George Soros has set his sights on Texas yet again.
Newly released campaign finance reports show George Soros in the top ten political donors in Texas.
Texas’ latest campaign finance reports show liberal billionaire George Soros has been pouring money into political action committees rather than funding candidates directly.
Soros contributed a total of $2,562,000 across several PACs between August and December 2023, making him one of the top 10 contributors in Texas.
Receiving over a million dollars from Soros, the Texas Majority PAC boasts the motto “let’s turn Texas blue.” The organization seeks to elect statewide Democrat officials by researching the most effective strategies to accomplish this goal.
Texas Organizing Project PAC received a quarter of a million dollars from Soros. Placing their mission’s emphasis on black and Latino voters, TOP focuses on reaching the minority communities in Texas to shift the state’s political leaning. However, TOP has also been linked in recent years to bailing out hundreds of inmates with severe criminal records.
After TOP was linked to Soros in the past, former candidate for Harris County Judge Alexandra Mealer posted on social media, saying “TOP works year around to elect candidates in favor of dismantling the criminal justice system so no surprise on [Soros donation].”
Soros also contributed to the Hidalgo County Democrat Party, which aims to emphasize elections at all levels rather than only those on a larger scale.
CTX Votes, Dallas County Democratic PAC, Cameron County Democratic Party Executive Committee, and Planned Parenthood Texas Votes PAC all listed Soros as a top contributor, with CTX Votes and Cameron County receiving over 94 percent of their total contributions from Soros.
In addition, Soros was in the top 10 contributors for both First Tuesday and the Texas Justice & Public Safety PAC.
One particularly interesting race is that for Harris County DA, where’s backing a primary challenger to incumbent Kim Ogg, whom he had previously supported.
Vying for her third term as Harris County district attorney, Kim Ogg faces a challenge in the Democratic primary from a former prosecutor who is backed by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and groups funded by billionaire criminal justice reform donor George Soros.
Ogg’s challenger, Sean Teare, worked for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) until February of last year, most recently as head of the Vehicular Crimes Division. After announcing his candidacy, his campaign raised $785,000 in the first six months of 2023, while Ogg trailed behind at $56,000. According to the most recent campaign finance reports, Ogg took in $282,000 compared to Teare’s $279,000 in the second half of the year.
Official campaign finance reports also show that Teare is receiving assistance from the Texas Justice and Public Safety PAC, a political action committee that has received most of its funding directly from Soros. The PAC, which previously supported the campaigns of Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza and Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, provided polling services to Teare.
Teare’s reports also show coordination with the Texas Organizing Project, a criminal justice reform group that often posts bail for suspects and supports candidates who will work to end the cash bail system.
On the campaign trail, Teare has criticized Ogg for “weaponizing the DA’s office” against political opponents.
After an investigation into an alleged bid-rigging scheme for a COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract in 2021, a Harris County grand jury issued felony indictments for three of Hidalgo’s staffers, which Teare and Hidalgo have blamed on Ogg.
A day after news broke in November 2023 that the Texas Rangers had issued new search warrants related to the case, at a press conference Hidalgo accused Ogg of leaking the warrants to the media. She also used the press conference, which took place on county property and was live-streamed on the Office of the County Judge’s official social media accounts, to announce her support for Teare, which drew a new criminal complaint and an ethics complaint against Hidalgo.
For more on ethics complaints against Hidalgo, see here. And here. And here. And here. And here.
In an interview with FOX 26 Houston this week, Ogg lambasted Teare for not revealing that after leaving his post at the HCDAO he went to work for the Cogdell Law Firm, which represents Hidalgo’s indicted former staffer Alex Triantaphyllis. According to Ogg, Teare was still a senior staffer at the HCDAO at the time prosecutors were building the cases against Hidalgo’s staff.
“The notion that I should turn a blind eye simply because it was committed by a Democrat is not just offensive. It’s dangerous,” said Ogg.
That is, in fact, exactly what Soros-backed social justice tools expect
Teare’s campaign website features Hidalgo’s endorsement along with those of state Rep. Gene Wu (D-Houston) and a group of Harris County Democratic Party (HCDP) precinct chairs.
On the Republican side, Dan Simons seems to be running for DA, but his campaign doesn’t have a website up yet. An odd decision, since he filed fr the race over a month ago and primary day is less than two months out.
Having seen the devastating toll letting a Soros-backed DA run your county has taken on Harris County thanks to high levels of violence from criminals put back on the street, you would think the Harris County GOP would be doing more to make sure it doesn’t happen again…
How do you know that a prosecution is politically motivated? When a DA actually makes convicting a police officer a campaign promise. That’s what happened with hard left, Soros-backed Travis County DA Jose Garza charging Austin Police officer Christopher Taylor with murder for the police shooting death of Michael Ramos. That case just resulted in a second mistrial.
The jury deciding the fate of Austin Police Department Officer Christopher Taylor deadlocked after several days of deliberations, prompting state District Judge Dayna Blazey to declare a mistrial.
Prosecutors accused Taylor of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Michael Ramos during a confrontation in April 2020. Taylor shot Ramos as he fled from officers in a vehicle.
Local media reported on Wednesday that jurors heard testimony for three weeks and deliberations had reached their fifth day. Earlier this week, the judge gave the jury a special instruction for deadlocked panels after they signaled they were unable to reach an agreement.
While the government cannot try someone again on the same charge if the defendant is acquitted, a hung jury means prosecutors can seek to try Taylor again to secure a conviction. It is unclear whether the state will choose to take the case to trial again.
The indictment of Ramos was among a set of investigations reopened by Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza after he was elected on the promise of “accountability” for police officers accused of misconduct. Garza won his first term in 2020, the same year protests against police violence overwhelmed the country.
Snip.
[defense attorney Doug] O’Connell consulted with the jury and confirmed that the final vote was eight jurors in favor of acquittal and four in favor of conviction after 34 hours of deliberation. He said Garza was “unable to fulfill his campaign pledge” to secure a guilty verdict against Taylor.
“(Taylor) wants to get this case over with. He wants to be able to get on with his life. This has been hanging over him for over three years now. He distinctly remembers when Mr. Garza came out while he was on the campaign trail and made Chris and this shooting a campaign issue,” O’Connell said.
O’Connell also referenced the recent shooting death of APD Officer Jorge Pastore.
“Chris is very loved, not only by his family but by his coworkers and his friends. I venture to guess that they’re all very frustrated, and for his officer friends and coworkers of course they’re still grieving at the loss of Officer Pastore last weekend, so I imagine this is going to also be difficult for them to deal with,” O’Connell said.
He added that Garza has brought indictments against more law enforcement officers than his three most recent predecessors combined.
It is the second time this year a mistrial has been declared in the case. The first time, the judge determined an impartial jury could not be formed due to jury intimidation.
On similar grounds, Taylor’s defense sought to move the trial to a different county, citing evidence that someone had attempted to intimidate potential jurors by leaving leaflets on their cars.
The defense team even provided affidavits from high-profile attorneys, such as former Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore, supporting the contention that a fair and impartial trial for Taylor cannot be held in Austin due to biased media coverage.
While [prosecutor Dexter] Gilford condemned the police response to the call at the Rosemont at Oak Valley Apartments off Pleasant Valley Road, he admitted Ramos wasn’t perfect.
Gilford said Ramos “burglarized cars” and “was alleged to have been involved with credit cards.”
Then Gilford called Ramos’ half-sister, