Unpaid Parking Tickets Linked To Police Officers

Reporting - David Goldstein

LOS ANGELES (CBS) -We uncovered thousands of unpaid parking tickets issued to personal cars of police officers and other law enforcement personnel. (File)Officer William Grundy with the Los Angeles County Police is sworn to uphold the law, but we found that he has hundreds of unpaid parking tickets for personal vehicles registered in his name.Officer Grundy was happy to see me until he found out why we were there.

David Goldstein: "You have more than 250 citations on the two cars you have. Do you know that?"

Officer Grundy: "No, I didn’t know that."

David Goldstein: "You have five pages of citations, all around your house. How don’t you know that?"

Officer Grundy: "I can’t talk about it but it’s nice seeing you."

We have obtained a database listing thousands of unpaid parking tickets issued to people who work in law enforcement and other sensitive positions.

So while the average person, like Travis Franklin, has to pay his tickets, these people haven’t.

Travis Franklin: "That’s just not cool. It’s not right."

David Goldstein: "You have to pay yours?"

Travis Franklin: "Of course."

The same goes for law enforcement — they don’t get a free ride on parking tickets for their personal cars. They have to pay up just like we do.

But we have found thousands in the City of L.A. who haven’t paid and most of them never even received a violation notice in the mail reminding them that the ticket is overdue.

That is because the license plates are registered to people, like police officers and others in sensitive jobs, who are allowed to hide their home addresses under the state’s confidential records program. The license plates look like any others in the state, but if someone has access to a DMV computer, no personal information would show up.

It’s designed to protect police from criminals, but it also creates a loophole by making it difficult for agencies, like the city’s Department of Transportation to track down the registered owners if the tickets are overdue.

"The confidential plates are protected under DMV rules, so we do not receive the actual name of the individual or the address. So we are unable to make the required notification under the vehicle code."

Without that information, they cannot ask the DMV to stop the renewal of the registration or even put a boot on the car.

We have found nearly 16,000 unpaid tickets in the City of L.A., amounting to just under $700,000 when you add up the original violations, but it is more than double with the fines.

There are all kinds of tickets, all over town — parking in handicapped spots, in front of fire hydrants, expired meters, red zones, yellow zones and white zones.

We found LAPD Officers, L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputies and more.

We crunched the numbers and found the most tickets registered to two vehicles in the name of Officer Grundy — 254 unpaid parking tickets.Officer Grundy works for the L.A. County Police; they patrol the parks and other county buildings.

Grundy did not have any explanations.

David Goldstein: "How do you not know it? We got tickets on your car just last week. Do you have disregard for the law?"

Officer Grundy: "No."

David Goldstein: "Are you allowed to park anywhere?"

Officer Grundy: "Not at all."

David Goldstein: "It feels like you do. Let me talk to you."

Officer Grundy: "I can’t man."

Number two on the list is a car registered to Belinda Womack, a parole officer with L.A. County. She has 65 unpaid tickets dating back to 2006 on a car registered in her name, but claims she’s paying them off.

Officer Womack: "I’m taking care of my tickets."

David Goldstein: "You’re taking care of them?

This database is from the city, 57 of 65 were around your house. Are you taking advantage of the system?"

Officer Womack: "Not at all."

David Goldstein: "But you haven’t paid them in four years?"

Officer Womack: "I work late hours and I’m making arrangements."

The City Department of Transportation will not say if she is paying them off, but they do say her number of unpaid tickets has now gone up five in the past month.Also on the list is LAPD Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger.

We found 18 unpaid tickets since 2006 on a car that was registered to him and his son. They have since sold it.The assistant chief says he did not know.

"I believe he was a student at the time and if I’m responsible, if he is responsible, I will absolutely make sure either he or I pays for them," Paysinger said.

Sure enough, days after we talked with the assistant chief, the tickets were paid."Nobody is above the law," said Assemblyman Jeff Miller, who is looking to put a stop to some law enforcement personnel abusing the system.

