Alaskacops identical to Corrupticops

[Mort Zuckerman]

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Subject: Alaskacops identical to Corrupticops

Date: Oct 16, 2008 8:46 AM

Well, well, well. I never in a million years
thought I would admire Sarah Palin. I take back
what I said about her. Anyone who tries to take
on the CRAZY cops - and there is no doubt about
their wolf-pack behavior in Corrupticut-
witness Ritt Goldstein:
http://www.actionlyme.org/VIKING_INTERVIEWS.htm
who had to seek asylum in Sweden because the Corrupticops
tried to kill him, just like Phil Inkel...
http://www.actionlyme.org/andersonpenisbiter.htm
who I feel had his children brutalized for winning
a lawsuit against the Colchester cops who beat Phil
up and then ordered him killed for $5,000. The
other $5,000 was payment for also killing Steven
Murzin- who reported witnessing Phil Inkel's beating
for trying to interfere with the cops beating up
a teenager by the same cops in a McDonald's parking
lot in Colchester.
(Yes, 4 people were beaten- the teenager, Phil
Steve Murzin and his brother, as a consequence of
the corrupticops beating up the first person- a kid.)
http://www.actionlyme.org/VIKING_INTERVIEWS.htm
http://www.actionlyme.org/ALVIDEOAUDIO_ALL.htm


What can I say?
Any woman who tries to get rid of a psychopath
is a heroine to me. I had to do it myself:
http://www.actionlyme.org/THE_REAL_DON_DICKSON.htm

I stand corrected. More people I know personally
have been injured by crazy cops than thought-disordered
jealous bitches, like my "sister" and Sarah Palin's clone,
Nancy E. Martin:
http://www.actionlyme.org/Hilarious.htm

Here is Nancy Martin reporting to the DCF that my
children are afraid of Donald G. Dickson because he
is violent and insane:
http://www.actionlyme.org/APATOW.htm


Kathleen M. Dickson
=============================================================

http://www.counterpunch.org/conn10152008.html

October 15, 2008
Even a Governor Can't Fire a Bad Cop
The Real Story of Troopergate

By STEVE CONN

If you think Palin’s Matalin-Corsi smear-Obama script in the new
Runaway Train,
was a stinker, consider her second, after she fired the Commissioner
of Public Safety
and failed to get her bad-cop-brother-in-law dismissed. Sent to
Alaska to delay
or discredit the inquiry, the Republican truth squad made fools of
themselves and
infuriated Alaskans It provided an opening for Democrats to play the
victims, demand
apologies and seek justice for a Public Safety Commissioner who was
fired -- in
part -- because Palin was frustrated with a system neither she nor the
commissioner
could beat.

Buried in the report and lost in the shuffle was a familiar public
policy issue-
how do those policed get simple justice from a system more protective
of police
than those it serves?

The real story behind Troopergate is better than the one created by
Republicans
or Democrats -the Partisan Investigation or Big Bully in the State
House, take your
pick. The Palins naively believed that, armed with the power and
authority of the
top state office, she (or her husband) could discover and even change
the results
of an internal and confidential state trooper process and get a bad
cop canned,
because the evidence was solid that he was, indeed, a bad cop. The
only reason we
know he was a bad cop is that he voluntarily opened his own, otherwise
confidential,
personnel files to the public.

An editorial in the Anchorage Daily News –“He’s No Angel” spells it
out:

Trooper Wooten gave his 10-year-old stepson a ‘test’ firing from
his state-issued
Taser because the boy wanted to know what it was like. That was
astoundingly bad
judgment. Because the child ‘consented’ and the test apparently
produced no lasting
harm, Wooten would have a good defense against any criminal charges.
But it was
a hopelessly inappropriate thing for a state trooper to do with state-
issued equipment.

Trooper Wooten also shot a moose illegally, using his wife's
permit. At
the time the incident was investigated, he was a wildlife enforcement
officer responsible
for enforcing the very same hunting laws he broke. Questioned by
troopers about
the incident, he said he felt it was not inappropriate, according to
the troopers'
disciplinary report.

Trooper Wooten also said he would make his father-in-law ‘eat a
f***-ing? lead
bullet’ if he helped get a lawyer for his daughter. Apparently that
didn't qualify
as ‘assault’ under the law because Wooten did not say it directly to
his father-in-law.
No crime, but another example that trooper Wooten lacked the judgment
and temperament
to remain a trooper.
Another disturbing incident from Wooten's record was the courtesy
treatment
he got from a fellow trooper during a DUI stop. A bartender had
reported Wooten
as a suspected drunken driver after Wooten caused a commotion in the
bar and drove
away. Wooten's fellow officer stopped him, let him leave his car
behind and
gave him a ride to his destination. An arrest and conviction for DUI
would have
ended Wooten's career as a trooper.

