Rat Catcher

By Eddie North-Hager
Daily Breeze
A former Inglewood city councilman who pleaded guilty to corruption charges in Carson two years ago has been linked to a federal investigation that resulted in a 45-count indictment against officials in Houston, Cleveland and New Orleans for extortion, fraud and conspiracy to commit racketeering. Garland Hardeman, a former Los Angeles police officer who was the bagman in a votes-for-cash scheme in Carson that so far has netted 11 individuals, was not charged with any wrongdoing in the indictments handed down in January. But he was a key player because of his consulting background and his relationship to Monique McGilbra, a high-ranking official at Houston City Hall.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/regstate/articles/1408487.html

Q Years ago while working in a Philadelphia coffee shop, I was told not to charge policemen for their drinks. The idea was to encourage them to hang around and deter crime. In Washington recently, I noticed that a cafe I frequent has the same policy. Sure enough, a couple of latte-sipping cops were often stationed outside. But isn't this a form of bribery and hence unethical? Thomas Catan London

A If you're right, and those cops are comped, this is indeed petty bribery, engendering not only bad policing -- patrol assignments should be based on the needs of each locale, not the availability of free mochaccino -- but bad ethics. Nobody wants to live where bribery is endemic, where you have to pay off the mailman to get a letter or to tip the sanitation men if you don't want to live within a wall of garbage. You should not act in ways that promote corruption and undermine the predominant honesty of municipal employees.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/11243328.htm

Feb 24, 2005 8:51 pm US/Eastern
PHILADELPHIA (AP) A former city official testifying in Philadelphia's "pay-to-play" corruption trial said Thursday that she didn't think it was unethical or improper to accept gifts from people who did business with her office. Ex-City Treasurer Folasade Olanipekun, called to testify against a colleague accused of taking particularly lavish gifts from people seeking city contracts, acknowledged that she too had accepted free meals and sports tickets.

http://kyw.com/Local%20News/local_story_055205237.html

Former San Jose City Councilman Terry Gregory pleaded no contest Thursday to 11 misdemeanor corruption charges, including improperly accepting gifts and violating conflict of interest laws. Gregory, who entered his plea through his attorney, was sentenced to 200 hours of community service, fined $130 and placed on probation for one year. The plea was a result of a deal prosecutors struck with Gregory, who agreed in January to resign his council post and plead no contest.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/25/BAGFIBU2NU1.DTL

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Former Gov. John G. Rowland was sentenced to a year in prison and four months under house arrest Friday for selling his office in a corruption scandal that destroyed his career as one of the Republican Party's brightest and fastest-rising stars.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=2&u=/ap/20050318/ap_on_re_us/rowland_sentencing&sid=84439559

McALLEN TX- Two former McAllen city employees were arrested and arraigned on charges of theft Wednesday in connection with a police investigation into misappropriation of city property. The suspects are Thomas Barba, 44, of Mission, and Francisco Javier Sanchez, 33, of San Juan. They are accused of stealing city property valued at more than $17,500 over a series of several months, including a welder, plasma metal cutters, boots, tools, building materials, lumber and steel

http://www.themonitor.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=6227&Section=Valley

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- A city manager is facing felony charges for tampering with bids. The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office arrested Billy Loranza Watson, 59, on official misconduct and tampering charges. Watson is the Chief of Public Buildings for the city. A police report shows Watson reportedly accepted between $1000-$2000 a month from the owner of a janitorial service in order to keep his contract with the city.

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/topstories/news-article.aspx?storyid=34149

ALHAMBRA, Calif. (AP) - A business partner of former Councilman John Parker Williams was arrested for allegedly conspiring with Williams to bribe a current councilman, authorities said. Williams pleaded not guilty earlier to the same charges. Frank Liu, who was arrested Wednesday, was the source of the $25,000 that Williams allegedly offered to Councilman Daniel Arguello in exchange for his support of a senior housing project, prosecutors said. Arguello did not take the alleged bribe and cooperated with investigators in a sting operation against Williams. Liu authorized a $25,000 withdrawal from the accounts of Woodward III LLC/Woodward V, a development company he operated with Williams, prosecutors said. "My only comment is that at this point Mr. Williams' intention is to defend the charges against him. If he didn't commit bribery, then I don't suppose Mr. Liu did, either," Williams attorney Richard Hirsch said. Liu, 71, is free on $25,000 bail and will be arraigned March 30.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/11101988.htm

