We have previously discussed “policing for dollars” or “churning” where they seize cash, particularly on highways, as suspected drug money even without actually arresting or charging the drivers. It raises a huge amount of money for police departments and has been widely criticized as abusive. The latest victim of churning appears to be Charles Clarke, 24, who was on his way to take classes at the University of Central Florida. He was stopped at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron, Ky. with his life savings that he was taking with him for safe keeping and to support his education. Since he could not “prove” the source of the money, agents seized the $11,000 and, despite dropping all charges against him, has thus far refused to return the money despite Clarke’s efforts.
The stop at the airport occurred after an airline employee reported that Clarke’s luggage smelled of marijuana. Police told him that he was free to go but asked to search him and his bags. Rather than walk away, Clarke consented and immediately told them that he had the cash on him. They found no drugs and he admitted that he had smoked marijuana before going to the airport.
DEA agent William Conrad, a Cincinnati-based officer with a DEA task force,and Detective Christopher Boyd said that when they grabbed the money, Clarke grabbed approached Boyd’s wrist. They responded by criminally charging him with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct — charges later dropped after they took the money.
Conrad’s affidavit insisted that the seizure was perfectly justified “based on probable cause that it was proceeds of drug trafficking or was intended to be used in an illegal transaction.” The “Mitigating factors” cited by Conrad was the purchase of a one-way ticket, inability to provide documentation noting where the money came from, a positive hit by a drug dog and the strong smell of marijuana on his checked luggage. Yet Clarke admitted to smoking pot and there was a perfectly good reason for a one-way ticket for a college student. Finally, if Conrad was asked to prove the source of the money in his wallet, I expect he would have had the same difficulty in producing receipts or a financial statement.
The United States attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky appears to have no comment on the arrest, dropped charges, or money seizure. There is a presumption of guilt until proven otherwise. It is simply thrown on the pile of $6.8 billion in cash and property has been seized through the “Equitable Sharing Program.” While only two agencies were involved in stripping Clarke of his life savings, some 11 agencies across Kentucky and Ohio claim cuts in such proceeds.
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@PaulCS
Yeah, that would have come out:
“My name is being Svetlana, and I wish to be asking the question, do you think that a lowly woman can administer the corporal punishment to the buttocks as stringently as a man of the same caste???”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Paul C.- now that you got the heads up on the 900 numbers, we’ll know how you’re spending your days if we see that you’ve stopped posting here.😊-Tom
Tom – I just found Hulu, so combined with Netflix and the 3200 movies I have on my movie server, I have plenty to do. 😉
@tnash80
She isn’t named Svetlana, is she??? And she doesn’t ask, “Und do you vink, a voman can spanky as hard as da man can???” blushing….blushing…
🙂
Squeeky “Svetlana” Fromm
Bezoomny Little Devotchka
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:A_Clockwork_Orange
I think her name is “Squeeklana”, but I’m not sure because of the heavy fake accent.
Tom – at least they didn’t sent the jobs to India. You would never understand them.
Small world, Squeeky. I didn’t know you were the Russian gal I’ve been talking to on those 900 numbers.😊
Tom – I didn’t think they still had those 900 numbers. Thanks for the heads up. 😉
I remember the Two and a Half Men episode where Martin Mull was Charlie’s fast and lose pharmacist.
They called India and the webcam showed the Indian doctor “examining” Charlie.
He told Charlie to turn his head and cough, then concluded Charlie had glaucoma from his “examination”, then wrote a prescription for pot.
He was interrupted when his phone rang on another line, and answered “Hello, Direct TV”.
@Ilmu Pelet
Boy, do I have a tip for you! Do you know that I make $7,500 a month from my home while sitting around in my underwear drinking wine, popping pills, and smoking pot! You can do this too! All you have to do is have a computer, and willingness to spam a slew of websites!
