Any day that begins with a visit from police will probably
turn out badly. Mark Patterson’s day got off to that kind of inauspicious
start, and grew worse in crescendo.
The officers let themselves into Mark’s home in Tampa
without knocking. Displaying the type of restraint that has all but disappeared
in this age of gratuitous SWAT raids, the officers were so stealthy that they
didn’t wake up Mark’s eight-month-old Doberman puppy, Thor. They told the
startled 21-year-old that a woman had made allegations against him, and said he
needed to “come downtown” to “clear things up.”
If he had been an older and wiser man, Mark would have
demanded that the cops come back with a warrant, and told them he wouldn’t say
anything else in the absence of an attorney. Like too many other people,
however, Mark allowed his response to be dictated by an alloy of anxiety and
misplaced confidence in the integrity of police officers. He didn’t know that
police who offer to take someone “downtown” are looking to cage the suspect,
not clear him.
At the station, as detectives began asking questions about a
middle-aged woman Mark had met the previous night, Mark made his second
critical mistake by offering honest answers to people
who are trained to lie. Before the end of the day he was behind bars and
accused of rape as a result of giving a ride to a troubled woman he claims
never to have touched.
No audio record was made of Mark’s interrogation. He never
signed a statement. There was no eyewitness testimony to corroborate the accuser’s
account. As Mark later recalled the interrogation, he admitted to giving the
woman a ride, and that she had been at his home, but denied having sexual
relations with her. She had been crying when Mark offered to give her a lift,
and at the end of the ride she demanded money from him. When he declined, she
got angry and left.
The investigating detective’s report claimed that Mark
admitted to taking the woman to bed, but maintained that the act was
consensual. No physical evidence was ever produced to confirm that a sexual
encounter ever occurred.
The
Cynical Charade: “Just one more thing….”
Protracting the cynical pretense of seeking to exonerate
Mark, the detectives said that he would have to undergo a polygraph
examination. Once again, the purpose of this ritual – the results of which are
not admissible in a Florida court – is to contrive a pretext to charge the
subject or to extract a confession. One of the detectives composed a list of
six questions for the examiner, which included a subject that hadn’t been
raised during the interrogation – namely, the woman’s claim that Mark had
threatened to turn his Doberman loose on her if she didn’t submit to him.
This supposed attack dog was the same torpid puppy that
hadn’t been roused from slumber by the sudden appearance of several uninvited
strangers just a few hours earlier.
When Mark was asked about that accusation, he reacted with
vehement incredulity. The examiner – as he was expected to – interpreted this
response as evidence of “deception.” It was on this basis that Mark was booked
on a charge of “forcible rape.” The only other “evidence” supporting that
charge was the uncorroborated word of the accuser, whose testimony wouldn’t
have withstood a nanosecond’s worth of cross-examination.
According
to the police report, the 46-year-old woman claimed that before being
assaulted she had told Mark about a “sick child at home who needed medicine.”
He allegedly parried that pathetic comment by sneering, “Let him die – he don’t
belong to me.”
Roughly three paragraphs later, the report discloses that
the supposed victim contradicted herself:
“[She] further related that she had three (3) children, whom
she had recently signed papers relinquishing them for adoption and two (2)
others in other states that she had given up.”
The woman supplied the name of a social worker, a Mrs.
Swanson, who confirmed that the alleged victim had scattered five children from
more than one biological father across at least three states. Mrs. Swanson
“further stated that [the accuser] had emotional problems and had been confined
in a mental hospital in North Carolina at one time. She further stated that
[she] had been separated from her husband approx. 2 weeks ago and living with a
man in the Hyde Park area.”
Forcible rape, or assault of any kind, is a terrible crime,
whether the victim is a doe-eyed ingénue or a troubled and dissolute
middle-aged woman. What matters is not the identity of the alleged victim, but
the evidence that an actual crime occurred. In this instance, the only “evidence”
of the supposed crime was the
unsubstantiated, self-contradictory account of a clinically unbalanced and
demonstrably irresponsible woman.
