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Amy Hunt
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03/06/06
Judgmental is not a bad thing!
In this modern day of political correctness, we are
discouraged from stating the obvious when we see something wrong. Look at all the flack Mayor Miller has taken for questioning some
shady doings at City Hall.
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When she publicized that the City Council was going to give another $6.3 million
tax abatement to that Son of a Bigamist Billionaire Ray Hunt, you would have
thought it was Mayor Miller who was ripping off Dallas taxpayers, not Ray Hunt
and the 13
council members who voted for it (Mitch Rasansky opposed it, too.)
Mayor Miller calling out the bad guys made her the target of their rage.
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03/08/06
JC:
People
who don't want
to be judgmental are people who are afraid of being judged
themselves.
Great article
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Bill Blaydes and Ed Oakley went
ballistic when Mayor Miller exposed them and the dirty deal they were doing for
Ray Hunt. They used her exposing the dirty Hunt deal as an excuse to go
back on their word to support the council's version of a stronger mayor.
Mayor Miller did the right thing, and stood her ground.
That pesky "Nuisance Abatement" fiasco (discussed more below) is going to cost
us a bunch of money. The way the Nuisance Abatement law was misapplied was
a bad thing. Again, the good guy who raised a stink and exposed the wrong has caught a
lot of grief, but he's standing his ground.
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Before we go on more about the evil stuff, let me tell you what happened this week
to the town's biggest cynic (that would be me). Thursday morning, I
stopped at the Kroger on Josey in Farmers Branch to get some supplies for the
office kitchen. I had a bunch of bags and my purse in the grocery cart, loaded the bags in the front seat, pushed the cart to the collecting bin and
went on to work. That was about 9:30. At the office, I grabbed
the bags and mail and went inside. Around 12:30, I needed something
from my purse.
When I didn't see it, I thought I had left it in the car. It was not in
the car. |
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03/06 Amy Hunt:
Just my personal observation, but your example of what the
lady did with your purse doesn?t seem to me to be at all unusual.
The truth is, most people are honest. Sure, there are bad apples,
but there have always been bad apples. It?s gratifying when we?re
smacked upside the head with the basic decency of human beings, and
it?s depressing when we?re equally smacked upside the head with the
evil that lurks in even the most basically good of us.
I think you give the world a
bad rap when you say that what that woman did was extraordinary and
unusual. In my experience, it?s neither.
For the record, I?m so
relieved for you that you got your purse back intact. Even if you
hadn?t had any credit cards or cash, the mere act of having to get a
new drivers license is enough to ruin my day.
Keep up the good work!
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Thinking back in panic, the last time I saw the purse was in that shopping cart. I
got queasy and went in to tell the receptionist what had happened and that I
was making a futile trip back to Kroger's to see if I could find my
purse.
As I drove the 7 or 8 blocks back over, I expected next to be
heading home to start calling and canceling credit cards and making a
trip over to get a new drivers license -- all the horrible stuff. I was
imagining how much someone could charge on my cards while I was wasting
time going back to the store.
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I drove into the huge parking lot and parked near where I had been earlier.
Some shopping carts were in the bin, but no purse. I locked my car and
went inside, knowing the walk was as futile as the drive had been. At this
point, I'm past nauseous, I'm green, but I walked up to the cashier who was on the
phone. She took the phone from her ear to see what I wanted. I asked if
anyone had turned in a brown leather purse, shaking my head NO as the question
was
coming out. She said "It's right here. A woman found it in the
parking lot." |
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03/06 Rad Field:
I'm not sure that you were actually "careless".
When we have "lots" of stuff on
our minds, sometimes we overlook what we're
doing. Our minds are just someplace else. We all do it now and then.
We all just have to be "heads up" as much as often as we can.
My wife was robbed in the past.
I chased two guys down that were much bigger than
I, but it was at night.
I pointed my hand at them, told them I was the police and
ready to shoot. They dropped
her purse and jumped over a fence.
All was recovered. Someone had
put out a robbery call, and police rained on the scene. When asked how
I recovered the property, I told DPD I just stuck out my hand, pointed
at the bad guys, they threw the purse on the ground and jumped over the
fence. Everyone at the scene was shaking their heads. |
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Stunned,
I opened it. There was my $80 and ALL OF MY CREDIT CARDS. I would
have been just as thrilled had the cash been gone and everything else been
there. I asked who the lady was, the cashier said "Some Hispanic lady!"
She said, "It's been here since about 9:30."
It's a sad thing when someone doing the right thing is unusual, but that's
where we are today.
That lady did what I would have done and what most DallasArena.com readers would do, but you can be assured way too many of our
fellow Dallasites would not have done what she did.