He introduced a bill that would prevent those in the program with unpaid tickets from re-registering their cars, just like everyone else.

"No government worker should be above the law. Clearly they have found a loophole in the system to avoid paying these fines and tickets and my bill will seek to close that loophole and make sure they pay their fines just like the average hard working citizen does," Miller said.

The bill is making its way through the legislature. Until then, the city has started to go through the database ticket by ticket and send letters to the chiefs of police and other supervisors in the hopes they can get the officers to pay up — just like everyone else.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

     SHE JOINED THE MILITARY WHEN SHE WAS 18.

     WENT TO COLLEGE ON THE G.I. BILL.

     BOUGHT HER FIRST HOME BY TAKING ADVANTAGE OF FHA.

     RECEIVES HER HEALTH CARE THROUGH V.A. AND MEDICARE.

     SHE IS ON DISABILITY AND IS RECEIVING SOCIAL SECURITY.

CHRISTINE IS A CONSERVATIVE “TEA PARTY” SUPPORTER WHO WANTS THE GOVERNMENT OFF HER BACK.

 BILL PAVELIC

New Orleans Shooting Cover-Up: The Worst Type of Police Corruption

Lt. Michael Lohman’s actions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina exposed his subordinates to legal jeopardy far beyond that which may have been warranted.

March 13, 2010 - by Jack Dunphy
 
It has been nearly five years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city of New Orleans. In that time, neighborhoods have been rebuilt, businesses reopened, and, perhaps most importantly, civic spirit reawakened. And, in what some believe was the very hand of Providence at work, even the once lowly Saints won the Super Bowl just in time for Mardi Gras.

But even as things appear to be looking up for New Orleans, there remains in the Crescent City a stubborn stain, one that won’t be as easily painted over or washed away as the high-water marks still visible in some parts of town. Last month, a former New Orleans Police Department lieutenant pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to obstruct justice in the aftermath of a September 4, 2005, police shooting in which two people were killed and four wounded.

The former lieutenant, Michael Lohman, admitted that he orchestrated a cover-up after coming to the scene of what has come to be called the Danziger Bridge incident and concluding that the shooting could not be legally justified. According to the Bill of Information filed in the case, Lohman “tacitly encouraged” officers to provide false and misleading information about the shooting to investigators. He also failed to ensure that a thorough investigation was conducted at the scene of the shooting by failing to see that evidence be collected, witnesses be interviewed, and a diagram of the scene be created, all of which are the most rudimentary of steps in any such investigation. Even worse, Lohman encouraged an investigator to plant a “clean” gun, i.e., one whose chain of possession cannot be traced, beneath the Danziger Bridge in a post facto effort to provide justification for the shooting.

This is the very worst type of police corruption. Lohman was a lieutenant, and as the senior officer at the shooting scene he had a duty, both moral and legal, to provide leadership to subordinates who, in the aftermath of Katrina, were working under conditions no police officer who didn’t experience them can imagine. He failed miserably, and in that failure he exposed those subordinates to legal jeopardy far beyond that which may have been warranted had they all simply told the truth about what had occurred.

Granted, if the conspiracy existed as described in the Bill of Information, all the participants should be held accountable. But there are questions that demand answers: When the first officer opened fire at the Danziger Bridge, what threat, if any, did he perceive that prompted him to shoot? And once the first shots were fired, did the others shoot at perceived threats, or was it a case of “contagious gunfire”? Finally, after the shooting had stopped, at what point and at whose direction was it decided to fabricate the account of the incident?

Had Lohman done his duty and seen to it that a genuine investigation be completed, some or all of the involved officers may nonetheless have found themselves in legal jeopardy, but they would not today be burdened with the presumption that inevitably accompanies a cover-up. By coming to the Danziger Bridge and participating in the whitewash of a “bad” shooting, Lohman denied his officers the opportunity to defend their actions as reasonable under the circumstances. Any such claims made in the future will ring hollow in the light of what Lohman allowed to occur.

