Beyond The Broken Spectrum

Los Angeles Times

Until it all went bad, Randolph Franklin used to talk with pride about his life in the Los Angeles Police Department. Wear a badge for nearly half of your 50 years and somewhere along the way it becomes more than just a job.

He was proud as well of the life he built on Woodlawn Avenue — an unremarkable street set amid the gang violence and poverty of the city’s southern swath. It’s an odd place for a cop to live. But it was where a black kid from a Mississippi trailer park managed to buy a real house. It was where he turned an old, beat-up bungalow into a real home with dark red trim, marble fireplaces and trendy bamboo stalks along the edge of the lawn.

In the early morning darkness of May 25, 2006, Franklin’s two worlds — his life on Woodlawn and his life in the LAPD — collided.

The phone in his upstairs bedroom woke him from a dead sleep at 4 a.m. His wife was away visiting her family, and their two small children slept down the hall. The voice on the line identified himself as a lieutenant with the LAPD’s elite SWAT unit. The house, he told Franklin, was surrounded. Peering out of the bedroom window, Franklin saw it was no joke: a knot of heavily armed officers were pressed up against the house. Snipers were perched on the neighbor’s porch. A helicopter hovered overhead.

Franklin had no idea what his own Police Department would want with him. He asked for time to roust his 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. He had 20 minutes, the SWAT officer said, or police would come in and get him.

Before Franklin pulled open the front door and walked into the blinding glare of spotlights, he put himself between his little boy and girl and took their hands in his own. “I wanted the police to be able to see our hands,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to give them any reason to shoot us.”

Franklin is a tightly wound man. When he describes the LAPD’s six-hour search of his house, his jaw clenches and he seethes words like “degrading” and “humiliating.” He recalls how he was made to sit in the back of a police van with his children, guarded by someone wearing the same uniform he wore each day. He remembers how neighbors gathered to gawk as drug-sniffing dogs were led inside, dogs that left paw prints on his bed. He talks about the quiet fury he felt as his demands for an explanation were ignored.

“They came into my house,” he says. “That’s my family. My reputation.”

What happened that morning is not in dispute. Why it happened, however, is.

If the explanation of officers who oversaw the search is to be believed, the incident was an unfortunate mistake born of honest police work. However, Franklin, in a lawsuit and interviews, has alleged that the search was the culmination of a campaign of retaliation orchestrated by his supervisors, with whom he had feuded.

Over the course of a year, LAPD officials reviewed Franklin’s accusations and dismissed them as unfounded. So, Franklin sued the officers who ordered the search, as well as the LAPD, for violating his civil rights, inflicting emotional distress, and negligence. Late last year, 12 jurors listened to what Franklin had to say and decided the officers should never have disturbed his life on Woodlawn. Corners were cut, they decided, lies were told.

After nearly five years in the Marine Corps, Franklin joined the LAPD in 1984 and established himself as a capable, if unremarkable, cop. His personnel file is full of positive performance evaluations, noting his work ethic and unbending adherence to department policies. Franklin was rarely disciplined — his most serious misstep coming when he berated a patrol officer who stopped him for a traffic violation.

But he is not a cop’s cop. By his own account, Franklin has reported several partners for perceived abuses, even telling a suspect once that his partner had unlawfully arrested him. In 2000, after being promoted to sergeant, Franklin was assigned to the department’s Pacific Division on the Westside, where he solidified his reputation as a strict, by-the-book supervisor and a rabble-rouser who didn’t shy away from criticizing other cops. More than once, he says, he raised eyebrows when he ordered officers to release suspects taken into custody under dubious circumstances.

Almost from the start, Franklin’s in-your-face personality led to clashes with the division’s command staff, he said. They formally accused him of misconduct at least six times, alleging neglect of duty, failing to complete reports and similar missteps. Each time, Franklin challenged the charges and, with one exception, was cleared either by an appeals panel or when supervisors abandoned the discipline proceedings. Franklin also represented several other Pacific officers during discipline proceedings. Much to the frustration of the division’s command staff, he says, allegations against several of them were dismissed or reduced.

Despite his run-ins with the brass, Franklin received a glowing evaluation in 2005 from one supervisor who gave him high marks in all categories and wrote that he could be “counted on to make sound, thorough decisions.”

But Capt. William Hayes, who had recently arrived at Pacific, rejected the write-up, saying he didn’t believe Franklin was that good, according to court records. The evaluation was re-written, with several marks downgraded and notes added that highlighted previously unmentioned deficiencies in Franklin’s time management and writing skills, the records show. Hayes declined to comment for this article.