In another incident, Wooten was off duty and drove his patrol car
with an open
container of alcohol. Witnesses indicate he had been drinking before
he got in the
patrol car -- a finding that trooper Col. Julia Grimes upheld in her
review of Wooten's
case.

Under normal circumstances, Alaskans and the country wouldn't know
much
about Wooten's record as a trooper. Typically, his infractions and
disciplinary
record would be confidential as a personnel matter. We'd all be left
guessing
what he had done that made the Palin family so upset.
Not to excuse the Palins' persistent queries about why Wooten was
still
a trooper, but they knew nothing of the disciplinary action that had
been taken
against him. They didn't know he had been suspended for five days.
They just
knew he was still on the force.

However, in one of the more bizarre twists in the case, Wooten
himself released
his personnel information, perhaps thinking it would vindicate him. On
the contrary,
most who view his record are left wondering, ‘If what he did doesn't
get you
fired from the troopers, what does it take?’

That's a good question for the Alaska Legislature to ask.

Palin’s own e mail to her commissioner echoes the editorial and
Wooten’s record,
but from a complaintant’s perspective: (from the Branchflower report
to the Legislative
Council)

In sharing a few personal examples with you including the trooper
who used to
be related to me -- the one who intentionally killed the cow moose out
of season,
without a tag -- he’s still bragging about it in my hometown and after
another cop
confessed to witnessing the kill, this trooper was “investigated” for
over a year
and merely given a slap on the wrist…though he’s out there arresting
people today
for the same crime! This same trooper who shot his 11-yr-old stepson
with a taser
gun, was seen drinking in his Patrol car, was pulled over for drunk
driving but
let off by a coworker & brags about this incident to this day…he
threatened
to kill his estranged wife’s parent, refused to be transferred to
rural Alaska and
continued to disparage natives in words and tone, he continues to
harass and intimidate
his ex.-even after being slapped with a restraining order that was
lifted when his
supervisors intervened…he threatens to always be able to come out on
top because
he’s ‘got the badge,” etc.etc.etc.) This trooper is still out on the
street, in
fact he’s been promoted. It was a joke the whole year long
“investigation” of him-
in fact those who passed along the serious information to … were
threatened with
legal action from the trooper’s union for speaking about it. (This is
the same trooper
who’s out there today telling people the new administration is going
to destroy
the trooper organization, and he’s never work for that b***, Palin”.)

Anyway-just a personal example of what I’ve personally seen out
there and had
to live with for two years -- and this is what people in the Valley
are putting
up with (those many residents who know of this trooper timebomb who
supposed to
be “protecting them.) (Branchflower Report pp.57-58)

The Palin family could not believe that a state trooper who had
tasered his step-son,
broken the fish and game laws he was charged to enforce and threatened
a member
of their family would be given a few days suspension in an internal
inquiry and
not fired. They assumed that a governor with the power to hire and
fire their boss
could reverse this decision, even if a mere civilian with a complaint
against a
cop could not. The Palins were wrong.

Legislative Investigator Branchflower did not question Palin’s right
to constitutionally
dismiss her Commissioner of Public Safety. The Alaska constitution
gives Governors
extremely broad authority to hire and fire members of their cabinets.
The drafters
wanted centralized power in a strong governor and not scattered
authority, as in
territorial days, when the state took on natural resource developers-
in those
days, the mining and fishing industries Her legal violation was in
use of her
power to advance a personal interest, by allowing her husband to
pressure employees
to get rid of the bad cop.

Alaska personnel rules and state statutes trumped civilian access to
the process
or any civilian’s ability to find out what happened with her complaint
or to get
a bad cop canned. Her use of her official authority in her personal
quest was the
abuse of power cited in the Branchflower Reporte, even though it got
her nowhere

Palin used her very broad constitutional authority to dump the one
person who was
giving her good advice, Walt Monegan, the public safety commissioner.
He warned
her that she couldn’t make it happen. He couldn’t either, and he was
“the boss”.

Said Monegan: “I was resisting the governor from the very beginning on
the Wooten
matter to protect her from exactly what just happened to her here,
being found to
have acted inappropriately.” When Palin fired Monegan, she killed her
messenger.

What Palin really needed in her Alaskan movie was a “local Native
guide,” from any
rural Alaskan native village policed by the troopers. Any village
leader could have
warned Palin that, in matters of trooper conduct, the employees of the
Department
of Public Safety take care of their own .