The police should have contacted local charitable
organization to see that the woman received some help, and consigned the
criminal case to the dustbin. Instead, they “cleared the case” by sending Mark to
jail, where he was attacked several times during pre-trial detention and
constantly threatened with rape.
An
Extorted Plea Bargain
A few weeks later, understandably terrified of what could
happen if he spent any more time in jail, Mark accepted a deal: In exchange for
pleading guilty to “assault with intent to commit rape” – a charge,
significantly, that wouldn’t require proving sexual contact – he would receive
a withheld judgment and five years of probation, with the promise of having the
conviction permanently removed from his record.
“My attorney emphasized to me that once the probation was
finished, if I didn’t get in trouble again, the charge would literally
disappear,” Mark recalled to me recently. “It would be as if it had never
happened, as far as my legal record was concerned. I wouldn’t have to mention
it in job applications, or in any other context that might involve a background
check. Where the law is concerned, I would be innocent and free of charges.”
Under Florida law, a withheld judgment means that “the
court declines to convict (adjudicate guilty) the defendant…. If the defendant
successfully completes his probation, he is not a convicted person.” According
to
the Florida Bar Association, a defendant who received “the
benefit of a withhold of conviction could traditionally deny having a
conviction, even when subject to deposition or while testifying in court.”
Circuit Judge Harry Lee
Coe,
who issued the withheld judgment in May 1974, was widely regarded as a stranger
to the concept of leniency. His habit of imposing maximum sentences earned him the not-at-all
friendly nickname “Hangin’ Harry.” He was not the type of magistrate one
would expect to treat an accused rapist with a light touch. Nor would he be
expected to vacate the judgment less than half-way through the appointed term
of probation “in his own best interest.” Yet this is precisely what Judge Coe
did in July 1976, after a private investigator hired by Mark’s father provided
evidence that the supposed victim had recanted her accusation.
In that same year,
Mark faced a second rape accusation that was dismissed
in a bench trial after an eyewitness confirmed that the alleged victim –
who displayed no physical evidence of experiencing such a horrible crime -- was
lying.
“She was a temp
worker in the Hamilton County clerk’s office, and she became aware of the case
in Florida,” Mark says of the accuser. “My family was wealthy, and I think she
believed it might be possible to take advantage of me. She was completely
drunk. I tried to get her to leave, because after the experience down in
Florida I didn’t want any trouble of that kind.”
The woman claimed
that Mark had choked and then sexually assaulted her, and that there were no
witnesses to the supposed assault. In her condition she was oblivious to the
presence of Mark’s roommate, who witnessed the entire incident. Although he had
not been convicted of the alleged offense in Florida, the prosecution “tried to
depict me as a repeat offender,” Mark points out. Acknowledging that the
prosecution didn’t have a case, the judge disposed of the case within a couple
of hours.
Some might believe
that recurring difficulties of this kind indicate that Mark Patterson was an
undisciplined young man who created trouble for himself. There is nothing in his personal history
since 1976 that would validate that characterization.
He continued his studies,
found gainful employment, taught automotive mechanics to inner-city youth as
part of a trade school program in California, and eventually started a very successful
manufacturing company in Boise.
Wanting to be
financially secure before starting a family, Mark deferred marriage until
middle age, eventually wedding a lovely woman and having two disarmingly
beautiful young daughters. He became active in a local church in Boise and
gravitated toward the local Tea Party movement when it sprung up in 2010. Two
years later, he ran for the state legislature as a Tea Party-aligned
independent conservative Republican. He won the race in a bit of an upset without
receiving any financial support from the familiar menagerie of entrenched
special interests.
Enter the Corrupt
Sheriff
During the 2012 race,
Mark was subjected to a thorough background investigation by the Associated
Press. As Mark’s attorney had promised back in 1974, the withheld judgment was
nowhere to be found in the public record. However, it was included in the “raw”
file maintained on him by the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC).
When Mark applied for
a concealed weapons license in 2007, his NCIC file – an austere and
unspectacular document roughly two-and-a-half pages long – came into the
possession of Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney, who has held that office since 2005.
Raney, who has known about
Mark Patterson’s withheld judgment since 2007, approved his CWL application without
complaint. Five years later, on April 27, 2012, Raney readily renewed Mark’s
CWL, because he had no legal authority to do otherwise.