Franklin knew the evaluation would be a barrier to his becoming a lieutenant — a promotion he wanted before retiring. He refused to sign it and took steps to file a hostile work environment complaint against Hayes and others in the command staff.

On the other side of the city several months later, a man was gunned down in daylight and left for dead on a sidewalk near Franklin’s house.

Det. Mark Morgan and Officer Jason Leikam from the LAPD’s Newton Division were assigned to the case. Morgan, a 20-year veteran, had worked for several years as a detective in Newton’s gang unit. Leikam had six years as a patrol officer and, months before the shooting, had been temporarily assigned to the gang unit.

Morgan and Leikam received tips that the shooters were Alonzo Billups, a member of the notorious Four-Trey gang, and Emmit Bond, an alleged drug-dealer with ties to the gang, according to police documents. About a month into the investigation, the officers felt they had enough evidence to ask a judge to issue a search warrant. In the affidavit Leikam wrote to justify the warrant, he sought permission to search three locations. The first two were the suspects’ homes. The third — Franklin’s house — was listed only by its address. The house, Leikam wrote in the affidavit, “is a known Four-Trey hangout. There have been numerous citizen complaints of gang activity and blatant narcotic sales/use at the location . . . Emmit Bond delivers narcotics and stashes weapons at the location.”

How Leikam and Morgan reached this conclusion is a matter of contentious debate. Morgan declined to comment, and Leikam did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. In testimony, they said much of their information had come from the victim’s cousin, who identified Franklin’s house as a place frequented by the gang and Bond. In addition, Leikam testified that an LAPD anti-gang officer also told them Franklin’s address was a Four-Trey stronghold. Both Morgan and Leikam testified that while they were conducting surveillance in the neighborhood they had witnessed Bond enter Franklin’s house.

But under questioning during Franklin’s lawsuit, Morgan and Leikam were unable to produce notes from their interviews with the cousin that proved he had pointed them toward Franklin’s house. Notes taken by Morgan, in fact, indicate that the cousin had instead described a “burgundy and green house” near Franklin’s. In a brief phone interview, the cousin, who is not being identified for his safety, said he did not direct the officers to Franklin’s house.

Franklin acknowledged in court that he knew Bond, the accused shooter, vaguely — hiring him once for a day to work for the private security company he runs on the side. He rejected, however, Leikam’s and Morgan’s allegation that they had seen Bond enter his house. He was, he said, in Mississippi visiting family that day and his wife testified she had let no one inside.

Eric Rose, the anti-gang officer, meanwhile, was confronted with his testimony from an earlier hearing in the criminal case against Bond and Billups that he had no knowledge of gang activity at Franklin’s house. He struggled on the witness stand to explain Leikam’s assertion that he had given them incriminating information about the address.

Leikam and Morgan also conceded during testimony that they did not know of any actual instances to support Leikam’s assertion in the search warrant of “numerous citizen complaints of gang activity and blatant narcotic sales/use at the location.” An internal check by the LAPD shortly after the search showed police had not been called to the house in the previous three years, police records show.

After a day of deliberations, jurors unanimously concluded the officers had “deliberately falsified” information in the warrant affidavit and that their conduct had been “outrageous,” according to court records. When asked about the case afterward, several jurors spoke on the condition that their names not be used because of concerns over retaliation by police.

“There were so many things they said that just didn’t have the ring of truth,” said one juror. “This could have ruined this guy’s career.”

“It scares me that they could just raid someone’s home like that,” another said.

If not a mistake, why then had police done it?

In order for Franklin to collect damages, the jury had to find that Morgan and Leikam’s actions had been part of a plan to harm him.

Franklin’s lawyers tried to convince the jury that Capt. Hayes and other command staff at Pacific had been involved. The lawyers talked about the bad blood at the division. They pointed to the fact that Lt. Paul Torrence, a supervisor there, had transferred to the department’s Internal Affairs Group and was at Franklin’s house the morning it was searched.

They focused on a phone call between Torrence and Hayes before the search.

They challenged Morgan and Leikam’s assertion that they had not known the house belonged to Franklin until the evening before the search and so had not told the judge they wanted to search an officer’s house.

The lawyers laid out this theory: Leikam and Morgan, who testified he knew Franklin from previous assignments, had seen an off-duty Franklin on Woodlawn while investigating the shooting. Confused as to why a cop would be in such a rough neighborhood, they called Internal Affairs to inquire about Franklin. Torrence, sensing an opportunity, called Hayes and, in turn, the two persuaded the Newton officers to entangle Franklin in the investigation.

