Friday, December 24, 2010

What happened in Rockford Fed. Court on Dec. 15?

OK, get out your reading glasses, polish 'em up, and move on over to www.mchenrycountyblog.com, where you can start reading the transcript of a hearing in Judge P. Michael Mahoney's court in Rockford on December 15 in the case of Seipler v. Cundiff et al. Cal will be posting the 48-page transcript in parts, due to its length.

You do know what et al. means, right? It's sort of like "etc."; in this case, it means all the other defendants, not just Anton Cundiff by himself.

This is Zane Seipler's civil rights case against the McHenry County Sheriff's Department that was filed in 2008. (This is not his employment case, which has been upheld in Zane's favor twice (by the arbitrator and then by Judge Meyer) and is now to be dragged further through the courts with an appeal by Sheriff Nygren.)

It is my belief that Zane was tossed out of the Sheriff's Department because he was a whistleblower. If he hadn't been a whistleblower, he probably would have initially gotten a three-day suspension, and we never would have heard a word about it.

So now it's on the Court record about racial profiling and "mis-coding" of traffic tickets by two deputies. What's mis-coding? That's when you put down White or Caucasian as the race for a driver whose name is Sanchez or Mendez or Villalobos. And not just once. Maybe 10-20-100-200 or more times.

Remember when I wrote a while back that I was told that deputies were instructed in rollcall that they could solve the Department's racial profiling complaints by just "marking everybody down as White"?

As will be shown on further pages of the hearing transcript to be published, there were two spreadsheets for tickets. And they weren't identical.

But wait until you see the rest of the transcript, which names names. Somehow, I think the attorney who stands up in Court and tells a judge that so-and-so did such-and-such is not going to make any baseless accusations.

Now, if you are a boss, what do you do with a whistleblower? Just wait until you hear the latest, which has occurred since the transcript became public.

3 comments:

Dave Labuz said...

Judge P. Michael Mahoney:

"Wow".

Dave Labuz said...

Can't wait to read the transcripts as they flow.

*IF* there was "consideration" flowing back to the Sheriff and other associates, the Judge was questioning how that could be so, in light of the Sheriff apparently encouraging (or ignoring) his busy bees preying upon these folks by traffic stop. Why beat up on "customers"?

Simple. In getting here, they were once somebody’s "customers". All you’re doing is importing raw material for your gristmill. Once they're here, they very well might become repeat "customers" of the Sheriff, unbeknownst to them, *IF* Horowitz’s allegations are probative. Their being here in quantity in a concentrated location allows not only for a means for the Sheriff to promote his busy bees, but also allows him to fill the Jail with ICE “customers” as well. Win-win-win. “Like shooting fish in a barrel”.

*IF*. The fact that this theory is fueled by another ongoing, related case is most interesting. When taking into consideration this other case and related investigatory information as bears on this trial, the prominence this case will attain no matter who wins or loses, as well as Horowitz’s own reputation - it’s not like the prosecution can just blather away and expect their reputations to remain unscathed should they lose. Like Gus, I find this to be most interesting.

Under all these circumstances, what will the Judge be pressured to allow in or exclude?

While “Wow”, might characterize the allegations made, such an admission on the Judge’s part may also characterize his realization of the difficulties presented him in terms of the conduct of this trial.

“Wow”.

Dave Labuz said...
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