LOS ANGELES - A Southern California water district board member who pleaded guilty to accepting a $25,000 bribe in exchange for voting to award a contract for financial services was sentenced to two years in prison. Tyrone Smith, 47, of Ladera Heights is one of about a dozen officials who had been convicted following a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe in to municipal corruption in Carson.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/11021509.htm

By Guy McCarthy

Less than six weeks after a massive landslide killed 10 people in La Conchita, the small coastal community north of Ventura, the U.S. Geological Survey completed and published a 12-page report on the disaster. The detailed report included descriptions of physical setting, locations of homes, landslide history at La Conchita, maps, photographs, charts and a summary of continuing local hazards. But timely, conclusive government-funded research of life-threatening hazards in southwest San Bernardino County is harder to come by. More than 14 months after nine children and seven adults died in post-fire debris flows in Waterman Canyon and Devore, no comprehensive report on the disaster or the factors that contributed to it has been completed and distributed to the public.

http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208~12588~2741777,00.html

By Janet M. Harp
LOMA LINDA -- Mayor Karen Gaio Hansberger has resigned in a surprise move she says was prompted by months of pressure and criticism from the community concerning her family's political and business ties. It was a decision Gaio Hansberger said she labored over. But, in the end, she believed city business would move along better without her. She said Wednesday the public questioned her ability to make unbiased decisions because her husband is a county supervisor and her father-in-law is a real estate developer who owns hundreds of hillside acres in Loma Linda.

http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208~12588~2754167,00.html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A jury came to a verdict Tuesday involving the last remaining defendant in a corruption case that brought down the sheriff of San Joaquin County. Monty McFall The former lobbyist was accused of extortion, fraud, and other charges involving efforts to build a Stockton power plant. Monty McFall, 58, was convicted Tuesday on nine counts of attempted extortion, six counts of honest services mail fraud and two counts of witness tampering. And he was acquitted of three counts of honest services mail fraud following a five-week trial, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/4266487/detail.html

BY DAVID LERMAN
(202) 824-8224

March 3, 2005 WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Maritime Administration has used an unauthorized process for awarding ship disposal contracts and will fail to meet a congressional mandate to rid the James River and other waters of obsolete ships by next year, a federal watchdog agency has concluded. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is preparing to issue what amounts to a scathing indictment of the maritime agency's ship disposal program, which is responsible for removing environmentally hazardous, obsolete merchant ships - known as the "ghost fleet" - from U.S. waters.

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-75867sy0mar03,0,5012458.story

Bill limits pensions of elected officials convicted of felonies

By Hank Shaw
Capitol Bureau Chief
Published Sunday, March 6, 2005

SACRAMENTO -- Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian wants to make sure former San Joaquin County Sheriff Baxter Dunn is the last public servant to escape censure with a golden parachute.

Aghazarian is sponsoring legislation to bar elected officials found guilty of felonies connected with their office from receiving the public portion of their pension.

Dunn pleaded guilty to mail fraud in January and faces prison time. But the 57-year-old can expect to enjoy a $140,000-a-year pension for the rest of his life.

Aghazarian said he was "shocked" to learn this and decided to do something about it.

"It's the old story -- there oughta be a law," Aghazarian said. "It shocks the consciousness that someone who violates the public trust remains on the public dole. It's a fairness issue."

(more)

By MATT APUZZO,
Associated Press Writer

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Public officials should be allowed to have confidential conversations with government lawyers because privileged communications are in the best interest of the public, a federal appeals court said. The decision conflicts with Clinton-era rulings in Washington, D.C., and Arkansas that forced President Clinton (news - web sites)'s attorney to testify before independent counsel Kenneth Starr's Whitewater grand jury.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050302/ap_on_re_us/attorney_client_privilege_2

This little brief is worth the ten or so minutes it will take to read it. It is nice to see someone stick it to the judicial system. This guy was a real pip.