Or, if that isn’t your thing, you can pretend that you are a Russian nymphomaniac and talk nasty to dirty old men all day long!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Olly
1, June 21, 2015 at 10:34 am
“Ken,
So you would prefer to go with don’t investigate anything, just go with the video? It doesn’t matter to you in the least what the events were that led to the call that brought Casebolt to the scene? It doesn’t matter to you in the least what the state of mind of the officer was as a result of any calls he was on just prior to this incident? It doesn’t matter to you at all what Casebolt’s professional conduct was prior to this incident? Nah, forget all that silly stuff and let’s go straight to sentencing. On second thought skip sentencing and let’s go straight for a rope and tree.
“That’s liberal justice right there for you. Civil rights for me but not for thee. That’s some real deep thinking on your part Ken. Gruber would be proud. Nicely done!”
Olly,
I hope this means that you agree to be the Chief Investigator of the McKinney Incident Task Force (MITF).
With your team’s obvious passion for and commitment to truth and justice, your investigative report has the potential to shame the McKinney PD (MPD) into reversing its own investigative finding arising from its liberal-justice and lynch-mob mentality.
Let me suggest at the outset, however, that your suggestion of a temporary insanity defense of Cpl. Casebolt, in view of his previous responses to 911 calls (or anything else), isn’t going to carry much weight with the MPD. Suicides and even homicides are routine police matters, and the MPD no doubt possessed records of Cpl. Casebolt’s having responded to a suicide and an attempted suicide that day.
They might even suggest that seeing a teenage girl threaten to throw herself off a roof should have made him more, rather than less, sympathetic to teenaged girls and their possible emotional stressors and states, but Cpl. Casebolt’s pursuit of, take-down, handcuffing, and kneeing in the back of the teenager in the bikini clearly showed that he was undeterred in his actions, even if he wasmoved to sympathy, by her cries for her mother.
One could argue, I suppose, that if the girl hadn’t cried for her mother, thereby arguably eliciting some degree of sympathy in Cpl. Casebolt, that he would have been even more brutal with her, but that defense is problematic, I think, for obvious reasons.
It’s also fairly certain that the MPD was aware of Cpl. Casebolt’s history of “professional conduct” prior to the incident in question, unless you think they may have lost his personnel file, so they’re unlikely to give thatdefense much credence, either, even if that history was completelyunproblematic for Cpl. Casebolt as it relates to the community pool incident.
No, the Task Force’s effort, if it’s to be successful in exposing the MPD’s dereliction of duty, and pressuring it into reversing its decision, is going to have to concentrate on degrading the evidentiary value of 1) the Brooks video, and 2) the value of the testimony of other officers who were on the scene.
As we both know, police officers love to turn on each other and report to higher police or civilian authorities real or fabricated “misconduct” by their colleagues, and this may very well have happened yet again in this instance.
It’s also a remarkable shame that the MPD doesn’t have a real police union to protect its members from reckless disregard of their rights, instead of one that seems to exist primarily, as do so many unions, to empower and enrich the organization’s officers, such as (now former?) Vice-President Casebolt. Please have your team investigate this very important question of why the police union threw its vice-president under the bus, without so much as a fare-thee-well.
Regarding the video, remember that Chief Conley asserted in his public statement that “…Casebolt’s actions, as seen in the video, are indefensible.”
In an ideal world, of course, you would simply induce the McKinney PD, including Chief Conley, to forget that they saw the Brooks video, and then destroy the original and all copies of it, i.e., send it down the Memory Hole.
Unfortunately, despite our having made great strides in the US in creating such an Orwellian possibility, we aren’t yet there. I think our best hope for future non-liberal responses to police misconduct is to support the legislative initiatives to simply make illegal the recording of the police in the exercise of their duties, thereby protecting them from any possible embarrassment, let alone accountability for their actions.
Here are some possible avenues of attack on the value of the video as evidence of Cpl. Casebolt’s conduct, but I’m sure you and your like-minded associates can come up with others:
* Was that in fact Cpl. Casebolt who was brutalizing the kids in the video? Can anyone truthfully say that they clearly saw his name or badge number, in view of the angle from which the video was recorded?
* Could the video have been doctored or at least embedded with a subliminal message to make it look and sound as though Cpl. Casebolt was verbally and physically brutalizing the kids, when in fact he may have been calmly asking them to have a seat and at the same time to leave the area (in somewhat inconsistent directives) while he was establishing his control of it?