There have been many police shootings in which officers have shot people they reasonably though erroneously thought presented a threat. Perhaps the most well known of these is the case of Amadou Diallo, who in 1999 was shot and killed by four NYPD plainclothes officers. The officers were charged with second-degree murder and other charges, but were acquitted after testifying that they believed Diallo, who resembled a man wanted for rape, was pulling a gun when he in fact was pulling out his wallet. Yes, the officers went through the ordeal of a trial, but by being forthright during the investigation and in their testimony at trial, they persuaded the jury that their actions in shooting Diallo were, though tragically mistaken, reasonable. The jury almost certainly would have reached a different conclusion had the officers planted a gun on Diallo or otherwise attempted to fabricate some justification for the shooting.

Here in Los Angeles, a central event in what came to be known as the Rampart scandal was a shooting in which a gang member named Javier Ovando was shot and paralyzed by Officers Rafael Perez and Nino Durden, two of the scandal’s central figures.  After shooting Ovando, Perez and Durden planted a gun on him, then fabricated an account of the shooting which led to Ovando’s imprisonment. The Ovando incident led to changes in the way the LAPD investigates officer-involved shootings, and protocols now in place make it unlikely that officers can collude to cover up an unjustified shooting.

The New Orleans Police Department had similar protocols for officer-involved shootings but, like much of the department’s infrastructure, those protocols were washed away when Katrina brought the levees down. The personnel that ordinarily would have responded to a police shooting simply weren’t available, which obligated Michael Lohman all the more to see to it that those rudimentary investigative steps mentioned above were taken.

And the Danziger Bridge shooting wasn’t the only one in which the official police accounts have been questioned. Reporters from the New Orleans Times Picayune, PBS’s Frontline, and ProPublica have worked together to examine these incidents, the full truth of which in some cases may never be known.

Which makes the Danziger Bridge conspiracy all the more pernicious. By fabricating evidence to cover up a wrongful shooting, the officers at the Danziger Bridge cast a long shadow of doubt on their entire department, the vast majority of whose members performed selflessly and valorously as Katrina struck and in the chaotic days that followed. If officers were anxious and too quick to shoot in some instances, it was not entirely without justification. New Orleans long ago earned the reputation as the country’s murder capital, a dubious title it retains to this day. (See here, for example, at how horrifyingly common murders are in some parts of the city.) And recall too that Officer Kevin Thomas was shot in the head by one of four suspected thieves he stopped in New Orleans’s Algiers neighborhood the day after Katrina struck.

And if we acknowledge that the officers lied about the Danziger Bridge shooting, we must also allow that those who accuse the police of unjustified shootings may also have their motivation to lie. One of the shootings called into question by the Times-Picayune was that of Keenon McCann, who, police alleged, was shot while armed with a handgun while on an overpass near the Superdome on September 1, 2005. No gun was recovered, and police speculated that McCann threw it either into the floodwaters below or onto an adjacent overpass where it was picked up and carried away.

The McCann shooting put me in mind of a 1991 incident here in South Los Angeles. On the day after Thanksgiving, LAPD officers responded to reports of shots fired in the Imperial Courts housing project, known then as now for its gang activity and violent crime. Officers traded gunfire with some gang members, one of whom was Henry Peco, who was armed with an AK-47 rifle. Peco was killed in the gunfight, but in the confusion that followed the shooting someone picked up and escaped with the rifle Peco had been firing. Peco’s family claimed he had been shot while unarmed, and the incident led to days of marches and protests, some of which were joined by Jesse Jackson and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. The protest movement was finally deflated when two men pleaded guilty to attempted murder and to taking and hiding Peco’s rifle.

As happened in the Peco shooting, it is entirely plausible that Keenon McCann was armed with a gun, and that the gun disappeared before the police could secure it. Sadly, the revelations about the Danziger Bridge shooting make it that much easier to believe McCann’s claim that he was unarmed. McCann filed a lawsuit against the New Orleans Police Department, but in a strange twist of fate he never saw it go to trial.  He was murdered in August 2008, a crime that remains unsolved.

