Law Enforcement Involvement

[Deleted]

There's a lot on the web about the James Ochoa case in OC and prosecutor misconduct. Part of the case involved an OC prosecutor trying to influence a Sheriff's lab technician to change her determination on the DNA. She claimed that it's not unusual for them to ask techs to change their determination. Pretty interesting that DNA determinations can be changed if they don't agree with a prosecutor and are the opinion of the tech instead of written in stone.

Despite the lab tech showing a non match of the DNA to Ochoa in the case, prosecutors went ahead with the charges anyway and a judge threatened him he would get 25 years to life if found guilty (yet armed rapists often get lighter sentences), so he did. He was sent to prison where he was stabbed, before they just happened to get a DNA cold hit on the real perpetrator. Imagine what he would have dealt with in prison if he had to be imprisoned longer. This all happened during the timeframe of the current allegations against the Sheriff's and D.A.'s office.

"According to news reports, prosecutors attempted to exert pressure on a crime lab analyst who conducted the tests that exonerated Ochoa. The Orange County Weekly has reported that a deputy district attorney contacted the lab and asked an analyst to change her report – to indicate that Ochoa could have been the perpetrator – before sharing it with Ochoa’s defense attorneys. The lab analyst refused to change the report.

The Guilty Plea:

Ochoa said that he was home all night on the night of the crime. At least five family members confirmed his story. Attorney Scott Borthwick represented Ochoa pro bono. A judge threatened Ochoa with a sentence of 25 years to life in prison if a jury found him guilty, and against his attorney’s advice, Ochoa accepted a plea bargain in December 2005 that led to a sentence of two years in prison.

Post-Conviction:

In October 2006, a man named Jaymes T. McCollum entered the Los Angeles County Jail on unrelated carjacking charges. When McCollum’s DNA was entered into CODIS, Buena Park police officer Pete Montez saw that McCollum matched the unknown male profile from Ochoa’s case. When Montez confronted him with this information, McCollum confessed to the May 2005 carjacking. The officer informed the Orange County district attorney, who filed a People’s Petition for Immediate Habeas Corpus Relief on October 18, 2006.

The next day, the same judge who tried Ochoa vacated the conviction. On October 20, 2006, at 6:30AM, correctional officials told Ochoa that he was leaving. Ochoa did not know about the CODIS hit or that his sentence had been vacated. He was not represented by an attorney at the time. He got a ride back to Orange County in a car from the district attorney’s office after officials bought him lunch and a set of clothing, sixteen months after he had been arrested for a crime he did not commit.

 - See more at: www.innocenceproject.org/cases-false-imprisonment/james-ochoa#sthash.272N0Uet.dpuf

[Drifter]

Sandia wrote ...

I do feel it is possible some corruption might have gone on ...

Thank you for at least acknowledging the possibility, however small and unrelated to the case ...

...protect a serial rapist/murderer.Why in the world would you think that anyone would want to do that ...

"rapist/murderer"?

In Sacramento, he was not known to be a murderer.  It's common for people who ridicule "consp-iracy" to conflate arguments to make "consp-iracy" seem illogical.

Depending on who the protector was ...
... maybe because the protector thought the guy had suffered enough and didn't deserve any further suffering ... maybe because the guy had political connections ... any number of reasons, if one keeps an open mind.

That multiple agencies would conspire to protect the EAR/ONS ...

I don't know of any poster here that claims that it's multiple agencies or even multiple persons. That interpretation belongs to you, to lepke, and to others who reject "consp-iracy" with just that single word but no thoughtful analysis of its application to the case.

But again, thank you for your opinion.

Drifter

[albion]

This is from a former OC deputy district prosecutor. Nick Novick. It is from an article discussing a fictional book he had written. He seems to imply that it describes his time at the OCDA's office. The next quote is his assessment of Sheriff Brad Gates.