According to Idaho Deputy Attorney
General Paul Panther,
a withheld
judgment “is not a conviction under Idaho law… If a person receives a withheld
judgment for a felony, he may still obtain a license because no Idaho or
federal law disqualifies him from owning a firearm.” This means that Mark
Patterson was legally qualified to have a CWL, given that Idaho has a “shall-issue” concealed
carry law.
Raney had no legal
right to reject Mark’s CWL application or to revoke his concealed carry permit.
Yet on May 22, 2013, Raney sent an
official letter to Mark informing him that “we have initiated administrative
proceedings to revoke this license” because “We received information that you
were charged with the crime of forcible rape on May 15, 1974, in Hillsborough
County, Florida,” and that he had entered “a guilty plea to the crime of
Assault with Intent to Commit Rape…. The court records also show that you
received a withheld judgment in that case.”
The only source from
which Raney could have “received” that information was the same NCIC file the
sheriff had twice consulted before granting Mark’s CWL in 2007 and 2012. In his
letter of notification, Raney claimed that Mark had committed “fraud or
intentional misrepresentation” in his application by stating that he “had never
had an entry of a withheld judgment for a criminal offense which would
disqualify you from obtaining a concealed weapons license.”
As is demonstrated by
Deputy AG Panther’s statement, Raney’s claim was a conscious misrepresentation
of the law: Once his probation ended four decades earlier, Mark was not
required to disclose the withheld judgment to Sheriff Raney or anybody else.
Raney had ratified Mark’s choice by twice approving his CWL applications. His
announcement that he was revoking Mark’s license was not dictated by the law,
or an act intended to serve the public interest. It was a petty, opportunistic
act of retaliation against a legislator who had caught the sheriff and his
allies in a violation of Idaho’s lobbyist disclosure law in their efforts to
defeat a gun rights bill.
During the 2013
legislative session, Patterson had sponsored HB219, which would have made it a
misdemeanor offense for an Idaho peace officer to aid in federal confiscation
efforts. The bill passed the House without difficulty, but died quickly in the
Senate – in large measure because of a frenzied, and patently dishonest,
pressure campaign waged by Raney and his lobbyists, Mike Kane and Vaughn
Killeen.
Gary Raney is on record stating that he would dutifully enforce confiscatory federal firearms laws. In addition to being Sheriff of Ada County and Chairman of the Idaho POST Council, Raney is the president of the Idaho Sheriffs Association (ISA). Kane is the group’s official lobbyist, and Killeen – a former Ada County Sheriff and one of the state’s most influential advocates of civilian disarmament – is the group’s executive director.
Without troubling
themselves to file the proper disclosure forms, Kane and Killeen worked behind
the scenes to defeat HB219, telling state senators of the terror that would
descend on Idaho if the legislature offended the Feds. Among the purportedly
ruinous consequences of the bill would be an end to the orgy of officially
licensed plunder called “civil asset forfeiture,” and federal withdrawal of
funding to combat sex crimes against children and gang violence. Interestingly,
both Idaho’s Fraternal Order of Police and the rank and file of the ISA
supported HB219 despite the putative parade of horrors it would produce.
After the legislative
session ended in May, Mark – in this context, he should be referred to as Rep.
Patterson -- filed a complaint against Kane and Killeen. Following an inquiry
by Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, Kane grudgingly provided an amended
lobbying report on May 15 – but in that document he didn’t mention his work on
HB 219. After Rep. Patterson submitted a second complaint, Kane was compelled
to fill out a second amended report and register as a lobbyist.
Mark wasn’t
finished. On May 21, he filed a complaint with Secretary
of State Ysura
about Raney’s lobbying. He also dispatched a letter to Raney’s office demanding “the accounting
records for the Idaho Sheriffs’ Association” dealing with expenses incurred by
the organization’s lobbying effort, in order to determine if taxpayer funds had
been illegally used to defeat the bill.
Gun-Grabbers
Retaliate
The following day, Raney suddenly announced his “discovery”
that Mark hadn’t disclosed his withheld judgment from 1974.