Still, it was my lucky day that one of God's good people was watching out for my
carelessness.
It's hard to hang onto good feelings when you pick up the paper and read:
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State: Dallas ran 'amok' with public-nuisance rules;
Saturday, March 4, 2006
By KAREN BROOKS / The Dallas Morning
News |
AUSTIN ?
Some Dallas police and officials intimidated residents, abused city
authority, and shirked their responsibility to protect and serve Dallasites
by using the public-nuisance abatement ordinance to
shake down businesses, state legislators said Friday.
In a blistering report they plan to
send to the U.S. attorney for review, two House committees said Dallas had
engaged in "ward-based politics run amok."
... The report also commended Police Chief
David Kunkle for his "admirable" response to lawmakers' concerns, first
aired during the legislative session in early 2005.
... "The committees believe most employees and
officials of the city of Dallas are dedicated to serving the public with
honor and integrity," the 34-page report says. "However, the
abuses recounted in extensive testimony indicate enough grave irregularities
in the city's conduct that the committees remain skeptical that the
city ... will appropriately exercise discretion in the pursuit of nuisance
lawsuits in the absence of further legislation."
... The House committee's investigation included
two public hearings in Dallas and came after lawmakers last session reined
in the state's two-year-old public-nuisance-abatement law that allows cities
to sue businesses or property owners who permit drug dealing, prosecution
and gambling to happen on their properties. The changes increased the burden
of proof by cities.
... Mayor Laura Miller, one of the most vocal
critics of the changes, said Friday that she felt confident that Dallas had
addressed the concerns voiced by residents and lawmakers last year.
... Ms. Miller and Chief Kunkle agreed that
there was good reason to be concerned about an incident in which a
dozen police squad units showed up in a carwash
parking lot as a show of force, one day after the owner, Dale
Davenport, testified in support of a man arrested on his property and later
acquitted.
... Ms. Miller said. "Chief Kunkle has assured us
that kind of thing is not going to happen under his watch."
Mr. Kunkle,
hired in June 2004 after most of the incidents, called the officers'
actions "stupid" and "clearly wrong" but said the officers "legitimately
believed that the carwash is a terrible nuisance in that part of town and
that Dale doesn't cooperate and try to manage his property."
... Mr. Davenport, however, said he felt
vindicated. His case is moving through an appeals process.
... The bipartisan committees, the House Criminal
Jurisprudence Committee and the House General Investigating and Ethics
Committee, are headed by a Republican and a Democrat respectively and,
together, have six Republicans and seven Democrats. Reps. Elvira Reyna,
R-Mesquite, and Terri Hodge, D-Dallas, are
among the committee members who signed the unanimously approved report.
The committees plan to send the
report to the Texas Bar Association and the North Texas district office of
the U.S. attorney,
... City officials lobbied hard against attempts to change the law,
which was originally passed in 2003 by Dallas Sen. Royce West, a Democrat.
The ordinance, supporters say, is a valuable tool in curtailing crime and
punishing businesses and properties that allow criminal activity or don't do
enough to stop it.
But it soon came to light that
when a business owner called the police to report
crime happening on his property, the city would count that call as evidence
that the owner was allowing it to happen ? creating what the report
called "a no-win situation for businesses."
... The law was changed in 2005 after a bitter,
public fight between Austin lawmakers and Dallas city officials, to prohibit
the city attorney's office from using those calls to build cases against the
business owner. In another major change, the city has to prove that the
business or property owner did nothing to stop the criminal activity on his
property, closing a loophole in the law that said simply knowing the
activity was happening was enough to file a nuisance suit.
Rep. Will Hartnett, a Dallas
Republican, ... On Friday, he questioned the
timing of the report ? a few days before the primaries in which six of the
12 committee members signing the report have opponents ?
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Just in case you don't know the
background on this issue, Dallas
Observer's Jim Schutze had several
reports on this travesty. Here's one:
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Payback; Five cop
cars hit a businessman who cried to the city manager
By Jim Schutze Published
Aug 4, 2005 |
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Recently the governor of Texas and the speaker of the Texas House authorized
a special investigative committee to come to Dallas toward the end of the
year to look into allegations of corruption and official oppression. This is
not the same thing as the recent FBI raids on Dallas City Council and Plan
Commission members. This is a completely different
black eye for the city--other eyeball.
The specific charges against
the city have to do with a state "nuisance abatement" law that was designed
to help cities crack down on crack houses, hot-sheet motels and places like
that. The accusation is that Dallas has gone after
legitimate businesses instead, blaming them for the terrible crime rate the
city itself has failed to resolve. More specifically legislators want
to know if the city has used illegitimate enforcement methods to pressure
businesses into hiring Dallas cops off-duty.
