SmarterthanYou
rebel
RIP maywood CA
read rest at link http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2010/06/maywood-rip-when-police-kill-city.html
Brent Talmo once lost a job he really enjoyed, but he was eventually able to find a position in the same field, with better pay and greater responsibilities.
Sure, he had been a troubled employee, prone to "bizarre behavior" and casual abuse of those described as his customers, but he was fortunate enough to find a new employer willing to overlook his mistakes.
Now that employer, the Maywood, California Police Department, is being liquidated. In fact, the entire municipal government of Maywood, a Los Angeles suburb of roughly 40,000 people, is being dissolved on account of bankruptcy. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will provide law enforcement coverage to Maywood, and a rump city council will coordinate delivery of services provided by neighboring Bell.
In Maywood, as case elsewhere, the economic crash has choked off the tax revenue on which the municipal government subsists. The town is currently facing a $450,000 deficit. But what finally broke the city, reports the Los Angeles Times, was the decision by the California Joint Powers Insurance Authority to terminate "general liability and workers' compensation coverage because the city posed too high a risk."
More specifically, the city was un-insurable because of "a large number of claims filed against the police." This is because the department (which also afflicted the neighboring city of Cudhay) had become the police equivalent of The Island of Misfit Toys -- a sanctuary city for criminals in state-issued costumes.
Ironically, Officer Talmo -- whose career usefully illustrates how difficult it is to be rid of an abusive cop -- was actually one of the less egregious examples among those given refuge by the Maywood PD.
As an LA County Sheriff's Deputy assigned to the jail, Talmo was a bully given to amusing himself at the expense of others -- and abusing fellow employees who rebuked his misbehavior.
An April 1, 2007 Times report summarizes:
"Talmo poured dirt into the gas tank of a county vehicle; placed a dead gopher in a prisoner's pocket as an apparent prank, then lied about it and tried to get another deputy to lie on his behalf; tipped over the bed of a sleeping prisoner, causing him to fall face first onto the floor and bloodying his nose; and telephoned a fellow jail guard and referred to him as a snitch and used a racial slur." (To be specific, Talmo called his associate a "f*****g n****r.") "When Talmo was fired, then-Sheriff Sherman Block publicly singled him out as `the primary culprit' in a campaign of harassment aimed at prisoners," concludes the Times.
Talmo was fired by the Sheriff's Office in 1986. He appealed to the Civil Service Commission, and three years later a hearing officer recommended that Talmo be re-instated, with his punishment reduced to a 90-day suspension. The full commission accepted the hearing officer's factual findings, but upheld Talmo's termination. In 1991, after a five-year-legal battle, a three-judge panel from the LA Superior Court upheld the decision.
One would expect that decision to make it impossible for Talmo to find employment as a police officer. One would be wrong: Talmo immediately found a job -- complete with badge, gun, and costume -- with the Los Angeles Housing Authority Police.
In fact, Talmo and his partner received a commendation in 1992 for "bravery and heroism above and beyond the normal demands of duty." While the cops were dining at a Denny's restaurant, a car smashed through one of the walls. Several customers were trapped under the debris. Talmo and his partner pulled the victims from the rubble and attended to their wounds.
Their actions were commendable, of course -- but it's not as if they had risked life and limb by rescuing a child from a burning high-rise or used their bodies to shield terrified pedestrians from gunfire. Any reasonably able-bodied person is expected to render aid to the wounded in situations like this. Actions of that sort are best described as basic courtesy.
Yet according to their superiors, the actions of Talmo and his partner displayed courage "above and beyond the normal demands of duty." Apparently, the "normal demands of duty" would have been satisfied had the officers simply finished their meal and left it to others to care for the victims.
It's likely that Talmo's commendation -- an award every bit as legitimate as the prizes handed out in the Dodo's Caucus Race from Alice in Wonderland -- helped him secure a position with the Maywood PD in 1998. Of course, he would have been welcome there even if he had left his last job by fleeing the jurisdiction to avoid criminal prosecution.
Not surprisingly, Talmo found himself named as a defendant in one of the plentiful civil rights lawsuits filed against the Maywood police and city government.
"The Maywood Police Department has the reputation for being an `agency of last resort' for those who seek employment as a peace officer," explained a March 2009 report compiled by the California Attorney General's Office. "Review of the Maywood Police Department's hiring practices over the past ten years validates this perception."
The April 2007 investigative report by the Los Angeles Times found that at least one-third of Maywood's officers "had either left other police jobs under a cloud or had brushes with the law while working for Maywood." The department was a full-spectrum kakistocracy: In February 2008, the city council selected as Police Chief an individual named Al Hutchings, who had been convicted of theft and forced to resign from the LAPD. (The man Hutchings replaced had been convicted of domestic abuse while serving as Police Chief.)
As the gathered scum of California's law enforcement culture, the Maywood Police Department met Augustine's precise definition of a government entity: It was a criminal band that achieved legitimacy not by renouncing aggression, but rather by attaining impunity. The department suppurated corruption like a freshly ruptured pustule.
When abuses or criminal conduct could no longer be concealed or explained away, the officer would be permitted to resign instead of being fired. This enhanced the officer's "chances of securing employment as a peace officer elsewhere," noted the report. And he could be quickly replaced by another "troubled" police officer eager to put his past behind him by enlisting in Maywood's merry band of armed plunderers.
Beginning in 1999 -- shortly after Talmo joined the force -- and ending in 2007, the Maywood police carried out a vehicle towing and impoundment racket that soaked up huge amounts of money for the city's parasite class. Supposedly begun for the purpose of removing unlicensed drivers from the streets, this was actually a criminal enterprise involving bribes, kickbacks, and other corrupt emoluments.
The AG report found "a glaring lack of documentation as to [the] rationale for impounding the vehicles that they seized"; it also concluded that the Maywood Police "routinely towed and impounded vehicles in situations that were not warranted" under existing laws and precedents.
A Maywood PD defector told the AG's investigators that it was well-established practice to conduct traffic stops without reasonable suspicion in order to satisfy the demands of police officials who were "pushing tows"; officers were expected to "get at least two tows per shift." Checkpoints were set up and used to confiscate vehicles or, when possible, to shake down motorists for what amounted to protection money.
read rest at link http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2010/06/maywood-rip-when-police-kill-city.html