Monday, October 27, 2008
A Varied, Troubled Past May Affect Credibility
Michael Mineo, the 24-year-old man who has accused the police of brutality, spends much of his time at the Brooklyn tattoo parlor where he works as a body piercer, friends say, and calls his friends from there his brothers and sisters.
He has applied for a city license to apply tattoos, though officials said he has yet to complete the licensing process, and friends say he favors industrial work clothes like Dickies and the music of the rapper Lil Wayne.
In recent years, he has had frequent run-ins with the police and has been arrested at least five times since 2003, according to court records. Two of those arrests involved marijuana possession. In April, he was accused of beating someone with a wooden stool during a fight at the tattoo parlor, Jiggaman Tattoos. That case is still pending.
“He has no family, only friends he calls his family,” said Jilma Brown, 20, who is his roommate in a three-bedroom apartment on Rogers Avenue in Brooklyn. “When you look at him, you’re going to think he’s a bad guy, but he just wants love.”
In a city where allegations of police brutality almost always leave murky, contested trails, investigators seeking to bridge the yawning gulf between the two accounts of what happened to Mr. Mineo will spend at least some time evaluating the credibility of the people who tell them.
Mr. Mineo says that at midday on Oct. 15, for no apparent reason, five police officers chased him into a busy subway station, where they knocked him to the ground and punched and kicked him before one of them sodomized him with the antenna of a walkie-talkie, or a similar instrument. He spent five days in a hospital recovering from his injuries. [Mark Godsey]
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Comments
Obviously not all of the facts in the case have been made public, but it's shameful that if these police did behave as Mr. Mineo claims they dad that any jury would allow their prejudices get in the way. The police have a difficult job, but it is a job they signed up to do, not one forced upon them.
Posted by: JT | Oct 27, 2008 7:36:54 AM
Unfortunately, this kind of injustice is pervasive in the United States. The judges in C[r]ook County regularly engage in criminal oonduct out of arrogance,incompetence, and political corruption.
In Illinois the presiding judge of the Law Section of the County Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County allows his law clerk to summarily deny petitions for indigent status if they come from frequent flyers or people who the clerk or judge doesn't like for some reason(especially pro se advocates for justice)violating statutes requiring that indigent status be granted if the person is on food stamps, supplemental social security, or has income less than the poverty level. His clerk writes the legally insufficient statement on the order that the cause can not be litigated in good faith. The statute and First Amendment do not allow this, especially if he does not read the complaint. This Dishonorable Judge William Maddux should be removed from the bench. I filed a complaint for mandamus against this judge with the IL S Ct which is pending.
He also has instituted a "black line system" where ALL lawsuits are placed in a computer and then 18 or 24 months later (depending on the type of case) they are placed on the bottom of a list of 300 cases moving toward the "black line". A judge, separate from the judge hearing the case, hears 30 cases a day from the black line. There is NO NOTICE of when the cases are heard except the day before on the clerk's computer or in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. If a pro se litigant is ill and can't come, the clerk will not accept a phone message from the litigant asking the judge to postpone the hearing. The purpose of the hearing is to order the case to go to trial even if the case is not ready for trial. If the litigant doesn't show up, the case is DWP.
This amounts to a constitutionally and statutorily unauthorized dual hearing system for each case with the second having no notice. It is unconstitutional and the spineless attorneys in Cook County are not seeking to have it dismantled. The reason is that this is an easy way to have pro se litigants' cases and cases of stressed solo attorneys disappear! Dishonorable Judge Maddux has designed this to clear the calender faster, but we all know it is for other purposes.
I am filing a complaint for mandamus to order him to cease and desist using this system and to have several cases re-instated which were DWP when I was in hospital. Any attorneys in Cook County who wish to join me and who have the spine to do so, please contact me ASAP.
I could write a dissertation on IL S Ct Judge Anne Burke and her misconduct, and the misconduct of many other judges in C[r]ook County. I have turned much of this over to the FBI and US Attorney. I believe much of it amounts to felony conspiracy to violate rights under color of law and an illegal penalty on the exercise of Constitutional rights.
We have no justice system. We have an injustice system in a totalitarian police state. Until the law community gets off their ass and stands up for justice it will not change. Many lawyers have told me they don't fight this injustice system because "we will lose our careers if we stand up to a judge". They are spineless, dishonorable, whimps in my book. Pro Se litigants,innocent defendants, and civil rights activists retaliated against by corrupt officials and police with false charges are fighting a losing battle! For more details see my blog I started three weeks ago: http://illinoiscorruption.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Dr Linda Shelton | Oct 27, 2008 5:32:43 AM