http://www.scamraiders.com/profiles/blogs/the-prisoner-by-janet-phelan
The Prisoner
by Janet Phelan
Dr. Joseph Zernik had become very persistent. The fifty four year old former
college professor had been accumulating a large amount of data supporting his
perceptions that the US federal courts and the Los Angeles court system were
involved in systematic fraud upon those accessing those courts. Zernik
alleges the fraud appears to be linked to the digitalization of court
records, when the new computer systems introduced layers of obfuscation to
previously transparent processes.
Dr. Zernik, who has a PhD in molecular biology and a holds a doctor of
dentistry degree and had taught at both the University of Connecticut and the
University of Southern California, decided to make his findings public. He
launched a campaign to get this information into the hands of the media, and
began emailing and calling various publications and reporters. The information
was technical and fairly complex and met with a somewhat puzzled but polite
response from reporters. Zernik had become adamant that the impact of this
fraud decimated many of the constitutional protections that our justice
system promises. In the face of an unresponsive press, he went ahead and
registered at examiner.com and was attempting to master the journalistic
skills to write his findings as news reports, himself.
On January 31, 2010, this reporter, having toiled over pages of
Zernik’s evidence, agreed to write an article summarizing his findings.
Within a week, Joseph Zernik was arrested and jailed at Twin Towers in Los
Angeles. Joseph Zernik had never been jailed before.
Zernik reports being pulled over on February 6, 2010 by the LaVerne police. Zernik
relates that the police did not inform him he had broken a traffic law nor
did they write him a ticket. Instead, he states that he was asked if he were
indeed Joseph Zernik. When he replied affirmatively, he was told that there
were two outstanding bench warrants for his arrest and that he was being
taken into custody. The warrants, as it turned out, were for minor vehicle
related infractions that were about two years old and which Zernik believed
had been resolved. Zernik, who drives an unusual and easily distinguishable
make and model of car, thinks he may have been under surveillance.
What happened then and in a subsequent arrest on February 19th is tantamount
to a Disneyland “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,” littered with court
documents issued from non-existent courts, finessed records and computer
irregularities of the type which Zernik had previously pigeonholed as
fraudulent in other cases.
Dr. Zernik was transported to Twin Towers and booked. According to him, the
arresting officer, LaVerne PD Officer McKindly, denied his requests to view
the executed warrants. The LaVerne police have also denied requests by this
reporter to view these records. However, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s
Department website lists one warrant as issued from Burbank Municipal Court
and one from Beverly Hills. Curiously, Burbank Municipal Court actually
ceased to exist about a decade ago, long before that court purportedly issued
a warrant for Zernik’s arrest.
From jail, Zernik contacted a bail bondsman, Erika Higgins at Bond Services,
for the purposes of issuing a $35,000 bond so he could be released. Higgins
researched the matter and told him that the bail had been reduced to $30,000.
According to Zernik, he was “alarmed, since it appeared as a
potentially deceitful manipulation of records” leaving him subject to
possible arrest at a later date. He states he stipulated that Higgins would
supply paperwork to support the legal foundation of the arrest, and in
particular the bail reduction, as a condition for payment.
Zernik was cut loose. When Higgins failed to keep her end of the bargain, he
subsequently stopped payment on the check to her bonds company.
He was then re-arrested on February 19 for failure to make good on his bond
check, by parties acting on behalf of the bail bonds company.
Richard Rodriguez, who was involved in this arrest, has refused to speak with
this reporter other than to say that “Zernik is a nut who has made a
lot of complaints.” He suggested that Zernik’s doctoral degrees
were bogus and when informed otherwise, referred this reporter to Erika
Higgins. Erika Higgins has declined to respond to questions from this
reporter.
What transpired during this February 19th arrest of Dr. Joseph Zernik belongs
in the annals of Alice in Wonderland meets Quentin Tarantino. Zernik reports
that two men, Richard Rodriguez and a man identified only as
“Javier,” showed up at Zernik’s home around noon, dressed
in black ninja outfits. He alleges they held him at gunpoint and robbed him
of his wallet, credit cards, identification and keys. Zernik says that
Rodriguez told him he was being arrested for failure to pay his bond fees.
However, Zernik states that Rodriguez did not transport him to jail. Instead,
he was held for about eight hours and transported back and forth between Southgate
and Twin Towers jail in downtown L.A., as the would-be arrestors first
ineptly attempted to extract money from him and then repeatedly failed to
produce licenses which the jail would accept as proper to execute the arrest.
Zernik states that he was first hijacked to Southgate. When he refused to
provide monies to Rodriguez and Javier, Javier then loaded him into the car
stating he was taking him to jail. Javier instead got lost in the maze of the
L.A. freeway system, ending up in Culver City. Zernik reports having to
direct him back toward downtown LA and to the Twin Towers jail.
When they finally arrived at Twin Towers, it turned out that Javier lacked
the proper license and authority to execute the citizen’s arrest.