Jurors weren’t convinced.

“We felt [Leikam and Morgan] had lied purposefully; we just couldn’t pinpoint why,” a juror said. “We couldn’t connect the dots between these two officers and anything larger.”

In addition, several jurors said the judge instructed them to think of Morgan and Leikam as individuals, not agents of the LAPD. “If we had been told to consider the officers as part of the LAPD, it would have changed the whole situation,” said juror Orly Benyaminy. “Almost all of us would have voted differently. . . .”

Franklin has appealed.

Meanwhile, the man who was shot eventually died of his injuries. Citing a lack of evidence, however, prosecutors dropped the charges against Bond and Billups. The killing remains unsolved.

In the months that have followed, Hayes took command of another station. Torrence left Internal Affairs for another unit. Leikam remains an officer at Newton, and Morgan transferred to Pacific, where he and Franklin sometimes cross paths.

Franklin was cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal LAPD investigation. He remains bitter, however, that the department also cleared Leikam and Morgan, and he accuses the agency of ignoring his accusations against his superiors. Through an aide, LAPD Chief William J. Bratton declined to allow any top LAPD official to comment on the case. Franklin says life on Woodlawn is different now. Neighbors look at him with suspicion. They avoid conversations.

He no longer thinks of being an LAPD cop as anything but a paycheck. “I used to be proud of my job,” he says. “Now, it’s just something I muddle through each day — just something I do to support my family. . . . This whole dream is dead.”

He’s looking to retire as soon as he can afford it.

A cyberbullying bill introduced last month has the potential to put half the Internet behind bars.

The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act is Congress’ response to the 2006 suicide of a 13-year-old girl who was harassed on MySpace. The bill makes electronic communication a felony if “the intent is to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person.”

Congressmen probably aren’t the most Web-savvy bunch, but anyone familiar with trolling, flaming, and various other forms of online bullying could see a problem with this bill.

Network World examines the bill and explains this new breed of Internet criminal:

Given the freewheeling exchanges that characterize everything from SMS text messages and instant messaging to blogs and Web site comments, the broadly written bill potentially could turn a lot of flamers and bloggers into felons.

Amid growing online criticism, bill sponsor Rep. Linda Sanchez defended the Cyberbullying Prevention Act in a Huffington Post article this month:

Congress has no interest in censoring speech and it will not do so if it passes this bill. Put simply, this legislation would be used as a tool for a judge and jury to determine whether there is significant evidence to prove that a person “cyberbullied” another… So — bloggers, emailers, texters, spiteful exes, and those who have blogged against this bill have no fear — your words are still protected under the same American values.

While Rep. Sanchez’s assurances may be comforting, judges tend to follow the wording of a law rather than its sponsor’s intent. So before you text your cheating ex, slam those Apple forum fanboys, or call me a ‘moron’ in the comments, consider the possible consequences of this new bill, or at least put your lawyer’s number on speed dial.

Posted by: Wes Finley-Price — CNN.com Webmaster

Press Release May 26, 2009
WASHINGTON — America’s third largest party Tuesday criticized President Barack Obama’s nomination of federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, citing past rulings that public employers should discriminate in hiring based on race.

“While Judge Sotomayor deserves a fair and impartial hearing, Supreme Court justices should be nominated for their thorough knowledge of and adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law,” said William Redpath, Libertarian National Committee Chairman.

“By nominating Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama has made it clear he prefers an activist for his personal causes over a rational interpreter of law,” said Redpath.

Sotomayor is best known for the Ricci v. DeStafano case, in which the New Haven, Conn. fire department decided it didn’t like the results of an officers promotion exam in which whites and Hispanic firefighters outperformed black firefighters.  The city threw out the results of the exam, denying several firefighters promotions solely because of their race.  The firefighters sued the city, claiming racial discrimination under Title VVI of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Sotomayor disagreed, ruling the city has a right to discriminate against white and Hispanic public employees to construct a politically correct racial mix in hiring, even if it goes against the results of a racially-neutral competency exam.

The case is now before the Supreme Court.  Sotomayor has had her rulings thrown out by the court a troubling four times.  In three of those cases, the Court ruled Sotomayor had incorrectly interpreted the law.

“It is troubling that Obama, who won the highest elected office in the world without racial preferences, would nominate someone who openly admits the government should racially discriminate against its own citizens to serve the needs of political correctness,” said Redpath.