In his letter, Raney said that the revocation would be
effective on June 6, and that he could request an administrative hearing to
challenge that decision. The hearing was scheduled for August 26, and Mark was
told that he would learn about the ruling within two weeks. Without
explanation, disclosure of the results was postponed until October 29.
Although Raney didn’t provide a reason for the delay, a
reasonable inference can be made that the sheriff and his little clique of
anti-gun zealots were coordinating an effort to remove Rep. Patterson from
office. In August, former U.S. marshal for Idaho Patrick McDonald announced
that he intended to run against Patterson in the Republican primary.
According to press accounts, “McDonald … told former Ada
County Sheriff Vaughn Killeen that he was running” before he filed the
necessary paperwork with the secretary of state. Killeen, recall, had lobbied
against Patterson’s gun rights bill, and was the subject of the state
representative’s investigation into potential misuse of tax funds.
Prior to the hearing, State Representative Judy Boyle, an
ally of Patterson, sent a letter to the Attorney General’s office requesting
clarification about the state CWL law as it pertains to the matter of withheld
judgments. That inquiry resulted in the letter from Deputy AG Panther
confirming that a withheld judgment is not an impediment to receiving a CWL.
Rep. Boyle told me that this issue “was raised by several of
my constituents, who like Mark Patterson had withheld judgments in their past
and wanted to know how this would affect their concealed carry status. Sure,
this is relevant to Mark’s situation, but it wasn’t limited to him, and as a
legislator I am constantly in touch with the Attorney General’s office
regarding all kinds of issues.”
Since 1990, Judy Boyle has been deeply involved in what are
commonly called Second Amendment issues, and she is very familiar with Vaughn
Killeen’s antipathy toward an armed citizenry.
“He’s one of those people in law enforcement who really
think that citizens should be disarmed,” she commented to me. “When he became
Ada County sheriff years ago, one of the first things he did was to stop
issuing CWLs, apart
from the bare minimum required by law. That’s one reason why we changed the
law to make Idaho a `shall-issue’ concealed carry state.”
Another important reform, Rep. Boyle points out, was to
exempt personal information disclosed in a CWL background check from the public
records law. This was done, in large measure, “because the Idaho Statesman got
ahold of a huge amount of information on people with concealed carry permits.
It didn’t publish the information, but it made a point of letting the public
know about it.”
The material in an NCIC background check is protected by
both state and federal law. Yet somebody in the Ada County Sheriff’s Office –
either Raney himself, or one of his underlings – made the information in
Patterson’s NCIC file available to Idaho Statesman writer Dan Popkey.
As noted above, none of the information about Mark’s
withheld judgment from 1974 was available even through the most comprehensive
public records search. The police report was inscribed on fading microfiche and
buried in the dusty depths of a warehouse in Florida. Yes, it could be found –
but only by someone who had been told where to look for it by an official with
access to the legally protected information in Mark’s NCIC file.
On October 24 of
last year, Popkey contacted the Clerk of Florida’s 13th Circuit
Court to request the information about Mark Patterson’s 1974 case. That
material was in his hands no later than October 28 – the day before Mark would
learn the results of the administrative hearing.
Propagating
a smear
This could be described as circumstantial evidence of
coordination between Raney and Popkey – albeit of the exceptionally strong
variety Thoreau compared to finding “a trout in the milk.” Clinching evidence
of coordination is found in the fact that Popkey contacted Mark about the
outcome of the sheriff’s administrative hearing before Mark had heard about the results from his own attorney.
“Popkey sent me an e-mail telling me that he wanted to
discuss my `criminal past,’” Mark recalls. “I got that message from him even
before my attorney gave me the news about the hearing.”
The November 10th piece Popkey published in the
Statesman dutifully recited the accusations against Mark as found in the Tampa
Police Department’s report. The accuser herself was described simply as “a
46-year-old mother of five.” Popkey carefully omitted any mention of the fact
that the woman had surrendered custody of those children, who were scattered
across the southeastern U.S.; that she was separated from her husband and
living with another man; or that she had recently been released from a mental
hospital.