I don't believe the corruption was only in regards to convicting the guilty, but also in letting off the rich and powerful. If you don't believe me, are you also not going to believe some one who served in the DA's office? Wasn't Lyman Smith a deputy DA at one time?
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
But as fictional as his book may be, he doesn't want it seen as frivolous.

He wants to make statements about the criminal justice system, he says, venturing that "99% of the people in the country" know little about how it operates.

His main thrust is that justice should be dealt equally, regardless of social or economic status. There's plenty of dialogue in the book to suggest he thinks that doesn't always happen.

So I ask him: Even if conceding that no judicial system run by humans can be perfect, would people be troubled or assured by how things work?

"I think they'd be troubled," Novick says.

For instance, he cited a time when another prosecutor in the office asked him to meet with a friend who faced possible charges in a case Novick was handling. Novick said other potential defendants didn't have that option, and he wouldn't grant it to a colleague's acquaintance, either.

"The first couple of months [on the job] when I was running up against this sort of thing," he says, "I was resolved not to let it affect my judgment, and I told myself that I was going to do battle with people who want me to do things I think are wrong."

I don't know if that's true or merely grist for his autobiography, but it's good storytelling.

And that's what "A Sense of Justice" is, he says. Simple storytelling.

So when he writes about an alcoholic judge and the deputy D.A. who was his drinking buddy and locked his office door in the afternoons to sleep it off ... that's not true, is it?

And it's complete fiction, right, when the accused police chief says to his wife: "How many lawyers, doctors or corporate executives have you ever seen being charged with this crime when it happens within the family? Do you think this is a crime committed only by the lower and middle classes? Do you know why the high and mighty aren't charged?"

To his incredulous wife, the fictional police chief adds: "Power, authority, money, reputation."

Compelling storytelling. Ripped from today's headlines, if not Novick's files.

Fiction, Novick had said loud and clear. His book is fiction.


"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

The Times' article (March 16) spoke of the jury verdict against Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates in the Guillory case. The jury felt that Gates had abused his powers. An accompanying article spoke of the views of some Orange County Republican politicians regarding that verdict.

In that accompanying article, state Sen. Marian Bergeson stated that Gates was " . . . not going to be hurt in the long run. . . . I think he's pretty well entrenched." Mission Viejo City Councilman (Robert A.) Curtis doubts that Gates need worry much about the verdict and County Supervisor (Thomas F.) Riley spoke only of the money involved.

As a longtime registered Republican, I ask those politicians when they are going to address themselves to their responsibilities as leading residents (not Republicans) of Orange County to see that the people get a sheriff-coroner who doesn't abuse his powers? These aren't slip-and-fall lawsuits out of some supermarket! How many abuse-of-power lawsuits does it take? Without their (and other civic leaders') support or neutrality, Gates wouldn't make it in any election.

The mind-set of "my party right or wrong" has no place in civic leadership. The county paid off $357,000 in the first suit (the Wright case) because it didn't want the facts of that suit to be revealed in the newspapers and it feared a far greater judgment. The Guillory suit with attorney fees will probably equal that. What makes politicians so blase about a sheriff-coroner who abuses his powers and then gets the taxpayers to bail him out? Twice! And one to go!

I strongly suggest that they inquire about the evidence of the case pending against Gates and that they then stand up to be counted.

NICK NOVICK

Irvine

[Deleted]

Jul 28, 2015 5:52:30 GMT Agent99 aka Sandia said:

Jul 28, 2015 2:27:18 GMT Drifter said:

To lepke, Sandia, and others ...

The link below describes a fact, not a conspira-cy theory. It is relevant to the Original Night Stalker case. And ... it's a fact that lepke and Sandia conveniently ignore.  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Carona

Here are the salient points ...


If we were LE, ignoring this fact would reek of investigative malpractice.

Yet investigative malpractice is precisely what some posters would prefer.

Drifter 

Drifter, All of the above that you, PC have posted from Albion and the links etc. is about police corruption in trying to CONVICT people NOT get the bad guys off.  I kind of understand when police are seeing the carnage of the killer's handiwork, this Dekraai who killed his wife and 8 others in a Seal Beach beauty salon would want to be sure a person they know did it, not escape justice.  What must it be like to go in and see all those people that were killed and the one that survived and was suffering.  How is it to deal with the suffering children and other family members left behind.  The justice system seems to be skewed in favor of the criminal's rights.  They used police informants to convict!

Now having said that, I do not condone that at all to say the least.  I can put myself in the position of the police and the prosecutor and understand the temptation to be sure the killer is convicted and does not walk but I don't believe I would ever succumb to such a temptation.  There have been innocent people convicted because police have hidden exculpatory evidence.  I believe that jail house snitches should not be used unless they are willing to wear a wire or an undercover camera and catch a confession that way but not take their word for anything.

This "criminal" Corona should have the book thrown at him, severely punished as an example, and kicked out of law enforcement, publically shamed.  We should come down hard on corruption in the legal system.   But Corona's crimes were for personal financial gain, and to hide his sexual exploits. 

This has nothing to do with a con.spiracy to protect the EAR/ONS.  This has nothing to do with the EAR/ONS at all.  All you have pointed out is how LE wants to convict the criminals.

Having said that, I do feel it is possible some corruption might have gone on and I won't say why because I could be so far off base but I do have some suspicions in one jurisdiction but again NOT to protect a serial rapist/murderer.  Why in the world would you think that anyone would want to do that other than perhaps his own mother and father and even that is dubious.  No, I'm thinking something might have been done to not look into one case if it involved perhaps drug dealings and some dirty cops don't want their activities uncovered.  This is a suspicion and I have with no proof. 

That multiple agencies would conspire to protect the EAR/ONS is so far fetched.  Many police lost their marriages over this, some of them are so upset they couldn't catch him they refuse to talk about it. 

Enough already, you made your point, not a good one, but you have devoted this board to it.  It is very much a downer.  Why are people that agree with you even "wasting" their time on a case that you don't think will ever be solved.

I think it is going to be solved.  I'm doing my bit to work on it.  So are other posters that have poi's they are chasing down.  Some have hired private investigators.  Some other retired LE are working on it as if they were full time detectives but the difference is they are not being paid.

It's time to stop kicking them in the teeth.

If you read through the Slate article, it points out that murderers are allegedly not investigated in order to protect snitches LE and the DA's use and to hide the details of what they are doing. That is protecting criminals.

[Agent99 aka Sandia]

Jul 28, 2015 6:11:13 GMT @privatecitizen said:

Jul 28, 2015 5:52:30 GMT Agent99 aka Sandia said:

Drifter, All of the above that you, PC have posted from Albion and the links etc. is about police corruption in trying to CONVICT people NOT get the bad guys off.  I kind of understand when police are seeing the carnage of the killer's handiwork, this Dekraai who killed his wife and 8 others in a Seal Beach beauty salon would want to be sure a person they know did it, not escape justice.  What must it be like to go in and see all those people that were killed and the one that survived and was suffering.  How is it to deal with the suffering children and other family members left behind.  The justice system seems to be skewed in favor of the criminal's rights.  They used police informants to convict!

Now having said that, I do not condone that at all to say the least.  I can put myself in the position of the police and the prosecutor and understand the temptation to be sure the killer is convicted and does not walk but I don't believe I would ever succumb to such a temptation.  There have been innocent people convicted because police have hidden exculpatory evidence.  I believe that jail house snitches should not be used unless they are willing to wear a wire or an undercover camera and catch a confession that way but not take their word for anything.

This "criminal" Corona should have the book thrown at him, severely punished as an example, and kicked out of law enforcement, publically shamed.  We should come down hard on corruption in the legal system.   But Corona's crimes were for personal financial gain, and to hide his sexual exploits. 

This has nothing to do with a con.spiracy to protect the EAR/ONS.  This has nothing to do with the EAR/ONS at all.  All you have pointed out is how LE wants to convict the criminals.

Having said that, I do feel it is possible some corruption might have gone on and I won't say why because I could be so far off base but I do have some suspicions in one jurisdiction but again NOT to protect a serial rapist/murderer.  Why in the world would you think that anyone would want to do that other than perhaps his own mother and father and even that is dubious.  No, I'm thinking something might have been done to not look into one case if it involved perhaps drug dealings and some dirty cops don't want their activities uncovered.  This is a suspicion and I have with no proof. 

That multiple agencies would conspire to protect the EAR/ONS is so far fetched.  Many police lost their marriages over this, some of them are so upset they couldn't catch him they refuse to talk about it. 

Enough already, you made your point, not a good one, but you have devoted this board to it.  It is very much a downer.  Why are people that agree with you even "wasting" their time on a case that you don't think will ever be solved.

I think it is going to be solved.  I'm doing my bit to work on it.  So are other posters that have poi's they are chasing down.  Some have hired private investigators.  Some other retired LE are working on it as if they were full time detectives but the difference is they are not being paid.

It's time to stop kicking them in the teeth.

If you read through the Slate article, it points out that murderers are allegedly not charged in order to protect snitches LE and the DA's use and to hide the details of what they are doing. That is protecting criminals.

I did read about that one case. 

[Deleted]

This is about a case involving Haidl's son. Haidl was appointed as an assistant sheriff by Carona and eventually snitched on him to the feds. It goes into some of the horrendous things Haidl paid the defense team to do to intimidate the victim and her family, and touches on things he and Carona allegedly did to try to influence the prosecution of the case. These are just excerpts, but the full article is at the link.

"Jane Doe was sitting in a Southern California community-college classroom when her criminal-justice professor ignited a debate about the infamous 2002 Haidl gang rape that won international attention. Three young men (then ages 17 and 18) got a then-16-year-old girl intoxicated on booze and marijuana to the point of unconsciousness, stripped her, and then videotaped their sexual assault at a Pacific Ocean-view, Corona del Mar home. With misogynistic rap as a soundtrack, they threw her limp body on a pool table and, in a despicable coup de grâce, repeatedly shoved a Snapple bottle, apple-juice can, lit cigarette and a pool stick into her vagina and anus.

We'd never know about the sensational crime except that Greg Haidl, the filmmaker/participant and the son of an ultra-wealthy assistant sheriff, clumsily lost his homemade porno after proudly showing it to friends. Eventually, the 21-minute film made its way to police, who initially believed they'd discovered a bizarre case of necrophilia. The arrests of Haidl, Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann began an intense, eight-year court battle that ended with convictions and six-year prison sentences—and created a political earthquake from which Orange County is still recovering...."

""I was unconscious, and there's a video to prove it," she tells me, unable to mask her incredulity.

She is the Jane Doe in the Haidl case. The horrific crime plus the savage, multimillion-dollar defense smear and intimidation campaign coupled with public scorn and her own missteps came close to ruining her permanently. It has taken a while to recover from all the abuse, but there's good news.""

"Everybody expected that Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl—a chain smoker with a cocktail near-permanently attached to his hand and a scowl on his emaciated face—would do everything he could to keep his son out of prison following the arrests. But few people could've anticipated the extent to which Haidl's legal defense team—totaling more than a dozen defense lawyers, including a former state Supreme Court justice, a retired FBI agent and, get this, a publicist—would go. Private investigators aggressively tailed and photographed Doe and her parents for years. A poster was circulated in Doe's neighborhood soliciting dirt on her. Her medical records were illegally released to reporters. She was repeatedly called a "slut," and her female friends were privately convinced to alter their stories to match the defense's case. Haidl brought in a veteran Los Angeles porno star to testify that Doe was faking unconsciousness in the video while playing the role of a corpse. Not satisfied, he also paid a New York doctor to claim with all seriousness that Doe didn't need to give oral consent to the gangbang because her rectum had done so when it accepted the insertion of foreign objects. The defense team even got CBS show 48 Hours to broadcast a fact-ignoring feature sympathetic to their clients."