In other words, has Dallas city
government turned into some kind of weird municipal protection racket?
... "At a car wash," Rasansky said, "if they're
accumulating noise, hanging out, having music, these boom boxes at night and
cars hanging out there, not getting car washes but just parked there, that's
not right, and if that man [the owner] is being persecuted, that's tough."
It is tough. Dale Davenport, who owns
the car wash with his father, can tell you how tough. The city of Dallas has
cost Davenport and his father six-figure sums by suing them to force them to
control crime in the area near and on their property.
They happen to own a car wash
surrounded by vacant fields and crack houses, as well as several legitimate
businesses. They're in a very tough area.
No one says the Davenports break the
law. They're honest business people. They obey the law, down to and
including an excellent record on building and business code issues. But the
city of Dallas has been hammering them because they have failed to prevent
other people from committing crimes in the vicinity.
... On February 9 or 10, the Davenports had an
impromptu meeting at City Hall with City Manager Mary Suhm in which they
pleaded with her to end the persecution of their business. They say Suhm was
not unsympathetic but told them they needed to plead their case instead to
city council member Leo Chaney, in whose district their car wash is located.
... On February 11--within 48 hours of when the
Davenports say they met with Suhm--five Dallas police patrol cars carried
out a drug raid on their car wash at the corner of MLK Boulevard and Myrtle
Street. Customers and a vehicle were searched, but no arrests were made,
because no drugs were found.
... after the raid an honest cop went to the
Davenports on the sly and told them the whole thing had been a political
set-up ordered from on high. The cop told the Davenports there was a way to
track it: He said they should make a public information act demand for text
messages sent back and forth between the five patrol cars.
They made the demand. Recently they
received the text messages, which they showed to me. This was not a response
to a 911 call. Instead, it was orchestrated from headquarters. The text
messages reveal that the five patrol cars, far from rushing in to provide
cover, all assembled beforehand at an agreed location a few blocks from the
car wash "as per deputy chief."
... Then the cops in the raid fudge official
documents to hide the role of the police hierarchy in ordering the raid.
... I spoke with council member Chaney, who
checked his calendar and told me he had been in New York on those dates. He
said he had nothing to do with the raid. Suhm also said she had nothing to
do with the raid.
... In April 2002, more than a dozen Dallas patrol
cars swept onto the Davenports' lot and parked there to prevent them from
doing business after the Davenports had testified against a police officer
in a trial. Dallas police Chief David Kunkle confirmed the event in hearings
in Austin this year.
In early June of this year, I
reported that a Dallas police officer confronted the Davenports at the car
wash and warned them against talking to state legislators.
... Council member Chaney has confirmed to me that
in at least one meeting with the Davenports he suggested they consider
hiring private guards from a security company owned by council member James
Fantroy. Fantroy and his security company
are now targets of an FBI probe in an unrelated matter.
This is all very serious business,
and it's going to get more serious toward the end of the year when that
state legislative investigative committee shows up here with subpoena power
and a staff.
... But you've still got a couple of really tough
problems to deal with. One is the fact that somebody somehow can send the
cops out on political raids. Call me paranoid: I think those five patrol
cars were there to punish honest business people for petitioning their
representatives. ... |
After shaking down Smirnoff for
several million, Shakedown Chaney probably thinks the Davenports were selfish
for not "buying" a little security. All of this could have been so easily
avoided had they just been more sharing with "the community".
Here's another Schutze report on the shakedown.
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Kickback City;
You wouldn't believe how bad Dallas looks in Austin
By Jim Schutze Published
May 12, 2005 |
Over a period of months, a Texas House committee has heard sworn
testimony that Dallas City Hall is impotent in the face of one of the worst
urban crime rates in America and wants to blame private business.
Business people from Dallas painted
an ugly picture in which the city sues businesses for reporting crime in
their areas; the Dallas City Council is flat-out corrupt and engages in
extortion and kickbacks; cops are goons who do the dirty work of connected
politicians; and when you cross the cops you get a bullet through your
house.
... This week the Senate is expected to take up a
measure already passed nearly unanimously in the House, based on the
hearings and aimed specifically at Dallas. The Legislature wants to stop
Dallas from misusing an urban nuisance law originally designed to help
cities shut down crackhouses, hot-sheet motels and places where landlords
rake in profits from crime.
... But no case angered them more than the story
of Dale Davenport, who owns a car wash with his dad in South Dallas.
... For reasons that remain mysterious, the city
of Dallas chose Davenport and his 70-year-old father to blame for rampant
drug trouble that has raged for decades around their car wash on Martin
Luther King Boulevard. These two gentlemen from East Texas, who have not so
much as a speeding ticket between them, took the elder Davenport's
retirement money from Lone Star Steel and dared to open up a business on MLK
in South Dallas, where they have never received a single code violation or
citation.