The clear purpose of Popkey’s article was to portray
Patterson as a predator. The Statesman contributor – who, interestingly, began
his career as a “police reporter” (“stenographer” would be a more honest designation)
wasn’t interested in complicating the picture by presenting an accurate
portrait of the accuser. His approach to the story was the journalistic
equivalent of a
corrupt prosecutor committing a Brady violation by withholding exculpatory
evidence from the defense.
While Popkey was eager to wring everything he could out of
Mark Patterson, he was reticent to discuss how he had been made aware of a
matter that was hidden in Mark’s legally protected NCIC file.
“Popkey called me on November 1 and told me that Mark had lied
on his CWL application,” Rep. Judy Boyle told Pro Libertate in a recent
interview. I asked him, `How did you get that? It’s illegally obtained
information.’ He said, `Oh, this showed up in a background check.’ `No, it
didn’t,’ I said, because it’s not subject to disclosure. Then he told me that
`It was a tip.’ I pointed out that he really should publish a story about how
he was given access to legally protected information, but he insisted that `I
don’t reveal my sources.’”
“The way [Popkey] tried to explain it was that somebody –
simply out of a sense of civic duty, I suppose – called Sheriff Raney and told
him that he knew Mark Patterson had lied on his CWL, and directed Raney to this
specific 40-year-old case in Florida,” Boyle continued. “But this anonymous
informant would have to be aware that Patterson had a CWL, a fact that is not
made public, and have access to the NCIC file, which is confidential and
protected by federal law and state law. The only
people who would know these things are Raney and a few of the people in his
office.”
The mythical informant described by Raney and Popkey would
also have to be blessed with uncanny timing: Somehow, Sheriff Raney “learned”
of the withheld judgment on the very day
he could use it to retaliate against a state representative who was promoting a
gun rights bill he hated, and making his life miserable by investigating
potentially criminal misconduct in the sheriff’s efforts to defeat that bill.
When contacted by Pro Libertate about the critical omissions
in his coverage of the Mark Patterson case, Popkey
insisted: “Our extensive reporting speaks for itself.” What Popkey and his
editors chose to suppress says a great deal more than what they decided to
disclose.
For his part, Sheriff Raney responded
to my inquiry by “adamantly” stating that “the actions by the Sheriff’s
Office followed the law, including protecting personal information relevant to
concealed weapons permits. We had a duty and followed it. Any suggestion
otherwise, and any suggestion that our actions were politically motivated, is
blatantly false.”
Raney likewise insists that he was honor-bound to file an
ethics complaint against Rep. Judy Boyle on October 31, claiming that her
request for clarification from the AG’s office about the CWL law constituted a
“crime” of some kind.
Raney told me that “enough evidence of misconduct existed
that we felt obligated to forward that information to the Speaker of the House
and allow their ethics system determine [sic] if any action was warranted.”
“Nothing was ever done about the complaint – it was just
filed against me as an act of retaliation that could be used to attack me in
the press,” Rep. Boyle observed when I asked her about it. “This gave Popkey a
chance to report that I was the subject of an ethics investigation, but nothing
was ever done about Raney’s complaint because it was without merit.”
Character
assassination
Rep. Boyle doesn’t equivocate in describing Raney’s actions
toward Mark Patterson as purely retaliatory. Significantly, that assessment is
shared with one of Mark’s critics in the Idaho Legislature, State Senator Fred
Martin, who helped pressure Mark into resigning.
Last December 17, the Idaho GOP’s District 15th
Committee, acting in closed “executive session,” approved a resolution calling
for Rep. Patterson’s resignation. Six days earlier, the
Statesman quoted Sen. Martin’s description of Patterson as “foul-mouthed,” “arrogant
and very threatening,” a “misogynist” who “shouldn’t be in public office.”
“And that’s not coming from me,” Martin asserted. “That’s
coming from women who have had encounters with him.” Eagerly transcribing and
retailing these calumnies to the public, Dan Popkey did admit that Martin “declined
to name the women” who had supposedly found Mark Patterson to be so
objectionable. The story included the ominous note that “security has been
arranged” for the Committee meeting because of “concerns” expressed by its
members.