“Libertarians believe that, while the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of association allows private parties to hire whomever they please, government has no right to discriminate.  Public employers should treat all citizens of all colors, races and ethnicities with equal respect and value and Sotomayor’s radical rulings are a jarring departure from that principle.”

For more information on this issue, or to arrange an interview with the Libertarian Party, please call Director of Communications Donny Ferguson at 703-200-3669 or 202-333-0008, x. 225, or email Donny.Ferguson@lp.org.

The Libertarian Party is America’s third-largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties.  You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting http://www.LP.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

PUEBLO, Colo. — A ninth grade history project at a high school in Pueblo was supposed to teach students about terrorism, but instead it outraged parents.

Gini Fischer says her daughter came home Thursday saying she had two minutes to come up with a plot for an act of terrorism.

Over 110 freshmen at Pueblo County High School were given the project.

The teacher claims the assignment was to illustrate an act of terrorism by a foreign government on American soil.

Fischer says, “To ask them to use their creative energies to come up with a plot for an act of terrorism is very ludicrous.”

District 70 Superintendent Dr. Dan Lere said students may have misinterpreted the assignment.

He says if a student, “actually did illustrate an act of terrorism that they might commit, let’s say against the school, we’ve expelled students for that.”

The school district has decided to collect the assignment from students and destroy them.

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Exactly what does plotting a terrorist attack against your own country have to do with a history assignment? I am just baffled at some of the teachers that have been hired to teach at our schools around the country. How about assigning the students something based on the revolutionary war, or our early president, any number of things really that could be more valuable to these students rather than having them plot a terrorist attack? We sit and wonder why our school system is one of the most inefficient systems we have too.

I call for the resignation of the teacher that assigned this project. They have no business being a history teacher, especially since they have clearly proven they haven’t done a very good job as a history teacher with this assignment, or lack thereof. Teachers should be undergoing constant performance and method evaluations, yet we don’t even have such a simple system as that in place. I have to wonder if any of the students even declined to do the project, as I would have.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090508/ap_on_re_us/us_school_dance_flap

FINDLAY, Ohio – A student at a fundamentalist Baptist school that forbids dancing, rock music, hand-holding and kissing will be suspended if he takes his girlfriend to her public high school prom, his principal said.

Despite the warning, 17-year-old Tyler Frost, who has never been to a dance before, said he plans to attend Findlay High School’s prom Saturday.

Frost, a senior at Heritage Christian School in northwest Ohio, agreed to the school’s rules when he signed a statement of cooperation at the beginning of the year, principal Tim England said.

The teen, who is scheduled to receive his diploma May 24, would be suspended from classes and receive an “incomplete” on remaining assignments, England said. Frost also would not be permitted to attend graduation but would get a diploma once he completes final exams. If Frost is involved with alcohol or sex at the prom, he will be expelled, England said.

Frost’s stepfather Stephan Johnson said the school’s rules should not apply outside the classroom.

“He deserves to wear that cap and gown,” Johnson said.

Frost said he thought he had handled the situation properly. Findlay requires students from other schools attending the prom to get a signature from their principal, which Frost did.

“I expected a short lecture about making the right decisions and not doing something stupid,” Frost said. “I thought I would get his signature and that would be the end.”

England acknowledged signing the form but warned Frost there would be consequences if he attended the dance. England then took the issue to a school committee made up of church members, who decided to threaten Frost with suspension.

“In life, we constantly make decisions whether we are going to please self or please God. (Frost) chose one path, and the school committee chose the other,” England said.

The handbook for the 84-student Christian school says rock music “is part of the counterculture which seeks to implant seeds of rebellion in young people’s hearts and minds.”

England said Frost’s family should not be surprised by the school’s position.

“For the parents to claim any injustice regarding this issue is at best forgetful and at worst disingenuous,” he said. “It is our hope that the student and his parents will abide by the policies they have already agreed to.”

The principal at Findlay High School, whose graduates include Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, said he respects, but does not agree with, Heritage Christian School’s view of prom.

“I don’t see (dancing and rock music) as immoral acts,” Craig Kupferberg said.

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It seems to me that both the school board and Tyler chose the same path, to serve their own interests. The only difference here is that Tyler is being a normal teenage boy and there is no doubt he should feel the need to serve his own interests rather than the interests of a panel of “bigoted” people. I would go so far as to say that according to these people’s rules, they are downright oppressive.

I agree, when Tyler’s parents enrolled him in the private school, they agreed to the school’s terms. However one has to wonder just how fine is an institution that deprives a person of their future over a petty issue such as him attending a prom. If anyone is to blame here though, it should be his parents for placing him such a horrible situation. These parents should take a big step back and re-evaluate their decision to send their son to such a bigoted learning environment.

