Abusing a badge for the purposes of badgering

June 23, 2018 — buckeyerino

First, read this.  Then I’ll weigh in.

At the outset, let me offer my apologies to the police officers who follow their conscience and the law in performing their duties.  I am told by reliable sources that the vast majority of police officers are not just conscientious and dutiful, but also brave to the point of putting their own safety in jeopardy in the interest of keeping the rest of the law-abiding public out of harm’s way.  I have met some officers that I know to be like that.  I can only hope that these reliable sources are true.

Yet, from my experience, I have met too many police officers who abuse their authority in pursuit of unworthy agendas.  How many?  Okay, now, one is too many, but I have had more unhappy encounters with police officers than that.  For now, I will share just two such experiences.

One of them lived across a street from my house on the west side of Columbus.  I called the police a couple of times due to this neighbor’s deliberate hostile provocations, but of course, after the responding officers paid a visit to the neighbor to find that this neighbor was one of their own, they returned to my door to give the neighbor’s “side of the story” (a story so lame that the responding officers delivered the message sheepishly, looking down at the floor or to the side because it was so awkward to be put in the position of repeating bald-faced lies) along with an anemic apology that in no way offered reassurance that my trouble with this neighbor would go away any time soon.

Another couple of police officers accosted me as I walked down the street on the Near East side of Columbus.  Supposedly, the police were keeping an eye on traffic–meaning motorists–but I was a pedestrian and I had not jaywalked.  At that time, I lived in the area and my car was in the shop for repairs (under warranty), so instead of driving to the grocery store, I walked.  It was my intention to purchase a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread and then return home.  They asked for my ID.  I gave it to them.  While one was questioning my integrity and suggesting I was up to something sinister, the other was on the radio asking if there were any outstanding warrants against me.  When the word over the radio was that I had no criminal record, the imperious police officer who had been antagonizing me with his farfetched ruminations on what I was really up to then changed his tune (as he handed back my ID and half-apologized) and urged me to be cautious while walking along the sidewalk because someone had been murdered the previous week at an intersection just five blocks away.  No such murder happened the prior week at that location, but I decided not to quibble with the policeman any further.  It was getting late and I just wanted to be on my way, which meant letting them go their way without argument.

Now, about that first story, let’s set aside, for a moment, that my next-door neighbor on the west side of Columbus was also routinely antagonized by the police officer who lived across the street.  Let’s set that aside because the next-door neighbor was a college professor from Nigeria who had just bought his first new house in the USA for himself, his wife, and two children–all formerly from Nigeria.  Now, I’ve been married and divorced twice, but let’s also set aside, for the moment, that I was married to my first wife at the time.  My wife and I had just bought our first new house together.  Let’s set that aside because my wife was from Japan.  Let’s also set aside that the rest of the residents of the subdivision were white and that it seemed that the police officer across the street never bothered them.  Let’s just assume that he might have peeved his other (white) neighbors, but that I just didn’t know about it.  Let’s just assume that this police officer across the street was just a pain in the butt to everybody indiscriminately, and that his poor behavior toward us had nothing to do with race.  Still, there should have been some way for the residents of the neighborhood to check the bad behavior of the police officer who lived among us.

Now about that second story, it is too hard to set aside that race was a factor.  Yes, most of the residents of the Near East were black.  I am white.  Besides living in the area, I had also worked in the area as a teller at a bank (a bank branch located even closer to the site of the previous week’s “murder”).  The police officer who was so suspiciously questioning me came right out and stated “White guys only come here for two reasons:  drugs or prostitutes.”  Yeah, he actually said that to my face.  I only had six bucks with me.  How many drugs or prostitutes can I buy with six dollars?  That money was for a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread at the grocery store.  Really.  That previous week’s murder just a few blocks away?  That was a white man murdered by black suspects, so be careful!  Still, I was really doing nothing that would have reasonably led to suspicion, let alone probable cause to investigate me.  Though nothing came of it, the officers’ suspicions were unreasonable.  What mechanism is in place to discourage the unreasonable actions of police officers?

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that all of these police officers were white?