"Observers also expected that Haidl's two best buddies, Sheriff Mike Carona and Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo might try to aid the accused rapists. Haidl had risen from San Bernardino County used-car salesman who'd made a fortune auctioning government vehicles to assistant sheriff with full police powers—without a minute of formal training. It probably helped that Haidl paid monthly cash bribes to Carona and Jaramillo, loaned them his private jet, bought them custom-made suits, as well as secretly funded their takeover of the Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD) in 1999 with hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal, undisclosed campaign contributions. In return, Carona and Jaramillo used back channels to sabotage Doe's case by threatening that Haidl would fund an election challenger to District Attorney Tony Rackauckas if the case weren't dropped or transferred to juvenile court."

"It's true the elder Haidl, Jaramillo and Carona were not present during the gang rape, but their ham-fisted efforts to wreck the prosecution not only backfired, but also undermined their once-impenetrable alliance. The tensions of the case exposed deep personality conflicts, and those rifts ultimately provided details about non-Doe scandals and crimes, information that fueled my newspaper columns and the investigatory files for suspicious IRS and FBI agents."

"The impact of the Carona-Jaramillo-Haidl breakup can't be underestimated. In 2002, for example, CNN's Larry King named Carona "America's Sheriff" following the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 5-year-old Stanton girl. There was political-insider talk of converting the self-styled "Christian conservative" sheriff's overwhelmingly positive public image into a Republican campaign to unseat U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer or serve as Arnold Schwarzenegger's lieutenant governor. President George W. Bush placed him in a top homeland-security advisory post."

"Before the sexual assault, Jaramillo—a onetime Garden Grove cop—made no secret of wanting to be elected sheriff on his way to becoming California's first Latino governor. Haidl, the least personable and, obviously, wealthiest of the trio, was content to bankroll his buddies' rise in power. He just wanted their influence for personal favors—say, if a criminal matter arose or an investment tip was needed."

Your typical rape victim endures enormous pain, but what Doe experienced was unforgivable. In addition to the intimidation campaign and the embarrassing national exposure, she had to sit for hours in the witness chair while Haidl's defense lawyers called her names and played (and replayed) on courtroom monitors a video of her vaginal and anal exam after the crime. Private investigators parked in front of her house and tailed her parents to work. According to law-enforcement sources, Haidl's emissaries offered secret deals to buy her silence.

"There was intimidation," she says. "I think they were hoping I wouldn't testify or that maybe I would settle out of court before it went to trial. No. That's not what I was going to do. I felt like they deserved to pay for what they did, and I felt that prison was the only true way to pay."

"Doe even felt afraid for her life. One night between the first hung-jury trial in 2004 and the second successful one in 2006, a female neighbor who looks like Doe was ambushed and severely beaten in the face and head with a rock. The assault abruptly ended, and the mysterious man fled after the victim yelled, "I'm not [Doe's first name]!"

"My neighbor is sure that I was the intended victim that night," Doe tells me while seated on a sofa inside the residence of DA chief of staff Susan Kang Schroeder, which, ironically, is just 900 feet from the 2002 crime scene at 1 Jade Cove, Haidl's former home. "She thinks that if I had been the one attacked, the guy wouldn't have stopped until I was dead."

Though she escaped the madman, Doe admits she contributed to her post-rape collapse."

"The law in California is unequivocal: A person can't have sexual relations with another person who is incapable of giving consent. That means, for example, that a man is guilty of sexual assault if he takes a woman home from a bar where they'd been drinking heavily, they smooch, he watches her pass out, and then initiates sex acts."

www.ocweekly.com/2012-04-26/news/jane-doe-greg-haidl-gang-rape/2/

[sammyt]

It's truly disgusting to treat a rape victim like that.