To be fair regarding his directives, in the video as we have it, he repeatedly ordered the girls to leave, but ordered the boys who attempted to leave, to sit down and shut up. As we know from (the doctored?) video, he then pursued (as fast as his little legs and 30 pounds of gear and the Texas heat permitted) one of the girls who seemed to be walking away on the sidewalk some thirty to forty feet from him, and dragged her back to the detention area he had established, where he proceeded to throw her violently to the sidewalk and then to the ground, where he twisted her hands behind her back, handcuffed her, and placed his full weight on her back with both knees. Or, if not a doctored or subliminally embedded video, could what is clearly visible in it have simply been a moving optical illusion created by the interaction of the camera, the immediate environment, and the hot Texas sun?
* Did the fifteen-year-old who video-recorded the incident Photo-Shop or otherwise change the skin color of the children so as to make most of the victims appear to have been “colored,” thereby inciting the predictably unhinged reaction of the liberal media, and thus bringing irresistible political pressure to bear on the McKinney Police Department and its feckless union?
Again, these are only a few suggestions for discrediting the dispositive evidence of the video, but I strongly suggest that it, in combination with the testimony of other McKinney officers who were on-scene that day, are going to be the main obstacles to your task force’s succeeding in getting Cpl. Casebolt reinstated with back pay.
Good luck, Olly.
It’s OK people… He’s BLACK!
“Full Story of The McKinney Texas, Pool Mob – Inside The “Craig Ranch” Subdivision…”
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/06/08/the-full-story-of-the-mckinney-texas-pool-mob-inside-the-craig-ranch-subdivision/
Ken,
So you would prefer to go with don’t investigate anything, just go with the video? It doesn’t matter to you in the least what the events were that led to the call that brought Casebolt to the scene? It doesn’t matter to you in the least what the state of mind of the officer was as a result of any calls he was on just prior to this incident? It doesn’t matter to you at all what Casebolt’s professional conduct was prior to this incident? Nah, forget all that silly stuff and let’s go straight to sentencing. On second thought skip sentencing and let’s go straight for a rope and tree.
That’s liberal justice right there for you. Civil rights for me but not for thee. That’s some real deep thinking on your part Ken. Gruber would be proud. Nicely done!
CORRECTION:
The 2nd paragraph in my 1, June 20, 2015 at 6:57 pm post should have read:
“ ‘I repeatedly said we should wait for an investigation’, and I asked you and others who were calling for ‘an investigation,’ other than the definitive evidence provided by the Brooks video, what information such a supplemental investigation could possibly reveal.”
Ken Rogers – some of us think there were more than one video taken that day. Some of us think the video show is NOT definitive. I have seen pictures of that girl from 3 different angles from various sources, none were this DEFINITIVE video you talk of.
As an attorney, if you had over 100 witnesses, would you rely on the testimony of the one who could not talk and be cross-examined?
Olly
1, June 20, 2015 at 7:41 pm
“Paul,
“Karen has it right that the investigation must run its course to get to all the facts. Common sense says there is more to this story than has been presented. Just basing opinions off a video is foolish. Who were these kids, why were they there, what did the residents who were at the pool have to say about the teens, what is the officers performance history and why is there no mention of parents of the teens? Lot’s of questions and certainly not enough answers to destroy a man’s career.”
Olly, I nominate you to head up an Investigative Task Force consisting of yourself, Paul, Karen, bam bam, and anyone else whose criminal investigation expertise you value (Nick Spinelli, perhaps?) to go down to McKinney and get to the bottom of this mess once and for all.
Those Keystone Kops in McKinney have obviously screwed the pooch on this, and only people of your investigative expertise, drive, and commitment to truth, justice, and the American Way are going to be able to rectify this travesty of justice with a real investigation, interviewing at least a hundred people to determine if that really was Eric Casebolt doing those things in the video.
Will you do it?
Ken Rogers – the Keystone Kops would have done a better job of investigating this than Conley did.
Paul C. Schulte
1, June 20, 2015 at 7:37 pm
“Ken Rogers – it takes at least 3 years to learn your job. Would you want a teacher with 90 days in the classroom responsible for expelling your child?”