"In light of Judge Wasilenko¹s retirement from the bench, we hereby impose a censure on him as the maximum discipline we can impose. Because of his demonstrated failure to reform, and his long-running pattern of misconduct, we determine that he is lacking in requisite judicial temperament, and therefore, to protect the public from his ever sitting as a bench officer, we hereby bar him from any assignment, appointment or reference of work from any California state court."

http://www.appeal-democrat.com/extras/add/add03.html

News Story by Robert McMillan
MARCH 03, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has filed criminal charges against the former policy director for then-Gov. Gray Davis in connection with a 2001 database contract scandal.

The 12-count criminal complaint against Kari Dohn, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court yesterday, alleges that Dohn modified her computerized schedule and internal progress reports after the state's Joint Legislative Audit Committee launched an investigation into a software license agreement between Oracle Corp. and the state.

http://www.computerworld.com/

(Chicago)(March 6, 2005) Truth is often the first casualty of tragedy. That appears to be the case in the Lefkow murders. Two members of a Chicago federal judge family were senselessly murdered in Chicago last week. In a very large sense, however, federal prosecutors and the FBI may have inadvertently engineered these killings. The potential complicity of federal officials is an unpleasant truth that we dare not ignore, but that is too explosive to be published in so-called mainstream media. The minister at the Lefkow funeral preached that there had been an assault on the principles of American democracy and openness. Unfortunately, I take a contrarian view. The greatest enemies of the American people are not extremists, who are mostly a motley collection of malcontents. The greatest enemies of the people have become the federal government and the federal judicial system. How can I make these charges? Let me explain. I speak from personal experience.

http://www.politicalgateway.com/main/columns/read.html?col=285

By John Shiffman, Emilie Lounsberry and Craig R. McCoy
Inquirer Staff Writers

Three days after the City Hall scandal broke, FBI wiretaps captured a phone call in which Mayor Street agreed with Ronald A. White's advice that Street should use the "race thing" to galvanize his voters. "We don't have much choice but to go with it," Street told White on Oct. 10, 2003, less than a month before the mayor was reelected. At the time, White was a key fund-raiser for Street - and was the target of intense FBI scrutiny. On the phone, he told Street that the two men needed to discuss "how we're going to do this from a black thing." "We can do both," Street replied, without elaborating.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/11060796.htm

If people took the time to read the headlines in the Feb. 23 Press, they would have been treated to another "why comedians love New Jersey" moment presented by public officials of Monmouth County. Eleven people taken away in handcuffs like the criminals that they are, including three mayors. That may be some sort of record for the number of mayors arrested in one place at one time.

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050227/OPINION/502270353/1030

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa More than 20 armed FBI agents raided this U.S. territory's government offices yesterday, blocking the entrances to the offices of the governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. The government's main computer room was also cordoned off, according to eyewitnesses at the building. The raid was the talk of the territory, which has a population of about 58,000, and onlookers milled after the raid as agents guarded closed doors. Agents did not disclose the object of the surprise invasion and search, which took place before most of the government workers arrived in the building.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Mar/04/ln/ln16p.html

The FBI has joined the list of regulatory and law enforcement agencies investigating controversial airport land deals.
Special Agent David Schrom, an FBI spokesman, said this morning that the "FBI is looking into the matter," but would not comment further.
Sheriff Bill Young said Metro Police officers are conducting their own investigation but would be working with the FBI.
"We're going to work cooperatively on this," Young said. "There's certainly a federal nexus here. We're talking about federal land. I think we'll work well together."
Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said he wasn't surprised to learn of the FBI's involvement, considering the agency's recent political corruption investigation centering on commissioners allegedly trading political influence for money and gifts.