New Orleans has made great strides in the years since Katrina devastated the city, but if it is to surrender the title of America’s murder capital it will need an effective police department. And if the police are to be effective they must win and maintain the trust of the citizens they serve. Michael Lohman and his fellow conspirators have done incalculable damage to that trust and left to others the task of rebuilding it, a feat in many ways far more difficult than rebuilding a city. But if the Saints can win the Super Bowl, perhaps anything is possible.
“Jack Dunphy” is the pseudonym of an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.

March 11, 2010 1:48 p.m. EST

(CNN) — A second former New Orleans police officer pleaded guilty Thursday in connection with police shootings of civilians on a Louisiana bridge in the days following Hurricane Katrina, authorities said.

Jeffrey Lehrmann, a former police detective who now works as a special agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, pleaded guilty in federal court to a charge that he failed to report a cover-up in the investigation of the Danziger Bridge shootings in New Orleans, the Department of Justice said in a statement Thursday.

Lehrmann also admitted he helped compile a false report on the incidents, and was with others when they planted a gun as part of the cover-up, according to court documents.

Last month, former police Lt. Michael Lohman pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in connection with the cover-up.

Two civilians were killed and four others wounded in the shootings on September 4, 2005, six days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

In the first shooting, on the east side of the bridge, one person — later identified as James Brissette, 19 — was killed and four wounded, prosecutors said. In a second shooting, on the bridge’s west side, Ronald Madison, 40, a severely disabled man, was killed. Madison’s brother was arrested but later released without indictment, authorities said.

“The police maintained that they fired at the civilians in self-defense, after the civilian fired at police,” the statement said. “However … Lohman pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring with other officers to cover up what he had determined was a ‘bad shoot’ on the bridge. Today, defendant Lehrmann admitted that he also knew of and participated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the investigation of the shooting.”

Lehrmann faces a sentence of up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced June 10, and Lohman faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine at his May 26 sentencing.

Jim Letten, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said that while Lehrmann’s conviction is the second in the case, “this officer was the first to enter into an agreement with the United States and provide cooperation.”

Lehrmann learned from a New Orleans police supervisor, identified in court documents as “the investigator,” that an officer had “shot an innocent man” on the bridge, prosecutors said in the Department of Justice statement, citing the documents. Upon hearing that comment, Lehrmann determined it was a “bad shoot,” meaning it was not legally justified, authorities said.

“Lehrmann admitted that he participated with his supervisors in the creation of a report that included false statements by the officers involved in the shooting; false claims about a gun that had in fact been planted by the investigator; and fabricated statements from witnesses who did not really exist,” prosecutors said.

“Lehrmann also admitted that the report of the Danziger Bridge investigation included false statements alleged to have been given by two of the victims of the police shooting.”

According court documents, Lehrmann said the report of the incident indicated the investigator had returned to the bridge the day after the shooting and found a gun in the grass below the scene of one shooting.

But Lehrmann said that story was “a lie.” He told authorities that after the shooting, he and two sergeants drove with the investigator to the investigator’s home, where the investigator retrieved a bag from his garage. Asked what was in the bag, the investigator said, “A ham sandwich,” according to the documents.

“Lehrmann then looked in the bag and saw a gun that would be used in the Danziger Bridge investigation,” prosecutors said in the statement. “Once the investigator assured Lehrmann and the sergeants that the gun was ‘clean,’ meaning it could not be traced to another crime, they all went along with the plan to plant the gun.”

At the time of Lohman’s guilty plea, authorities suggested that other indictments would follow. However, an information was filed in Lehrmann’s case, showing he was not indicted. Informations can be filed when a defendant waives indictment by a grand jury, according to the federal courts’ Web site.