If the teacher had a master’s degree in her subject and 27 years of experience, as does Chief Conley, why yes, I think I could live with his or her having that responsibility.
I take it that in your peculiar world-view, the length of someone’s time in a particular geographical work location trumps education and work experience.
Is that right, Teacher?
Ken Rogers – Conley was Chief. That would be like going from teacher to principal. Way different job. He is administration now. Now, if you had said head instructor I would have bought it.
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
1, June 20, 2015 at 6:24 pm
“@KarenS
“Ken was dissembling [sic] about me, not you. Gee, when the comment about ‘racial prejudices’ thru affirmative action comes up, and I mention the story with the rowdy black kids and the white cop, in connection with race baiting and scab picking, some people think that was a bad comment. I don’t think so. The whole McKinny [sic] thing would not have been much of a national story if the rowdy kids had been white. So, yeah, color was kind of relevant.”
Your ethnically prejudicial surmise is rather compromised, don’t you think, by the fact that some of the kids at the pool party were “white,” including one of the kids Casebolt pulled his gun on, as well as the “rowdy” kid who captured the incident on video.
“I am not sure if the rowdy black kids would have even been rowdy black kids if it wasn’t for the constant race-baiting about police picking on blacks.”
“I didn’t see any rowdy “black” or “white” kids in the video. Where were they? The only ones I saw and/or heard were either sitting on the ground quietly, talking quietly with friends, or picking up and returning Casebolt’s flashlight, which he lost while executing his Rambo-esque tuck-and-roll after tripping over his own feet in his fevered pursuit of kids who were dispersing.
Criminy, the cops are rude, overly-aggressive, and mean to white people, too. And us white folks even get stopped for “Driving After Midnight”, too. For nothing at all except a vague suspicion that since we are out sooo late we might be up to something, or drunk.”
So, your complaint here is that “white” victims of police harassment and/or brutality don’t enjoy the same public recognition and sympathy as “black” victims?? Is this just one more example of the infamous “black privilege”? 🙂
Why don’t you simply decry police misconduct regardless of the ethnicity of the victims? Is it because you can’t bring yourself to feel the same sympathy for “black” as for “white” victims? Boy, that would sure be unusual here in post-racial America. 🙂
“If all we ever saw was videos about cops hassling white folks, we might get a chip on our shoulders, too.”
No, we wouldn’t, not if we are properly obedient mundanes who recognize our place in the American Authoritarian Order, where the police may not only harass and brutalize you with “qualified immunity,” but can actually take your cash, your car, or your house, if those possessions are merely suspected, but not necessarily convicted, of a crime.
Paul,
Karen has it right that the investigation must run its course to get to all the facts. Common sense says there is more to this story than has been presented. Just basing opinions off a video is foolish. Who were these kids, why were they there, what did the residents who were at the pool have to say about the teens, what is the officers performance history and why is there no mention of parents of the teens? Lot’s of questions and certainly not enough answers to destroy a man’s career.
Paul C. Schulte
1, June 20, 2015 at 6:55 pm
“Chief Conley had only been on the job for 90 days.”
And that, in the context of his having a master’s degree in criminal justice and his having been in law enforcement for 27 years, or in any other context, for that matter, means exactly what?
That you have a master’s in maundering?
Please educate and amuse us further with your aimless and vacuous points.
Ken Rogers – it takes at least 3 years to learn your job. Would you want a teacher with 90 days in the classroom responsible for expelling your child?
Karen S
1, June 20, 2015 at 3:49 pm
“On the relevant pool party thread,…” (You may want to say something to Squeeky about her going off-topic so frequently.
“I repeatedly said we should wait for an investigation”, and I asked you and others who were calling for “an investigation,” other than the definitive evidence provided by the Banson video, what information such a supplemental investigation could possibly
“On the other hand she was acting like a child and refusing to move so he heaved her like a sack of potatoes and put his knee on her back.”
If you ever get around to actually watching the video, as opposed to parroting what you’ve read here or elsewhere on the Internet, you’ll see that Casebolt hurried after her on the sidewalk as she appeared to be moving away and dragged her back to his little detention area on the grass, where you’ll see he put both of his knees in her back.