But, turning back to this week’s police story out of Lorain:  A Lorain police officer accosted a man and directed the man to take a seat in the back of the patrol car.  The man wants to know the police officer’s reason for this.  The police officer says the man is going to jail and that the officer will think of crimes to charge him with on the way to the jail.  The man happens to be the boyfriend of the police officer’s daughter.  Allegedly, the man had been found in possession of marijuana at least once before in his life.  If you and your daughter are both totally against marijuana, why, the man’s marijuana possession might be a good cause for concern.  But, hey, the daughter’s eighteen, not a child.  She can make decisions independently from her police officer father.  I think it’s a lot more perplexing and disturbing for a convicted murderer on death row to receive marriage proposals from women who only know of him due to news coverage of the crimes he’s committed, but, hey, adults make their own decisions about love.  The police officer’s daughter could certainly have picked someone much worse.  On the flip side, the police officer’s daughter could not pick a perfect man to fall in love with because perfect men do not exist. (Did I mention that I’ve been divorced twice?)

It just so happened that the police daughter’s officer was a passenger in the man’s car along with two other people who lived in that neighborhood.  The mom of those two other passengers was at home. For now, let’s just call her Ms.  You can read all their names in this Chronicle-Telegram article that I prompted you to read at the start.  When Ms. came out of her house to see what the ruckus was, the police officer told Ms. that he wanted to retrieve his daughter’s computer from inside her house.  Ms. was going to allow him to do that, except the police officer was getting mouthy.  He said that he was going to write a $300 ticket to one of Ms.’s kids for not wearing a seat belt.  Ms. changed her mind. On second thought, the police officer would have to get a warrant to retrieve his daughter’s laptop from Ms.’s house.  The confrontation escalated.  Then Ms. told the police officer that she would call 911 to report the officer’s actions.  The police officer countered by saying he would arrest Ms. for calling 911 when there was no emergency to respond to.  He ordered Ms.’s two kids out of the man’s car and into the house.  Lo and behold, the officer finally sized up the fact that his daughter was still in the man’s car.  He decided he would rather have his daughter in the back seat of his patrol car than his daughter’s boyfriend, so the boyfriend was permitted to get back out while the daughter was stuffed back there.  The police officer left, daughter in tow.  The police officer received a dispatch to a road rage incident.  He did not respond to it.  After the fact, he said that he contacted another officer to handle the road rage incident, and that the other officer said he’d handle the incident on his own.

So, a guy is upset with who is adult daughter is dating.  Hey, it happens.  The rest of the fathers do not pull out a police badge and stuff their daughter in the back seat of a patrol car.  The police officer harassed Ms. and two of her family while carrying out this personal agenda and threatens them with criminal charges because they became upset with him.  He was the one who caused them to be upset in the first place.  If he wasn’t there, nothing criminal would have happened.  He was the instigator.

But the one thing that sends shivers down my spine is that a person who is charged with upholding the law and enforcing the law flat out told someone that the officer was going to send that someone to jail for charges that he intended to trump up.  There is no way whatsoever that a person like that should be on the police force.  To allow such an officer to remain on duty would totally undermine law and order.  It would undermine the public trust.  Never mind all the rest, if courtroom testimony were to bear out the fact that this police officer had any intent of trumping up charges, he, himself, ought to be criminally charged on top of being fired.

But the union is obligated to defend him from being fired if he filed a grievance contesting his dismissal.  We’ll find out more about that after arbitration this September.

By the way, the police officer and his daughter are white.  The daughter’s boyfriend is black.  Let’s set that aside for a moment to say that, no matter the identities of the people involved, the trumping up of charges by a police officer and badgering people from behind an officer’s badge just for the pursuit of the officer’s personal agenda that happens to be at odds with carrying out the officer’s lawful duties is more than enough reason to terminate his employment.  Okay, the moment for setting that aside is over.  Make of it what you will.

Posted in abuse of power, crime, law enforcement, Local Politics, Lorain, race. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Updating blog roll

February 5, 2014 — buckeyerino

It has been a long time since I last checked the links on my blogroll.  I have made changes.  Deletions from the blogroll were based on links that stopped working, links that redirected to a totally unrelated page, blogs that were blank, blogs that were password protected, or blogs that hadn’t added content in years.

If you own a website that was deleted and you would like it reinstated, you should probably include an explanation of why I found what I found when I clicked on your link.  If for example, your link was dead because you changed your URL, then I’d be happy to revisit my decision to delete.