My condolences go out to Tyler, I hope he goes through with attending his girlfriend’s prom, regardless of the others that try to bring him down. Don’t let others deprive you of this experience known as life.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/07/walmart.death/index.html

It is a sad day indeed. As most will remember the holiday rush shopping last year that caused a walmart employee to be trampled to death by crazed shoppers, there has been a settlement in the case. Rather then persue criminal charges against the shoppers who were responsible for this animalistic behavior, they have decided to just make the large corporation the fall guy, have them pay 2 million plus expenses, and be done with the matter. Where is the justice here? It’s sickening to think that these people got away with what I would call brutal murder while everyone focuses on the corporation who owned the store where it happened.

Sure walmart could probably have done more to control the crowd, but how does one anticipate for such a large gathering of “rabid” people though, at a grocery store nonetheless? I agree that they are party liable in this matter, however I am ashamed that we are at a point as a nation of people that are more than willing to throw all the blame on the big corporations and not take any of it for ourselves. We are allowing murderers to walk free in this case while everyone is focused on walmart.

Perhaps the next person that goes into a walmart and shoots up the place should just be let go since walmart didn’t provide the proper security measures to prevent this. We can have a public hanging of walmart officials and a big lawsuit, and in the end, everyone will be happy because they’re a little richer and walmart is a little poorer, never mind the individual who committed the crime.

By Bob Barr
as published in The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Wednesday, May 06, 2009 at 9:00 AM

Trust is a fragile commodity, easily lost and difficult to regain. As an asset in the public arena, honesty appears to be in shorter and shorter supply. Even as considerable rhetoric continues to be devoted to restoring “trust” in government, recent studies clearly indicate we remain a society awash in dishonesty and mistrust.

One of the more revealing annual surveys of this phenomenon is conducted each year by the non-partisan Ponemon Institute. The institute’s annual “Privacy Trust Study of the United States Government” probes the views of citizens across the country to gauge their level of trust regarding various federal government agencies.

For the past four years, the U.S. Postal Service has received the highest score. Although that may surprise some people, what should universally shock Americans is the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice is among the least trusted of federal agencies. That’s right —- the one government office tasked above all others with maintaining the standards of justice, fairness and privacy, is among the least trusted. Nearly four times more Americans found the Postal Service worthy of their trust than they did Justice.

Confidence in the Justice Department’s ability to operate according to high standards of fairness is essential to upholding the rule of law in America. Lack of trust in government erodes the ability of the Justice Department to successfully prosecute important cases, including those involving corruption in government. If the citizenry lacks trust in law enforcement, especially at the federal level, they will be more hesitant to bring information to the government’s attention. If the average citizen perceives top government officials as thumbing their noses at the law, those citizens may feel emboldened to themselves violate the laws.

Recognition of standards for honesty and trust in government at the top likely led Attorney General Eric Holder to affirm the administration will in fact abide by the laws prohibiting torture. This move was buttressed by his recent release of disturbing memos by Bush administration officials that attempted to justify the use of torture by its operatives in the CIA (which, in the most recent Ponemon trust survey, ranked even below that of the Justice Department).

The administration of President Obama, however, appears still unsure of how far to go in demanding that agencies other than the Justice Department take steps to convey openness and honesty in their dealings. The administration still refuses to order the Treasury Department and other federal offices responsible for the “bailout billions” to disclose how they are spending the taxpayer monies entrusted to them. And prosecutions of the massive frauds that aided the mortgage meltdown still are far too few.

Another study conducted by the Josephson Institute for Ethics presents a chilling picture of just how difficult is the task of restoring a sense of trust. In its 2008 survey, Josephson found that nearly two-thirds of high school students cheat in school; nearly one-third of those same students admitted stealing from stores. (Both figures were increases over the institute’s 2006 survey.)

Finally, yet another survey conducted by KPMG found that businesses suffer equally distressing levels of dishonesty. KPMG’s 2008-2009 “Integrity Survey” of corporations, revealed that three-fourths of corporate employees observed misconduct in their organizations, with half of those indicating such transgressions were of such severity as to cause a loss of public trust if discovered. Dishonesty truly is an equal opportunity endeavor.

Nearly 2,500 years ago, Diogenes roamed Greece looking for an honest man, reportedly with little success. He’d likely have an even harder time now.

Bob Barr, an Atlanta attorney, is a former member of Congress and Libertarian presidential candidate.