Anyone who still believes the sheriffs of the time wouldn't cover up for one of their own needs to get their head out of the sand.

This case also adds some weight to the claims of some investigators that weird, intimidating things started to happen once they closed in on certain suspects.

[Deleted]

Jul 28, 2015 8:16:37 GMT sammyt said:

It's truly disgusting to treat a rape victim like that.

Anyone who still believes the sheriffs of the time wouldn't cover up for one of their own needs to get their head out of the sand.

This case also adds some weight to the claims of some investigators that weird, intimidating things started to happen once they closed in on certain suspects.

It is disgusting and the claims that no one would protect a serial rapist are just silly.

[richporce]

Jul 28, 2015 8:16:37 GMT sammyt said:

This case also adds some weight to the claims of some investigators that weird, intimidating things started to happen once they closed in on certain suspects.

Can you elaborate more on this please? Which suspects, which investigators, and what happened to them?

[lepke]

Jul 28, 2015 4:00:27 GMT Drifter said:

port ...

Mike Carona's career is as follows ...

... joined the OC Marshall's Department in 1976
... became head of the OC Marshall's Service in 1988
... elected OC Sheriff in 1999

During Carona's tenure as OC Sheriff ...

the Orange County Sheriff ’s Department’s cold-case
unit linked six unsolved killings to one person through DNA
evidence.

Here's the bigger picture ...

Orange County has been plagued by corruption in its law enforcement agencies. The Carona corruption case took place before the more recent corruption case that involves the County district attorney's office and the State attorney general.

Some posters here assert that no LE corruption is possible in the Original Night Stalker case. They derisively refer to "corruption" as a "conspira-cy theory", dismissing it without logical analysis. These posters will only support a focus on potentially trivial "facts", provided to them by the same law enforcement establishment that has a history of corruption, as delineated in the Carona case.

This message board does not endorse any particular theory of the Original Night Stalker case. Since this is an unsolved case, we welcome all theories, not just those that happen to coincide with LE's "facts".

And one of those theories is that the EAR/ONS case possibly involved LE corruption. The Carona case, and the more recent OC corruption case, lend heft to that theory. If corruption happens in Orange County in recent years, it can happen in any county at any time, including Sacramento in the 1970s. There are no shortage of corruption cases in the U.S. involving local Sheriff's offices.

Again, that's not to imply that corruption occurred in the EAR/ONS case. It's to suggest the possibility that it occurred.  I will not censor out the corruption theory, as some here demand.  To do so would be myopic and inconsistent with an open message board.

Drifter

It is very rich that you accuse others of demanding censorship of theories, that in reality they just argue well against, when no one can write the word 'consparicy' without deliberately misspelling it, because otherwise it automatically gets changed to 'unusual' - talk about censorship.

If someone is using foul language, being abusive, threatening, or making horrible allegations against another poster, then go ahead, censor away, but banning the use of the word 'consparicy', is the kind of thing that would get lampooned in a film about a nutty dictator.

If you want this board to thrive in future, and keep the more long-standing and knowledgeable posters here, I strongly suggest that you stop censoring the word 'consparicy', before people decide to leave and participate somewhere that reasonable free speech is not interfered with.

It is arrogant to think that you can censor such a word, because you don't like how it is being used. If you don't like how it is being used, then argue against it - banning it isn't the answer. Moderation has to be by common consent, and you are in a small minority who think banning that word is acceptable.

As for possible corruption in the case, I have never posted that it is impossible, as you try to imply, but that there is no evidence for it. Port, Sandia, Guessting and whoever else is on the other side of the argument from you, have simply said the same, from what I can see.

Why are you so desperate to push the point about corruption, when you have nothing to indicate that there must have been? No one that has been arguing with you has tried to prove a negative, and just made the point that you have been unable to prove a positive. What's the problem?