After those deletions, I am looking to add to the blogroll.  I will be on the lookout for blogs that are Ohio-based and/or politics-based.  North central Ohio, like the counties along the Lake Erie shoreline between Cleveland and Toledo and a little further inland, is what I consider my home territory, for I have resided in Erie, Seneca, and Lorain counties (Franklin County, too, but plenty of blogs cover Columbus).  Huron, Sandusky, and Ottawa counties are of interest, too.  If you would like your blog added to my blogroll, give me a holler (my profile with email appears on the About page). As you know, I identify myself politically as being right-of-center (even though there are those who disbelieve my self-assessment).

On another note, I was stunned to see that WordPress had begun to place ads on my site.  I paid WordPress extra money just to keep my blog advertisement-free.  If you see ads crop up on Buckeye RINO, I’d appreciate it if you would let me know so that I can investigate.

For social networking, I have been using just Twitter, as I find it least annoying among social networking sites.  I once had Facebook and a few others, but I hated them, so I pulled the plug on them.  However, if readers have a social networking site that they want to recommend, let me know, and if you really think I should return to Facebook, I will entertain your arguments (but make them good, since I’ll be difficult to persuade).

Posted in Announcements, Political Blogosphere. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Press release: HB 382 would grant more consumer protection from predatory tow truck operations

December 13, 2013 — buckeyerino

Editor’s note: Two state reps from the Columbus area have introduced HB 382 to curb unethical practices among tow truck companies. For more information about this press release dated 12/12/2013, one may contact the offices of the bill’s sponsors, Democrat Rep. Heather Bishoff at (614) 644-6002 or Republican Rep. Mike Duffey at (614) 644-6030. IMHO, this bill is long overdue. Back in the mid-1990’s, I remember taking a bathroom break while moving furniture into a Columbus-area apartment only to find the vehicle missing from the parking lot when I re-emerged from the apartment. The van was blocking no one in, for it was in a space designated for the tenants of our apartment. I did not have a parking tag for the van, as I was only borrowing it because it was big enough to haul furniture in while my own vehicle was too small for that. I called the property manager’s office to figure out what happened. They gave me the towing facility’s phone number, but no one, to the property manager’s knowledge, had requested the van be towed, let alone complained about the van being parked where it was. Apparently, tow truck companies cooperated with each other to boost revenues. The towing facility I called, “Company A,” was not even the company that was hauling the van. Tow truck companies would patrol parking lots close to each other, whether they were the enforcing tow truck entity designated on the parking facility signs, or not. If Company A found vehicles to tow from its own lots, or from Company B lots, or from Company C lots, it would get the vehicles on the hook and tow them to the facility designated on the sign. In my case, Company B found the van and was hauling it to Company A. It is easy, under this scenario, to see why a tow truck operator would not unhook a vehicle even if caught in the act by a vehicle owner if Company B was grabbing a vehicle from a Company A lot. Company A expects to get paid for anything taken from a Company A lot. Company B expects to get paid for anything hauled by a Company B truck. If Company B were to accept a payment to unhook a vehicle prior to towing it from a Company A lot, then where is the Company A payday? When 2 companies cooperate to boost revenue, they both expect paydays. When we finally picked up the van from Company A, we paid the towing fee that reimbursed Company A for Company B’s payday and we paid the storage fee, which was Company A’s payday. The average consumer would suppose that Company A would only patrol and tow from Company A lots, but this was not the case in the mid-1990’s in the Columbus area. This bill, in calling for a 24-hour “grace period” for supplemental storage fees, would make cooperation between companies less lucrative, for Company A would have only been able to split a payday for hauling with Company B and would not be able to corner its own big storage fee payday. Moving apartments was expensive enough as it was without having to pay overzealous towing companies on top of that. The purpose for the parking policy at the apartment complex was so tenants would not have their allocated spaces taken by someone else. I was only using the space allocated to me. As unfair as it all was, I had no other recourse but to pay Company A whatever they demanded. I can only hope HB 382 moves quickly toward passage into law. –DJW

House Bill Introduced to End Predatory Towing Abuse in Ohio

Columbus, Ohio – State Representatives Mike Duffey (R-Worthington) and Heather Bishoff (D-Blacklick) yesterday introduced legislation to boost Ohioans’ protections against predatory tow truck abuse.

“For decades, vehicle owners in Ohio, especially college students, have been victimized by predatory towing practices such as bogus charges, no evidence of improper parking, unfair payment practices, and outright lies about Ohio’s existing right to stop tows already in progress,” said Duffey. “Now is the time to pass legislation to establish consumer protections for Ohio vehicle owners against predatory towing.”

