Until relatively recently Connecticut had restrictive “Blue Laws” that forbade the sale of alcohol after 8 pm always and not at all on Sunday. I used to joke you had to decide how big your party was going to be before you started it.

So we picked up the nickname “Blue Law State” which is kind of unfair since Lynchburg Tennessee (Jack Daniels) is still dry so don’t go on the distillery tour expecting a drink at the end.

This is not about that and the only surprising thing is I was laboring under the impression that Hartford was the biggest city in the State.

Police Chief Cheated to Get His Job, and Officers Helped, U.S. Says
By Ed Shanahan, The New York Times
Sept. 10, 2020

Bridgeport, Connecticut’s biggest city, has experienced its share of government corruption in the recent past, including a scandal that sent the current mayor to federal prison for seven years before his triumphant return to City Hall.

On Thursday, federal prosecutors added a potential new entry to the city’s dishonor roll, charging that the police chief and another official conspired to rig the hiring process to ensure that the chief got the top police job.

The chief, Armando J. Perez, colluded with Bridgeport’s acting personnel director to obtain confidential test questions in advance, had two officers secretly complete his written test and made sure that the test-scoring criteria was tailored in his favor, according to a criminal complaint.

The chief and the personnel director, David Dunn, “schemed to rig the purportedly impartial and objective search for a permanent police chief to ensure the position was awarded to Perez,” Audrey Strauss, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement announcing the charges against the two men.

“Bridgeport’s citizens and police officers deserve leaders with integrity who are committed to enforcing, not breaking, the law,” Ms. Strauss added.

In a video posted on Twitter several hours after the charges were announced, Mayor Joseph P. Ganim said that Mr. Perez, 64, had resigned and that Assistant Chief Rebeca Garcia would serve as acting chief. The department has 400 officers and a $100 million annual budget, according to the complaint.

“Certainly there is a grappling for some of the answers to what has happened,” said Mr. Ganim, a Democrat, expressing feelings of “disappointment” and “uncertainty” about the accusations against Mr. Dunn and Mr. Perez, a longtime friend.

In a separate statement, six Democratic state lawmakers who represent Bridgeport suggested they believed that the police force needed a thorough housecleaning. They described the allegations as “extremely troubling” and “the latest in a string of incidents that have undermined public confidence in the leadership of our police department.”

The charges announced on Thursday hit especially close to home for Mr. Ganim. His ties to Mr. Perez, a 40-year veteran of the Bridgeport police force, date at least to his first turn as mayor, when Mr. Perez served as his driver.

Mr. Ganim’s initial stint as Bridgeport’s mayor ran from 1991 to 2003, when he resigned after being convicted on multiple corruption counts. After leaving prison, he asked voters to give him a second chance and he was elected mayor again in 2015; he won re-election last year.

One of Mr. Ganim’s early moves upon regaining office was installing Mr. Perez as acting chief of police. For Mr. Perez to hold the position permanently, though, city regulations required that he emerge from a wide-ranging search process as one of three finalists.

The complaint said the maneuvers by Mr. Dunn and Mr. Perez to ensure that Mr. Perez landed on the short list included dropping a requirement that candidates for the job have a bachelor’s degree. Mr. Perez was the lone applicant without one, prosecutors said.

In securing the permanent position, Mr. Perez received a five-year contract that, among other things, included a $300,000 payout for accrued leave, the complaint said. The city made the payment last year, The Connecticut Post reported.

Ms. Strauss, the United States attorney, said Mr. Dunn, 72, and Mr. Perez had compounded their fraud when they “repeatedly lied to federal agents in order to conceal their conduct.”

Both men are charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and making false statements to federal investigators. They face up to 20 years in prison on each of the wire fraud counts if convicted. Each was released on a $150,000 bond after initial court appearances on Thursday.

Gideon/Collins and some bit players (Maine has ‘Ranked Choice’ voting).

BDN (Bangor Daily News), your source for things Maine.

There are supposed to be 5 more but I’ve seen enough.

Well, kind of horrible but composed in 1789 or so and Mozart is not responsible for the Libretto (though he did agree to participate in the project).