[portofleith]

Orange County had one of the lowest violent crime rates in the state of California through 2012.  I am a bottom line person.  It sounds to me like detectives like Larry Pool and the majority of beat cops were doing their jobs and doing them well.  We cannot hold it against Larry Pool that he succeeded in running O. J. Simpson down during the infamous freeway chase, only to have a jury find Simpson innocent. 

No one on this board has introduced a shred of evidence that EAR was protected by the judicial system and that is why he has not been caught.

[sammyt]

Well by your own logic no one has provided a shred of evidence about ANY theory regarding EAR, so should we stop discussing other possibilities too?

What do we actually know for sure about EAR, and what actual evidence is there to link him to any location, age, occupation or social class?

I'm not asking to be *y, it's just when it comes to actual evidence IMO we don't know anything for sure.

[sammyt]

Jul 28, 2015 9:31:31 GMT richporce said:

Jul 28, 2015 8:16:37 GMT sammyt said:

This case also adds some weight to the claims of some investigators that weird, intimidating things started to happen once they closed in on certain suspects.

Can you elaborate more on this please? Which suspects, which investigators, and what happened to them?

I will ask privatcitizen to PM you as I can't recall who the investigators were.

It's in one of the main EARONS books, but I sometimes lose track of all the tangents in this damn case... 

[applicable]

From Lepke:

"It is very rich that you accuse others of demanding censorship of theories, that in reality they just argue well against, when no one can write the word 'consparicy' without deliberately misspelling it, because otherwise it automatically gets changed to 'unusual' - talk about censorship.[/p]

If someone is using foul language, being abusive, threatening, or making horrible allegations against another poster, then go ahead, censor away, but banning the use of the word 'consparicy', is the kind of thing that would get lampooned in a film about a nutty dictator.

If you want this board to thrive in future, and keep the more long-standing and knowledgeable posters here, I strongly suggest that you stop censoring the word 'consparicy', before people decide to leave and participate somewhere that reasonable free speech is not interfered with.

It is arrogant to think that you can censor such a word, because you don't like how it is being used. If you don't like how it is being used, then argue against it - banning it isn't the answer. Moderation has to be by common consent, and you are in a small minority who think banning that word is acceptable.

." -------------------------------------

+1, banning the word "consparacy" is ridiculously stupid and makes no sense. Mods might as well ban the word "donuts." The Great Dictator image is fitting as even mods and admins must write "cons-piracy" instead of what they wish to say. That is the most ridiculous sense of "open dialogue."

Drifter,
I think you and Truthy and Greg do a very good job generally, with a few decisions I personally disagree with (but I am not a mod, so I accept those and continue to participate non-the-less), but Lepke's point is spot on and it is dumb to ban a word besides a living POI's name, dox, or an identifiable personal threat.

[applicable]

Dear board of concerned citizens and general insomniacs,

Personally, I am not someone who currently sees much reason to believe in consparacy occurring the EARONS case. I don't deny it could have happened, it could have, but it seems less likely to me than just dumb luck on behalf of the criminal(s) and some pretty shoddy work by LE --- from my reading of the case and current understanding.

In any case, if a consparacy occurred, then it just adds a layer to the onion.

We all want to have this case solved.

If you believe there was a cover up, then create demonstrable evidence of WHO was being covered up by whom.

If you can't create a good argument for that, then the whole conspiricy approach seems like "taking a pass" and not going for the golden star.

If you really can show who our man is AND who covered for him, you can win 2 golden stars. And since this board is mainly for speculation,even speculative inquiries are acceptable if facts are shown.

But there is very little point to say it can't be solved because it is being covered up and hidden.

All criminals, career criminals and bad cops included, hide their crimes. I think our mission is to expose them.

This whole "pro-LE", "con-piracy" thing is driving me batshit and I have stopped reading most of the posts. Thus, app out (smashing mic)