MORE
http://www.lasvegassun.com/

WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. - The borough's mayor, arrested in an FBI corruption sting along with 10 other public officials, has stepped down from office two days after a heated council meeting. Paul Zambrano, 48, submitted his resignation to the borough clerk on Friday. Several residents on Wednesday had suggested that the mayor should step down or the council should ask him to resign along with Councilman Joseph DeLisa, who also was arrested Feb. 22 in the probe.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/104-03052005-458980.html

The corruption in California's prison system is revealed Scandalous! The time has finally come for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and the $5.3 billion penal system it has so masterfully corrupted. The revelations come in a new 71-page report by John Hagar, an expert on prisons appointed by U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to investigate. It is apparent that top officials of the Department of Corrections neither understand nor care about the need for fair investigations, nor are they likely to impose discipline in the face of CCPOA (the prison guard union) objections.

http://www.jimgilliam.com/

by Christina Karaoli
KWCH 12 Eyewitness News

Friday, March 4, 2005 Before police said Dennis Rader is the BTK suspect, Rader spent more than a decade as the Park City Compliance Officer.
That's how people knew him and that's where Eyewitness News caught up with him in October 1997. Rader was shooting video of health and code violations found at Wichita Heights, a Park City apartment complex.
A few days after our story aired on the violations, we found Rader back at the apartment complex putting up notices and giving the landlord two weeks to fix the problems.
Eventually Rader and the city of Park City condemned and shut down the complex.
Wednesday, just days after his arrest, Rader was fired from his Compliance Officer job Wednesday, for failing to report to work or call in.

This story can be found at: http://www.kbsd6.com/

You will notice that when Rader begain his job as a code enforcement officer the BTK killings stopped. If we would have only known we could have given Charles Manson a job with the city and saved ourselves from all that "helter skelter" episode.

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The last defendant in a corruption case involving several county and state officials presented closing arguments in his own defense after firing his third attorney.
Monte McFall, a lobbyist and former San Joaquin County sheriff's deputy, faced 19 charges, including extortion and witness tampering.
The case revolved around a bid to build a power plant in the port of Stockton. McFall and other public officials stood to make millions of dollars from the deal.
The judge warned McFall that some of the charges he faced carried a 20 year sentence in federal prison, but McFall said he wanted to continue with his own defense. His lawyer sat in the back of the courtroom and watched the rest of the trial.
"This was a case about greed, power and money, a case about Mr. McFall's campaign of corruption in San Joaquin County," Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner told jurors.
Wagner described McFall as an influence peddler and a "parasite" to developers.
McFall told jurors that the federal prosecutors' case did not prove he did anything wrong.
"I believe in a system of law," McFall told jurors. "I defended it most of my life."
Several public officials have already pleaded guilty. The former sheriff, Baxter Dunn, former Supervisor Lynn Bedford, ex-Bedford aide J. Tyler Reves and state official N. Allen Sawyer all struck plea deals and face prison terms.

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/11032176.htm

San Bernardino County leaders say they want to leave the corruption and cronyism of the 1990s behind, but three recent hirings have observers questioning whether the county is cleaning itself up. Treasurer Dick Larsen hired a close friend whose affair with the county's personnel chief cost her that position. Supervisor Paul Biane chairs a commission that employs his chief-of-staff's wife. And Public Defender John Roth hired a lawyer who had been jailed on misdemeanor charges of soliciting jail inmates to hire bail bondsmen. Roth is on administrative leave for a week, County Administrative Officer Mark Uffer said. Uffer was vocal in criticizing the public defender -- he told Roth, "I can't have a department head who doesn't see the big picture" -- but he has been more circumspect regarding the other appointments. "It's not a good practice for the CAO to make negative comments about elected officials when I have no authority to do anything on the hires that they're making," Uffer said. Supervisor Gary Ovitt said, "We're trying to build our image and improve our image and we have issues in the past that we would love to leave behind us. We have to scrutinize everything very closely and make sure that the people we hire pass the test." However, he echoed Uffer's position, saying he would not challenge Larsen's hire because he is independently elected.

http://www.pe.com/breakingnews/local/stories/PE_News_Local_ethics03.f483.html

WASHINGTON, March 1 - The Supreme Court ruled today, in one of the most closely watched capital punishment cases in years, that imposing the death penalty on convicted murderers who were younger than 18 at the time of their crimes is unconstitutional. The 5-to-4 decision, arising from a Missouri case, holds that executing young killers violates "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society," and that American society has come to regard juveniles as less culpable than adult criminals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/politics/01cnd-scot.html