The short title, Così Fan Tutte literally means “So do they all”, using the feminine plural to indicate women. It is usually translated into English as “Women are like that”. The words are sung by the three men in act 2, scene 3, just before the finale; this melodic phrase is also quoted in the overture to the opera.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

America faces the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks; Nazis rescue Italy’s Mussolini; JFK confronts critics of his religion; Student leader Steven Biko killed in South Africa; Singer Johnny Cash dies.

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

H. L. Mencken

Continue reading

Trevor takes off.

It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away everything he’s got and everything he’s ever going to have.

Former officers charged in George Floyd killing turn blame on one another
By Holly Bailey, Washington Post
September 10, 2020

The four former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing appear to be turning on one another, with each offering significantly different versions of the infamous arrest that acknowledge Floyd should not have been allowed to die that day but also deflect the blame to others.

The four men have said in court documents that they all thought someone else was in charge of the scene on May 25 — with rookie officers arguing they were deferring to a veteran, and the veteran saying he was simply assisting in an arrest that was in progress. All have said in court documents that the relationship between the veteran officer — Derek Chauvin — and the others is at the heart of the issue, as each officer perceived their role, and who was in charge, quite differently. Chauvin was the officer shown with his knee on Floyd’s neck as he struggled to breathe in videos of the ill-fated arrest.

“There are very likely going to be antagonistic defenses presented at the trial,” Earl Gray, a lawyer for Thomas K. Lane, wrote in a legal motion filed here this week. “It is plausible that all officers have a different version of what happened and officers place blame on one another.”

Gray and lawyers for Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao have been arguing to separate the former officers’ cases for purposes of trial, citing competing stories from their clients about the events that led to the 46-year-old Black man’s death. The officers are scheduled to appear in court Friday as a judge takes up that question; prosecutors have been asking for a joint trial.
…
Floyd died May 25 while handcuffed and restrained facedown on a South Minneapolis street as police investigated a 911 call about a counterfeit $20 bill that had been passed at Cup Foods, a local convenience store. During a struggle with police, Floyd was placed on the ground, where Chauvin pressed his knee into the man’s neck for almost eight minutes as Floyd repeatedly complained of struggling to breathe until he lost consciousness and no longer had a pulse.

Floyd’s death sparked a nationwide movement for social and racial justice, with protests emerging in cities from coast to coast along with a renewed and widespread push for police reform. Some of the protests have pitted social justice activists against those backing law enforcement officers.

While police often stand in solidarity during use-of-force investigations, Floyd’s case could be an unusual departure, with the officers who allegedly played a role in his killing arguing that other officers should be held to account instead.

Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s lawyer, said his client didn’t know the full picture of what was happening when he arrived on the scene at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue and saw Kueng and Lane struggling to get Floyd into a squad car.

Nelson, who has argued that Floyd died of a drug overdose and not from Chauvin’s knee restraint, blamed the rookie officers in a motion filed this week, suggesting they had mishandled the scene and caused Floyd’s death. He said the former officers delayed in requesting an ambulance when they suspected Floyd might be on drugs or was having a medical issue and that they did not do enough to try to calm Floyd down by “sitting him on the sidewalk” or “render aid instead of struggle.”

“If EMS had arrived just three minutes sooner, Mr. Floyd may have survived. If Kueng and Lane had chosen to de-escalate instead of struggle, Mr. Floyd may have survived,” Nelson wrote. “If Kueng and Lane had recognized the apparent signs of an opioid overdose and rendered aid, such as administering naloxone, Mr. Floyd may have survived.”

Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, while Kueng, Lane and Thao have been charged with aiding and abetting murder. All four were fired by the Minneapolis police department and are defendants, along with the city of Minneapolis, in a federal wrongful-death civil suit filed by Floyd’s family. Justice Department officials also are investigating and are said to be nearing a decision on possible federal charges in the case, according to sources familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Chauvin is slated to make his first in-person court appearance at Friday’s hearing. Since his arrest May 29, he has attended all hearings remotely from a state prison where he is being held on a minimum $1 million bail. He is the only officer charged in the case who is still jailed.

Lawyers for Kueng and Lane, rookies who had been on the force for less than a week at the time of Floyd’s death, have argued that their clients were following orders from Chauvin, a 19-year-veteran of the department who had been Kueng’s field training officer and informally advised Lane during his probation period.