On December 11 I contacted Sen. Martin to ask if he was
concerned about the illegal disclosure of Patterson’s background information by
Sheriff Raney. Martin
responded that an investigation had been launched into Raney’s “possible
misconduct.”
“In my heart of hearts,” Martin
told me, “I think that he [Raney] got tired of what Patterson was doing to
him, and did this [released the legally protected information] to get back at
him.”
What Rep. Patterson “was doing” to Raney, recall, was making
entirely legitimate inquiries about the sheriff’s illegal lobbying activities.
Like Rep. Boyle, Sen. Martin – who was decidedly not a friend or ally of Mark
Patterson – was convinced that Raney has used his access to the confidential
NCIC material to punish the representative by revoking his CWL and ruining his
reputation.
Rather than focusing on the offender, the party’s 15th
District Committee directed its ire at the victim, approving the resolution
claiming that Mark Patterson had “brought himself and the party into disrepute”
and demanding his resignation. The Chairwoman of that committee is Sara Jane
McDonald – the wife of former U.S. Marshal Patrick McDonald, Patterson’s
would-be opponent in the Republican primary.
Patterson resigned his seat in early January. House Speaker
Scott Bedke – who had received illegally disclosed information from Patterson’s
NCIC file in an October 31 email from Sheriff Raney – prevailed
on Governor Butch Otter to appoint McDonald to fill the vacancy.
In this
way, a boon companion of gun-grabbing ex-Sheriff Vaughn Killeen was installed
to replace a state legislator who had sponsored a key piece of gun rights
legislation – and had exposed the unethical actions of the rogue sheriff who
had worked to defeat it. (Speaker Bedke did not respond to my request for a
comment about his role in the appointment of McDonald as Patterson’s
replacement.)
Ironically, an attenuated version of HB219 was enacted by
the Idaho legislature during its current session. The Statesman, after
admitting in a November 15 house editorial that Raney’s actions were probably
illegal, lost all interest in the matter after Rep. Patterson was forced to
resign. (A
member of the Statesman’s editorial collective, interestingly, briefly
considered running for Patterson’s seat after his resignation.) Mark, who
can now devote his undivided attention to productive pursuits, has filed a tort
claim against Raney – and is trying to help his family deal with the
irreparable harm that has been done to his name and reputation as a result
of Raney’s vindictive and criminal behavior.
One
ruinous arrest
“People who had treated my wife as a close friend now
ostracize her,” Mark told me.
“Friends who once spent time with our daughters have
been told to avoid them. When we go out to eat as a family, people who used to smile
and wave at us, and talk to us, now make a point of ignoring us. People have
been convinced that I’m a serial rapist – and I have never in my life done such
a horrible thing, nor would I. The withheld judgment was not a conviction,
which means I’ve never been convicted of a crime. I don’t even have a speeding
ticket on my record.”
“I was promised that once my probation was over, this false
charge would go away,” Mark laments. “The problem here is that federal agencies
like the FBI keep all of these accusations and charges that have been dismissed or unproven in a file that never goes away, and that material is
available to dishonest and corrupt officials, who can use it to
blackmail or retaliate against their critics.”
Whatever one thinks of Mark Patterson, his experience compellingly
illustrates that a single contact with the police is quite sufficient to ruin
an innocent person’s life.
My family and I are deeply grateful for the generous help we've received over the last week. As an independent journalist I depend entirely on readers for support -- and I am thankful to all of you who have helped us keep the lights on for another month. God bless!
Dum spiro, pugno!
16 comments:
To much of this goes on in the state of Idaho when reporting a crime becomes a crime when it is against a so called public offical Keep up the good work Mr. Grigg
People like Popkey and his ilk will soon be extinct. The truth, the constitution and our UNALIENABLE rights will prevail.
Can you say BLAH... BLAH....BLAH... BLAH. If you got out of your pajamas and got a job you would not have to panhandle and beg for money from your computer screen addicted groupies.
This probably won't make it to your blog. It looks like you have the option of approving what is said.
I really don't care. That is OK because your junk information would not even make a good dime store fiction book.
