native American perspective,” the group said.

Linda Bowen, assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at California State University, Northridge, won second place for developing a mentoring program that matches senior journalism majors with area high school and middle school media programs.

The third place winner was Napoleon Byars, assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who developed the Chuck Stone Program for Diversity in Education and Media. Byars was formerly director of policy and communications for the Air Force Association and public affairs officer to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Out of Prison, Michael Vick Says He’s Close to Signing

“Michael Vick said Thursday that he is getting close to signing with a professional football team but refused to elaborate,” the Associated Press reported.

“Vick made the comment to reporters as he left a courtroom in Newport News, Va., after a hearing in his bankruptcy case. Asked about his progress in signing with a team, Vick said: ‘We’re getting close.’ He declined to answer additional questions.

“The former Atlanta Falcons star, who served 18 months for running a dogfighting ring, was conditionally reinstated Monday by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.”

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