Zernik states that even though the Sheriff’s Department issued a
preliminary booking number at 4:53 p.m., the Department refused to accept
Zernik into custody from Javier.
Zernik states that Javier then called Rodriguez and asked him to come
downtown to complete the arrest. Apparently, Rodriguez did not possess the
proper papers either and refused to show up.
At that point, Javier piled Zernik into his car again and took him back to
Southgate. Zernik reports there were more attempts to extract monies from
him. When he again failed to comply, Javier called “Dave,” who
agreed to execute the surrender. Back Zernik went to Twin Towers with
“Dave” and his companion, Albert.
Joseph Zernik arrived back at Twin Towers around 8 p.m. He reports that an
unnamed Sheriff’s Deputy relieved him of his Braun tungsten watch,
valued at about $500, and passed it to Dave. In an interview with this
reporter, Steve Whitmore, the media relations representative for the
Sheriff’s Department, admitted that this did indeed occur, which is
ostensibly in violation of the policies concerning securing inmates’
possessions.
The Deputy then demanded that Zernik sign that he entered custody with no
possessions other than his clothes. Zernik refused to do so, insisting that
his watch be listed as property. He reports being “violently
shoved” into a solitary confinement cell and held in chains there for
about four hours. Periodically, he states, a Deputy would enter the cell and
exhort him to sign the possessions form. He reports being threatened that his
head would be “split open” if he did not and also that he was
called degrading and obscene names by the Deputies.
Around midnight, Zernik reports he was “violently removed from the
solitary confinement cell” and booked. The Los Angeles County
Sheriff’s inmate website lists his booking time at :23 on February 20.
While there is a paucity of documentation available, a booking and property
slip survived the ordeal, having been stuck inside Dr. Zernik’s sock.
This slip reveals that Zernik had failed to sign the possessions slip at
around 9 pm and lists his property only as “clothing worn.” This
document supports Zernik’s statements that he declined to sign the slip
and that he was later booked at a falsified time.
First thing Monday morning, Zernik was taken to Beverly Hills Court where he
resolved his outstanding matter. No valid warrant was found in the court file
and no record of warrant execution by the LaVerne police was found, either.
Later that day, Joseph Zernik was released.
Upon his release, he filed several complaints with Stephanie Maxberry, the
Ombudsman for the Sheriff’s Department. He has stated that, at this
point in time, he has not received any complaint numbers to track his
complaints. The practice of law enforcement agencies refusing to supply complaint
numbers in order to keep a complaint out of the system has been explored in
an article entitled, “How the California Justice System covers up Crime
Reports.” (http://www.scamraiders.com/profiles/blogs/how-the-california-justice)
Stephanie Maxberry states that Joseph Zernik has been supplied at least one
or two complaint numbers. “He just didn’t get the numbers he
wanted,” she stated. When asked to provide these numbers, Maxberry
refused and declined to discuss the Zernik matter any further.
The only complaint number that this reporter could locate was apparently
issued when this reporter first contacted Steve Whitmore, asking questions
about Zernik’s arrest. At this time, no complaint numbers attached to
Zernik’s own written complaints to the Sheriff’s Department have
surfaced.
Mike Genaco, of the Office of Independent Review, promised to look into the
matter of the whereabouts of Zernik’s complaint numbers. At the time of
going to press, he has not responded to repeated follow up calls.
Erika Higgins hung up on this reporter when contacted for input. Steve
Whitmore, media representative for the Department, refused to speak on the
Zernik matter after admitting that the Deputy gave Zernik’s watch to
the bounty hunter. When told that he would be quoted as refusing to answer
questions on Zernik’s allegations, he shot back, “Please
do.”
A Los Angeles attorney, speaking on the condition of anonymity, warned this
reporter to “stay away” from Joseph Zernik. “He is on a
list,” this reporter was told. “He is being watched and followed
where ever he goes. Leave him alone or you’ll be watched too.”
“Computerized or Con-puterized: Are the courts defrauding the public
through digitalization?” was published on scamraiders.com on March 3,
2010. (http://www.scamraiders.com/profiles/blogs/computerized-or-conputerized)
Epilogue: As of today, May 7, this reporter has been notified that “a
group of badge-wearing agents” appeared at Zernik’s residence on
April 24th, attempting to apprehend him. A neighbor reports them as
“trigger eager.” He was not home at the time and is not clear
which agency had shown up at his home, although he suspects it was the US
Marshals. Zernik had recently been contacted by a US Marshal Threat
Investigator, Deputy Darcy Smith, who was requesting to interview him
concerning his communications with a judge on the issue of court corruption
and fraud. This reporter has received the communications between Smith and
Zernik, wherein he requests the legal authority for the interview request and
goes on to supply more information on his work in exposing corruption within
the courts. His tone, as usual in his letters to public officials, was
professional in nature. At the time of going to press, Deputy Marshal Darcy
Smith has not responded to calls from this reporter.