The shootings occurred after several officers, responding to a call for assistance, drove to the bridge and encountered six civilians who were walking across it to get food and supplies, according to the indictment filed in Lohman’s case. The officers fired, killing Brissette, and then traveled to the other side of the bridge, where Madison was shot.

Madison was shot seven times — five times in the back, the coroner said. His brother, Lance, was arrested on suspicion of eight counts of attempted murder of a police officer and held for weeks before his release, according to the indictment.

State prosecutors pursued criminal charges against several police officers without success. In August 2008, a judge quashed indictments against Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius Jr., Officer Anthony Villavaso II and former Officer Robert Faulcon Jr., all of whom were facing first-degree murder and attempted murder charges. In addition, the judge threw out attempted first-degree murder charges against Officers Mike Hunter Jr. and Robert Barrios, and attempted second-degree murder charges against Officer Ignatius Hills. Federal prosecutors opened an investigation after the judge’s actions.

Legal scholars have said that while more might be indicted, it’s unclear whether any other officers will be charged in the shootings.

“There’s no evidence the officers shot out of malice,” Dane Ciolino, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans’ College of Law, said last month. “It was probably negligence, ratcheted up to a federal offense by the cover-up.”

COMMENT BY BILL PAVELIC TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES : 

HAVING WORKED ON THE O.J. SIMPSON CASE, I WILL VENTURE TO SAY THAT THE LAPD EXHIBIT IN LAS VEGAS DID NOT CONTAIN THE RACIST AUDIO TAPES ATTRIBUTED TO OFFICER MARK FUHRMAN AND OR THE GUN GIVEN TO O.J. BY A HIGH RANKING LAPD OFFICER. THE ENTIRE TABLOID LIKE EXHIBIT SANCTIONED BY LAPD AND LADA IS A “DOG AND PONY” SHOW DONE IN BAD FAITH AND IN BAD TASTE.BILL PAVELIC (03/03/2010, 7:33 PM )L.A. police chief, district attorney say homicide exhibit not intended to upset victims’ families

Hoping to put rest the controversy over a homicide exhibit, L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck and L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Thursday the display was not intended to upset victims’ families.

Beck apologized Tuesday to the family of the late Robert F. Kennedy and removed items from a homicide exhibit in Las Vegas that included the dress shirt, tie and jacket that were worn by the senator in 1968 when he was assassinated.

The clothing was among items in an exhibit at the 2010 California Homicide Investigators Assn. Conference, which is being hosted by the LAPD in Las Vegas. The multimedia presentation at the Palms Casino Resort features photographs, videos and evidence from the vaults of the LAPD and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

“We never intended to compound the grief of murder victims’ families, but unfortunately, a few items on display have been interpreted by some people as such, and that was never our intention,” Beck and Cooley said in a statement Thursday. “Our organizations strive to bring justice to homicide victims, not to cause sorrow to their families.”

The exhibit also included items from the 1997 Bank of America shootout in North Hollywood, the Black Dahlia slaying, the investigation of actress Marilyn Monroe’s death, the O.J. Simpson case, the Symbionese Liberation Army shootout, the “Onion Field” killing and the Manson family murders.

Also on display was evidence connected to the assassination of Kennedy, who was fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan in the early morning of June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel. Kennedy was mortally wounded in a kitchen pantry moments after declaring victory in the California Democratic presidential primary.

The exhibit has already drawn thousands of visitors, many of whom waited hours in a line stretching around the casino to get in. Organizers have extended the hours to accommodate the extra viewers.

The statement by Cooley and Beck comes a day after one of Kennedy’s sons criticized the Los Angeles Police Department for displaying his father’s clothing.

“Such items are personal property, entrusted to the state’s care, not to be exploited,” Maxwell Taylor Kennedy wrote in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. “He [Beck] relies on crime victims to prosecute virtually every criminal. He cannot long succeed if he continues to put victims’ pain on display for publicity.”

But Beck and Cooley said the exhibits were designed to give visitors a better appreciation for the tragedy of murder and the difficulty detectives have in solving complicated cases.