City officials told legislators they
went after the Davenports because people in the vicinity of the car wash
were found in possession of drugs. But then they had to admit they never
went after the crackhouse that operates openly like a Narco 7-Eleven right
across the street from them. Instead of helping protect the Davenports'
honest business, Dallas police came around to beat up their employees and
block customers from entering the property.
Dale Davenport testified about one
occasion when he and seven other witnesses watched a Dallas police officer
Mace a man on the car wash parking lot and then falsely accuse the man of
resisting arrest. When that man's trial for resisting came up, Davenport
testified on his behalf.
"The next day after I testified, a
bullet went through my house," he told the committee.
The man accused of resisting
arrest was acquitted. Davenport told the committee that in early April 2002,
on the day of the acquittal, "I had 17 police cars and 26 officers on my
lot, and they had the driveway blocked to where my customers couldn't get
in."
... Kunkle was not chief of
police when these events took place. But he told the committee in
Austin last month that the FBI had informed him they had investigated the
case and had found that someone had fired a shot through Davenport's house
on the night in question.
... I know this didn't happen under Kunkle.
It took place under his predecessor, Terrell Bolton.
... State Representative Terri Hodge, who
represents the area around the car wash, told the committee that the
Davenports' problems all come from the personal enmity and bullying of
Dallas City Councilman Leo V. Chaney.
"Mr. Chaney, you see, is part of the
problem," Representative Hodge testified. "Mr. Chaney, the councilman who
should be working with Mr. Davenport to help him as a business person in his
district, is not doing that."
Hodge alluded to a competing car wash
owned by an ally of Chaney. She said Chaney had leaned on Davenport to
contribute money to certain community organizations. "You see, they try to
designate who he hires, who he pays and how much. Well, Mr. Davenport went
along with that for a while, but it became a big problem."
... Chaney was asked to appear before the
committee but declined. He spoke to me and denied that he had brought any
undue pressure on the Davenports, although he did acknowledge that he
sometimes encourages businesses in his district to contribute to worthy
causes.
"I do believe in partnerships,"
Chaney told me. "I do believe the corporate folk that do business and earn
millions of dollars in the community ought to give back. As far as shaking
people down for personal gain, that's outrageous.
... The committee was amazed and obviously
infuriated by the testimony of an assistant Dallas city attorney, Jennifer
Richie, who described with evident pride how she had successfully sued the
Davenports on the basis of crimes on and near their property. The crimes
counted against the Davenports as evidence of their low character included
911 calls they had made for help,
... The city persuaded a Dallas judge to slam them
with hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of special security
requirements that no small business could possibly afford and stay in
business.
... Judge David Evans in the 193rd District Court
told the Davenports to do to deal with the crime problem around them.
... Judge David Evans wants 70-year-old Freddy
Davenport to cleanse his portion of Martin Luther King Boulevard of drug
dealers by spraying them with a water hose.
... I'm like Chairman Nixon: If a guy gets
shot in front of my house, does that make me an accessory? Can the city sue
me for allowing crime to occur in my vicinity? ... |
Does anyone wonder why
DallasArena.com calls Leo Chaney "Shakedown Chaney"?
I hope you noticed that all this happened BEFORE Chief Kunkle came to save us.
That's how dangerous it was for us having that idiot Terrell Bolton as police
chief. I have two questions:
1. Is the Deputy Chief who organized the harassment of the Davenports
still a commander? If so, why and where?
2. Is Asst. City Atty. Jennifer Richie still on the city payroll or even
practicing law? If so, why?
3/22-A DallasArena.com reader advises that Asst. City Atty. Richie is in fact
still employed by the City of Dallas.
Back to being judgmental. How can any intelligent person say we have no
right to discern between right and wrong? I will never forget a former
friend telling me that I see things too much in black and white, that I should
embrace the gray. Not in this lifetime!
Are you one of those nitwits who think we should expect and accept bad behavior
from elected officials or government employees? Do you think taking
whatever steps you can to right a wrong done by an elected official is
"frivolous"?
It's unlikely you said "yes" to either question because you know we can't allow
government officials to break the law, laws that you and I must obey.
Being judgmental means you know the
difference between right and wrong, good and evil.
Thank God, there are still people who can make that distinction without a great
deal of effort.
Thank God, there are still honest politicians who will hold shakedown
politicians accountable for their extortion antics.
Thank God, there are still good people living among us who would never think of
profiting from someone else's carelessness -- like the lady at Kroger who found
my purse.
There is good and evil in this World. Don't be afraid to make the
distinction.
Judgmental is good!
sb
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