Features of HB 382 include:

· Making explicitly illegal any and all bogus “administrative” charges or other fees not explicitly authorized in the Ohio Revised Code;

· Requiring signage at tow-away zones to clearly explain what qualifies as an “authorized vehicle”, including the purpose and hours for which vehicles may park;

· Providing a 24-hour “grace period” for supplemental storage fees, also known as overnight fees;

· Requiring that towed vehicles travel no further than 15 miles if possible or 25 miles maximum;

· Requiring tow trucks to accept major credit cards for payment, both onsite at the towing spot if caught in progress and at the storage facility once the tow has been completed;

· Prior to towing, a tow truck service must take at least one photograph of the vehicle showing it is parked illegally, and shall record the time and date of the photograph;

· “Stop, Drop and Pay Half” – Requiring the tow truck operator to actively notify the vehicle owner of their existing legal right to pay half of the normal tow charge for release if caught in progress;

· Tow trucks will be required to display business phone numbers on both sides of their trucks

· The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) will be provided rule-making authority to aid in the enforcement and implementation of the provisions in this bill.

“Great tow truck operators exist in Ohio, but they cannot compete with the unfair practices of predatory companies,” said Bishoff. “It is time to ensure Ohioans receive fair treatment as vehicle owners and to ensure that good operators are not put at a disadvantage compared to those who operate illegally.”

HB 382 will now be referred to a standing House committee for further consideration.

Posted in press release, State Politics. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

DJW: I’m not That Other (Paper) Dan Williamson

April 28, 2008 — buckeyerino

There is an alternative weekly paper in Columbus, called The Other Paper, who has a managing editor named Dan Williamson. He sometimes writes articles that include political figures and political issues.

I’m also known as Dan Williamson. My first media exposure in a political vein occurred when I was a Republican candidate running for state representative against incumbent Democrat Joe Koziura, of Lorain, in Ohio’s 56th House District in 2002. I listed my name on the ballot as Daniel Jack Williamson for two reasons, one reason being that my dad, Jack Williamson of rural Bellevue in Seneca County, was a candidate in the Republican primary for an open seat in the 58th House District, which neighbors the 56th, and I thought where media coverage about those two state rep races overlaps, my middle name on the ballot might somehow improve his name recognition. I wrote letters to the editors of newspapers, and I posted comments at an online community forum at LorainCounty.com, but that was just about the greatest extent of my writing contributions to the media at that time. I ran again for state rep in 2004 (an image of my 2004 campaign literature here–you’ll have to scroll to see the whole image). My political writing had not expanded beyond what it had been during the 2002 campaign.

In early 2005, not long after losing (again) the election in November 2004, I went to South Korea to teach English for a year (image), so I wasn’t even posting online comments at Lorain County.com during that time. In early 2006, I was back to posting online, but my comments, critical of Sherrod Brown before Paul Hackett withdrew from the Democrat primary for the U.S. Senate seat, kept getting deleted by the website, and after that, my comments went to moderation, and it would be about 24 hours before my comment would actually appear. By then, the conversation thread had lengthened quite a bit, so my comments weren’t likely to be read when they did appear. That’s when I started looking to other blogs to comment. In 2007, I began contributing entries to blogs.

In the early 1990’s, I was living in Columbus. The Other Paper had emerged on the Columbus print media scene. Dan Williamson became a known byline. Most of my friends and co-workers called me Dan. I didn’t realize that some of them were confusing me with the journalist until the secretary of my boss at National City Bank (where I worked from September 1993 through May 1995 as a teller) gave me a compliment about my writing. LOL! I quickly corrected her and said that it wasn’t me. Until I moved out of Columbus at the very start of January 2000, I’d had a number of people approaching me similarly, and these were people who knew me quite well, some of whom I saw nearly every day!

So, the second reason I chose to include my middle name on the ballot? Because I already knew that people had been confusing me with the journalist for years, and that if I received media coverage as a candidate, I hoped that including my middle name would spare media observers the confusion. I continued using that middle name when I made my first foray into blogging for much the same reason.

But I suppose that once I start generating political commentary, and, in a sense, entering the arena that the journalist was already in, I suppose it was inevitable that the confusion would arise anyway. And so I guess writing this blog entry to set the record straight was inevitable.

Posted in Politics in the MSM. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 5 Comments »