“Murder is the absolute worst thing one human being can do to another, and the displays were designed to provide a unique insight into the sacrifice of victims and their families, as well as the emotional toll murder takes on homicide detectives and the district attorneys who prosecute the cases,” they wrote.

“Homicide is by nature horrific, but the entertainment media often portrays it as sterile and benign,” the statement continued. “When people see the reality of murder, it becomes an unthinkable act.”

– Andrew Blankstein

Federal investigators say former Lt. Michael Lohman knew two people shot to death as they crossed the Danziger Bridge had no weapons, but he and others filed false reports to make the shootings seem justified. Four other people were wounded.

Family members of the victims gathered at the downtown federal courthouse as Lohman arrived to enter his plea.

“We are very, very happy about the progress that the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department have made,” said Dr. Romell Madison, brother of Ronald Madison, who was killed on the bridge. “It’s a tremendous relief for us to see some sort of closure. The people of New Orleans should be relieved that there is still justice for everybody here.”

Seven officers were charged with murder or attempted murder in the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings, just days after Katrina smashed levees and flooded 80 percent of the city. But a state judge dismissed the charges in 2008.

Until Lohman’s plea Wednesday no one had been prosecuted in the deaths of Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, and 19-year-old James Brissette. Four others were wounded.

Survivors have said the officers fired at unarmed people who were crossing to get food at a grocery store. The officers acknowledged shooting at people on the bridge, but claimed they did so only after being fired on.

The Danziger case is one of the best-known incidents of violence involving police after Katrina, a time in which confusion across the flooded city led to widespread reports, many later discounted, of police and rescuers being fired on.

Lohman, now 42, supervised the initial probe of the officers’ actions at the bridge, which spans the Industrial Canal and connects the working-class Gentilly neighborhood with eastern New Orleans. Both areas were extensively damaged in the storm.

His investigation drew U.S. Justice Department attention after the state judge dismissed charges against the seven officers.

Federal officials say Lohman knew another investigator planned to plant a gun to justify the shooting and asked if it was “clean,” meaning it could not be traced back to another crime, according to the documents. The investigator assured him it was and he went along with the plan to plant it.

After Lohman’s plea, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said the investigation continues. He called the case “a pretty elaborate ongoing conspiracy.” He declined to say whether higher-ranking police officials might have been involved.

“We are going to follow the evidence wherever it takes us,” he said.

Lohman went to the scene of the shootings, saw that the victims had no weapons, and concluded the shooting was unjustified, according to the bill of information. Then he and other unnamed officers conspired to cover that up by filing false statements on a police report about the incident, according to the documents, which does not name the other officers.

The plan was “to ensure that the shootings would appear to be legally justified and that the involved officers would therefore be shielded from prosecution and liability,” the documents said.

A lawyer for one of the officers originally charged in the shootings said federal investigators have been looking into what they described as a “corrupt investigation.”

So far, lawyers for two other officers have identified their clients as targets of the probe.

The documents unsealed Wednesday allege Lohman and two unidentified sergeants drafted different versions of a false incident report on the bridge shootings in October 2005.

Among claims in the false report was a statement by one of the victims that she had seen her nephew and others firing guns on the bridge.

Federal officials say Lohman drafted his own 17-page false report after becoming dissatisfied that another investigator’s false account was not logical.

“On several occasions in or about October 2005, defendant Lohman reviewed drafts of the false report written by the investigator and counseled the investigator on ways to make the story in the report sound more plausible,” according to court documents.

The documents said Lohman also told the investigator to speak with each of the shooters to ensure they were “OK with” the false report, and were willing to give statements consistent with it.

“It’s pretty incredible stuff, said Gary Bizal, lawyer for Jose Holmes, Jr., who said he was shot several times as he lay on the ground but survived. “It’s like a script from Hollywood.”

Lohman is to be sentenced May 26.

Associated Press writer Kevin McGill contributed to this story.