In the vast Alaska bush are hundreds of villages peopled by the last
hunter and
gatherers on the continent. They look to official state law
enforcement from the
Department of Public Safety because they can’t afford their own
departments. Troopers
usually fly into villages to respond to crime from rural towns. As non-
native cities
incorporated and, along with bigger rural towns, hired their own
police, the Alaska
bush and the few state highways became the trooper’s remaining turf
which they jealously
guard from interlopers. What Palin and most urban Alaskans fail to
appreciate
is that the trooper agency effectively lacks civilian oversight. Its
clients in
the rural villages are policed by it as it chooses and, unlike the
citizens of a
town like Wasilla or at least its political leadership, they have no
control over
police behavior and limited authority over abuses.

Hundreds of villages in the Alaska bush (with the exception of rural
towns and the
North Slope Borough that can afford their own police agencies) are
policed by a
Agency which they don’t control, a system of legal colonialism over
rural Alaska.

The troopers’ immunity from meaningful civilian review may have
surprised Palin,
her husband and her family, but thousands of Alaska natives knew it
already. Colonial-style
policing, complete with a cadre of Alaska native para-police, akin to
Australia’s
Aborigine bush trackers of yesteryear, and modeled on the long
abandoned Native
police in Canada- have been sustained by urban, non-native Alaskan
political leaders
of both parties for decades.

The first thing Inuit leader Eban Hopson did with property taxes from
the North
Slope oil fields, collected by an organized borough after a protracted
fight with
the state, was set up his own police force for his half dozen villages
of the hundreds
policed by troopers. The state’s department of law and the troopers
retaliated.
No cases “made” by these new cops were prosecuted for months,
including one by a
man who later murdered two non-native campers. You don’t mess with the
troopers.

Palin, as Wasilla mayor, fired her town’s police chief. But the mayor
of Emmonak,
on the mouth of the Yukon River, can’t hire or fire or discipline a
trooper. Complaints
over the decades from villagers who have attended what Alaskans call
bush justice
conferences, usually related to non-response from troopers who wait
for crime to
occur before making an appearance. A suit by the Native American
Rights Fund which
argued Alaskans got unequal legal protection (note: I was one of
NARF’s expert witnesses)
failed in state court. The state legislature and governors across
party lines give
short economic shift to village Alaska, treating villages as the US
Congress treats
the ghettoes of Washington, DC. Institutional racism persists.

Further, some Alaskans have noticed that while the Federal authorities
have been
busy with prosecutions, the state police and the state department of
law has been
notably absent in ferreting out corruption among state lawmakers, a
kind of live
and let live arrangement with those who fund them and otherwise leaves
them alone,
a longtime arrangement that sacrifices police oversight for
institutional independence.

Once Palin was nominated, a Republican political operative, with no
knowledge of
Alaska, wrote her new script. He or she decided to delay the inquiry
by the Alaska
legislature into the governor’s firing of her public safety
commissioner and its
rationale. To delay an Alaskan investigation until after the election
must have
seemed easy to accomplish. You just sent someone to Alaska to bully
the local pols,
drawing on Palin’s wild Alaskan popularity. It was a dumb move and one
that insulted
Alaskans unnecessarily, unless it was calculated to do precisely that.
It served
the purposes of the oil companies who want Palin and the legislature
at each other’s
throats. And for the Alaska state troopers, it solidified their status
as police
left free from interference by those whom they police and even from
those who fund
them.

Palin’s husband used his wife’s authority to go after a cop who could
and probably
would have been fired in an agency still subject to civilian control.
Within the
Alaska system, blatant personal use of official authority amounted to
an ethics
violation . Only minorities abused by police with no remedy could
appreciate her
husband’s frustration with a system non-minorities rarely experience.
None of this
was part of the Troopergate inquiry.

So what did the Troopergate report recommend to help people frustrated
after making
complaints about police conduct, even people without the clout of
Sarah Palin?

The legislature should consider amendment of (the statute) to
permit those who
file complaints against peace officers to receive some feedback about
the status
and outcome of their complaint.” (Branchflower report 79 of 263).

Whoop-De-Doo.

Branchflower says, in part,

When citizens are told no information can be released, it has the
potential
of engendering skepticism about whether the complaint was taken
seriously. There
is likewise a great potential that the confidence we need to have in
our law enforcement
agencies will be undermined, and respect for those institutions will
be eroded.
(Branchflower 80-18).

As in Alaska native villages and the Governor’s mansion?

The Palins had a story to tell, one that was buried in the legislative
investigation
and one that ordinary people -- especially minorities -- could relate
to, about
bad cops and the inability of ordinary citizens (and, apparently, even
Governors)
to get justice when they complain about them or even try to find out
if anything
happened with their complaints. That the Republican operatives who
counseled delay
and sought to smear the investigation as purely partisan did not see a
better script
in Troopergate about a family with a legitimate grievance against a
cop and a police
organization, shows us how far removed Republicans are from the
working class voters
and the minorities they seek to persuade.

Steve Conn lived in Alaska from 1972 until 2007. He is a retired
professor, University
of Alaska. His e mail is stev...@hotmail.com.

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