If "professional" journalists like Dan Popkey did the job for which they are supposedly being paid, it wouldn't fall to pajama-clad bloggers to clean up their messes, would it?
Here we go again in IDAHO. This has been going on from the beginning. There is no honor, integrity, truth. They are for self and a job for retirement pay so they can then get another government job with another retirement. This is what goes ON AND ON AND ON AND ON.
People like Raney, Killeen, and Popkey are all on a list. When it starts they will be dealt with. The corrupt eventually get what they deserve.
I think the "list" they have to worry about is being kept by the Ultimate Judge, and dealing with them in the sense to which you're alluding is His business, not mine.
Anonymous at 8:09 was smacked down and owned hard by grigg's response. He is also probably the boss Hogg hillbilly sheriff In question or on his staff.
Mr Griggs,
You might find this interesting.
http://www.fatalencounters.org/posts/
http://www.lanejudson.com/OFFICER_INVOLVED_FATALITIES.htm
Have you seen this? It is a list of cops who murdered people in their personal lives. No idea how accurate it is but seems legit at first glance
After reading this story, I have been checking out the Boise local newspaper and TV web sites to see if they corrected the slanted reporting. They have not. This is a classic example of how reporters lie through their omission of the truth. I will look at tomorrow's Sunday on line edition of Boise's local newspaper and see if they remain silent or attack Patterson once again to cover up for their dirty deed.
This is why I and millions like me have stopped buying newspapers. The print media too commonly makes news the dirty way. I take it skilled journalist are a thing of the past, as newspapers won't be soon enough.
WILL GRIGGS.
I hope you talk about this one..
its particurlary repulsive.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/helmet-cam-footage-shows-cops-murder-man-illegally-camping/#OOCmI2EeKjiVHG3V.01
There are hundreds protesting at the police department..
"38 year old James Boyd had been camping in a spot that the state deemed “illegal.” Trigger happy officers were dispatched to the scene and Boyd was murdered by them."
"Can you say BLAH... BLAH....BLAH... BLAH. If you got out of your pajamas and got a job information would not even make a good dime store fiction book."
Oooh! You're so brave exposing Will Grigg!
Which is why you hide behind an "anonymous" post. *roll eyes*
I suppose it's Quislings like you who are behind the recent drive in Congress to "define who or what a journalist" is.
You are beyond pathetic!
To Anonymous at 8:09 I see you are a COWARD. I bet you carry a badge because like any that do they are COWARDS. You would not hold a candle to Mr. Grigg as he is a Man and well you are a little pussy COWARD. I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr.Grigg and some of his beautiful kiddo's and I stand behind him and his enlightening work to EXPOSE CORRUPTION and COWARDS that hide behind Anonymous badges. Come out in the open little pussy Coward or do you have to much to hide? Now knowing what I have just learned about Mr. Grigg my RESPECT for him has grown. He came and I bared my soul to him. I feel selfish knowing what hardships he is going through yet he takes the time to listen to abused people, He gives strength to the weak, hope to the downtrodden. He is a tall strong tree that YOU will Never come close to being. Pathetic Anonymous Coward that is what you are. Thank you Mr. Grigg Keep doing your wonderful work. Keep exposing the Corrupt Cowards that walk among us pretending to be human but in actuality are empty black souls. Representatives of Satan himself.
Just to be clear, Will - you're creating the mess, not cleaning it up. The lies and half-truths you spread on your blogs are not harmless. They sure beat working, though, don't they?
You certainly use a haughty tone for a man who begs for a living. Get a real job - it would certainly help you develop a perspective.
I'm not unemployed; I'm a practitioner of entrepreneurial journalism. I don't enjoy the unearned security (or regular hours) of a Dan Popkey, but I have the independence necessary to tell the truth, as I discover it, without fear or favor.
It is precisely because I tell the truth that I place my name on what I write, unlike those who emit childish nonsense from behind a barricade of cowardly anonymity.
I'm not in the business of peddling half-truths or lies -- but you are correct: What I write here is not harmless to corrupt, self-satisfied people who commit abuses. Thank you for providing that unsolicited, and unintended, endorsement.
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