Lane, who was holding Floyd’s legs, twice asked Chauvin whether they should reposition Floyd — requests that his lawyer says prove that he tried to intervene with a senior officer but was rebuffed. After Floyd appeared to have stopped moving, Lane told Chauvin he was worried about “excited delirium,” citing a term used by medical examiners to describe the sudden in-custody death of people who might be under the influence of drugs or who are in an agitated state.

“That’s why we got the ambulance coming,” Chauvin told him.

“Okay, I suppose,” Lane replied.

I have to stop right there. “Excited Delirium” is just an excuse Cops use to kill Blacks, not a Psychiatric condition. No actual MD (Psychiatrist, they have a prescription pad) thinks it’s real. “He scared me because he was a Black Dude. You know ‘those people’, give them some drugs and they become unstoppable monsters, running around raping White Women.”

It is inherently racist.

Lawyers for all four former officers have suggested in recent court filings that they plan to argue that Floyd’s death was accelerated by drugs in his system — including what the Hennepin County medical examiner told prosecutors in June was a potentially lethal amount of fentanyl, according to recently disclosed interview notes filed as evidence in the case.

Kueng’s lawyer, Thomas Plunkett, wrote in a court filing this week that his client, who was restraining Floyd’s back, was only on his third shift as a police officer that day and that he had spent approximately 420 of his 730 hours of field training “being taught and evaluated by Chauvin,” whom he was required to call “sir.”

Plunkett suggested he plans to introduce evidence of how Chauvin trained Kueng — including “past opinions and directions” and “past statements he has made about how to handle a subject being detained,” which he wrote would be “derogatory” to Chauvin’s defense.

Chauvin, who has largely been silent most of the summer, is trying to recast his role at scene in recent days, aiming to shift the blame back on Kueng and Lane.

Chauvin and Thao, who were partners that day, have argued through their lawyers that they responded to provide backup to the other officers, who first encountered Floyd as he sat in a parked SUV. Lawyers for Chauvin and Thao have described their clients as supporting officers who were deferring to Kueng and Lane on how to handle Floyd and that seniority and rank didn’t matter.

Lawyers for Thao and Kueng have indicated they will introduce evidence of Chauvin’s history as a Minneapolis police officer. Last month, Thao’s lawyer, Robert Paule, filed a motion demanding the state disclose the “complete Minneapolis Police Department disciplinary files” for Chauvin — records the police department thus far has declined to release in detail, aside from records showing he was the subject of 18 complaints, 16 of which were dismissed.

Thao has sought to have his charges dismissed, shifting blame to Chauvin, Kueng and Lane, who had more direct contact with Floyd. In a May interview with investigators with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the FBI, which was filed as evidence in the criminal case, Thao described his role at the scene as “a human traffic cone.” He said he was focused on controlling a growing number of bystanders and was unaware of what was happening behind him.

Thao told investigators that he and Chauvin had been called as backup to the scene, but they were canceled by dispatch. Thao said he decided that they should continue to Cup Foods anyway because Kueng and Lane were “so new” and the area was known to be hostile to police.

Police body-camera footage shows that Thao advised the other officers to put Floyd on the street after they tried and failed to get him inside a squad car.

“Just lay him on the ground,” Thao tells the other three officers, who comply.

Though Thao looks for a hobble — a leg restraint that would keep Floyd immobile and allow the officers to lift their bodies off his — he and the officers ultimately decide to skip the device and wait for the ambulance, believing the hobble would be more hassle than it was worth. But the ambulance, requested without lights or sirens, was delayed by several minutes.

In his interview with investigators, Thao echoed Chauvin’s argument, that he believed that Kueng and Lane were in charge of the scene because they were the first to arrive.

“This is 320’s call,” Thao said, referring to the squad car number Kueng and Lane were driving that day.

Prosecutors have filed an objection to Thao’s motion to dismiss charges, arguing that all officers have a responsibility to stop another officer from committing a crime. They dispute his claim that he was unaware of what was happening around him, citing body-camera footage that shows him shoving and screaming at bystanders — including an off-duty Minneapolis firefighter — who urged officers to check Floyd for a pulse and that he ignored Floyd’s “desperate cries.”

Well, I guess they had it coming.

We all have it coming kid.

Back to School.

It’s a really stupid idea. Prepare for lots of death.