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Recent Blog Posts
Last Week's Reasonable Doubt
In which Todd Dupont, Franklin Bynum and I discuss METRO VIPRgate and have way too much fun:
For the METRO Board
When we spoke to the METRO board of directors last week, it struck me that some of the things that I consider common knowledge might not be. Chairman Gilbert Garcia asked me for links to my blog posts on the subject of the meeting, by which I think he meant TSA and its VIPR teams.
I'm not the best resource for either, but I can point the METRO board in the right direction.
For TSA's airport depredations, and an introduction to TSA's culture of contempt for American travelers' dignity and freedom, see Lisa Simeone's TSA News.
For the direction that TSA is taking, exporting its culture to the surface-travelling public, see this post by Simeone.
The Amtrak police chief barred VIPR teams from Amtrak property after their illegal harassment of passengers disembarking in Savannah.
METRO to The People: “Up Yours!”
Reports are that yesterday (30 April 2012) at about 3pm three uniformed METRO police officers accosted about a dozen passengers getting off the #219 bus from downtown to the West Road Park and Ride and asked for ID.
What does this have to do with METRO's mission?
Not a thing. METRO should be encouraging ridership, not discouraging it by demanding riders' papers.
(The comparison is inescapable: requiring papers for internal travel is a hallmark of modern totalitarian regimes.)
It's hard not to see this as a deliberate slap in the face by METRO to those concerned citizens who appeared less than a week ago at METRO's board meeting to protest METRO's inviting TSA into our community and performing (as reported-and now denied-by METRO) "random bag checks."
TSA Agents Violate Texas Law [Updated]
[Update: A federal statute, 28 USC §1442, allows removal to federal court of any civil or criminal case against:
The United States or any agency thereof or any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States or of any agency thereof, in an official or individual capacity, for or relating to any act under color of such office or on account of any right, title or authority claimed under any Act of Congress for the apprehension or punishment of criminals or the collection of the revenue.
So, like an occupying army, the TSA has it wired so that it won't be subject to the jurisdiction of the occupied state's courts.]
A little Texas law:
A person commits an offense if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly carries on or about his or her person a handgun...
(Texas Penal Code Section 46.02)
Section[] 46.02...do[es] not apply to: (1) peace officers or special investigators under Article 2.122, Code of Criminal Procedure...
Our Natural Allies
At the METRO Board meeting yesterday, we met some non-lawyer members of the community who shared our concerns about the creeping police state. The best comments to the METRO Board were, in my view, not made by the lawyers but by these free thinkers.
Amberia Smith:
Derrick Broze:
(When the METRO chairman, Gilbert Garcia, was clearly trying to cut us off, Derrick got up and insisted that we be heard, and Garcia wisely relented.)
Steve Susman (Libertarian candidate for Congressional District 22):
Things Everybody Knows
I wrote:
METRO says they went where the crime is, but if they had spent eight hours running drug dogs through Park-and-Ride buses they probably would have made as many weed cases, more cocaine cases, and some gun cases for good measure.But affluent white folk ride Park-and-Ride buses. Affluent white folk don't do their prostitution business on the bus, affluent white folk don't plead guilty at the first court appearance, and affluent white folk have politicians who listen to them.Much easier to go fishing where the fish don't bite back.
Today I ran into a METRO police officer I knew (I used to be the lawyer for the METRO Police Officers Association, the METRO cops' union). He's not a reader of my blog, but unprompted he said almost exactly the same thing: "if we ran dogs through Park-and-Ride buses, we'd make a bunch of arrests, but those people would be up in arms, and it'd be a real headache."
Thirteen Million Dollars
A Tarrant County jury awarded Mark and Rhonda Lesher of Clarksville, Texas, the sum on Friday after the couple filed a lawsuit against people writing anonymous, hurtful comments about them online.
(KHOU.)
One of the defendants, Shannon Coyel, had accused the Leshers of sexually assaulting her in 2008. The Leshers were indicted, went to trial, and were acquitted.
Anonymous commenters called the Leshers sexual deviants, molesters and drug pushers on topix.com. After filing suit against John and Jane Does (original petition (PDF)) the Leshers successfully sought and received the IP addresses of the commenters. (Murray's commenters, take note: you're not as anonymous as you think.) 70 percent of the postings on Topix came from only a narrow number of IP addresses and-surprise, surprise-one of them came back to a Fort Worth salvage yard owned by the Coyels.
Earl Musick's VIPRgate Letter
HCCLA President Earl Musick's letter to the Houston Chronicle on the subject of METRO VIPRgate:
Objection to searchesRegarding "Undercover officers ride buses in anti-terror effort" (Page B2, Thursday), the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association (HCCLA), which represents more than 600 area criminal-defense lawyers, is alarmed that Metro Police Chief Victor Rodriguez invited Transportation Security Administration teams to conduct operations at Houston's bus stops.The TSA is known for its disrespect for and abuse of airline passengers' civil liberties and dignity.Metro said that agencies involved in the operations would, among other things, perform random bag checks.Random bag checks are, except in very narrow circumstances (none of which apply to Houston bus passengers), illegal and in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.Local Metro buses are overwhelmingly used by people who don't have cars. Bus passengers are the least affluent and the least powerful of Houston's residents. It also bears saying that they are predominantly nonwhite.It's not that Chief Rodriguez is incapable of keeping Metro bus stops safe without federal help: According to him, even without TSA interference, Houston has one of the safest transit systems in the world.So Chief Rodriguez invited an abusive federal agency into our community to perform illegal searches on the least powerful among us, and it wasn't even necessary. We object.Earl D. Musick, president, Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association
Harris County GOP and the PD Redux
Last month I blogged about the Harris County Republican Party and the Harris County Public Defender's Office, talking about what I called "the greed angle": that former HCRP chair Gary Polland, who is still influential in the party, is trying to use the party (by, among other things, deceiving the party's constituents) to protect his court-appointed income stream:
Sometimes good policy happens to be good for the policymakers. If political leaders' self-interest dictate policy and they use untruth to support that policy, though, that's not "conservatism" but kleptocracy.
Now the plot thickens: current HCRP chair Jared Woodfill is (and was at the time he sent the deceptive email) also on the juvenile-appointment teat. (Newman, Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, Your Friday Dose of Irony).
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