“It looked too rough for a kid who wasn’t threatening. I said he seemed emotional.”
Really? Do you think?
“It came out he’d responded to one suicide where a guy had blown his head off and a 2nd call were [sic] a young girl was threatening to throw herself off her parents’ roof to kill herself. This was his 3rd call.”
I’m sure Chief Conley was aware of Casebolt’s calls that day, but decided that his other calls and even the Twinkie/Doughnut defense simply didn’t exonerate Casebolt.
“The man reaching into his waistband MAY have caused the cop to draw his firearm, but I wasn’t sure. It needed to be investigated.”
What “man reaching into his waistband”? Again, watching the video would be a big help to you in sorting out fantasy from reality. And again, what investigatory tool, other than the video, could establish whether the teenager “reached into his waistband”?
“My thought was that the 2 suicide calls may have caused the cop to lose it. It needed to be investigated.” You seem to attribute virtually magical properties to this “investigation” into Casebolt’s misconduct that day as documented for all the world to see, but you still haven’t indicated what the all-important “investigation” of which you so frequently speak would consist, and could possibly reveal.
“Considering the day this cop had and that no one was hurt, I thought it was premature for him to be forced to retire by the mob who wouldn’t at least wait for all the facts first.”
If dealing with a suicide, a threatened suicide, and a gaggle of swimming suit-clad teenagers in one day could cause him to go over the edge as he did, he was pretty obviously in the wrong line of work to begin with, and I doubt that the kids Casebolt verbally and physically assaaulted would agree that “no one was hurt.” As you may recall, Chief Conley said in his announcement that they were inquiring into the possibility of “criminal charges” against Casebolt.
Why you would characterize as a “mob” Chief Conley, his Internal Affairs officers, and others in the McKinney Police Department who may have been involved in making the determination that Casebolt’s “actions, as seen on the video, were indefensible”?
With all due respect, I don’t know whether you’ve been engaging here and elsewhere in special pleading because of some generalized sympathy for authoritarian LEOs, or if you still haven’t watched the video, or both, but if you care anything about it, you really should attend to your credibility.
I suggest that you not embarrass yourself further until you’ve actually watched the video, in its entirety, that Chief Conley watched.
@KarenS
Ken was dissembling about me, not you. Gee, when the comment about “racial prejudices” thru affirmative action comes up, and I mention the story with the rowdy black kids and the white cop, in connection with race baiting and scab picking, some people think that was a bad comment. I don’t think so. The whole McKinny thing would not have been much of a national story if the rowdy kids had been white. So, yeah, color was kind of relevant.
I am not sure if the rowdy black kids would have even been rowdy black kids if it wasn’t for the constant race-baiting about police picking on blacks. Criminy, the cops are rude, overly-aggressive, and mean to white people, too. And us white folks even get stopped for “Driving After Midnight”, too. For nothing at all except a vague suspicion that since we are out sooo late we might be up to something, or drunk.
If all we ever saw was videos about cops hassling white folks, we might get a chip on our shoulders, too.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Ken Rogers – when an investigation is done in one day, the word ‘railroad’ is apt. There is no way you investigate all the witnesses, including the officers who were there, and make a decision in one day. Too many people. It is like deciding the Kennedy Assassination in one day. Hell, there are still 50,000 pages of stuff the FBI has we still have not seen. Not sure I will live long enough to see them. 🙁
Teaching civics stopped when the teacher’s union took over public education. The Education Industry is keeping our children “barefoot and pregnant” regarding understanding our government.
DBQ, Karen and Paul,
If a CFP seminar could be put together in a way that also provides necessary civics education then that is something I would support. I realize Paul that your comment had as much truth as sarcasm but we really need to find a way to fit this curriculum in. Perhaps treat it like driver’s ed where the student has to privately attend training outside of school, but in this case it is necessary for high school graduation.
Olly – Arizona is requiring you pass a civic exam, but not economics. When I first started teaching you took 1/2 semester of civic and 1/2 semester of free enterprise. Now they are compressed and added to English or Math.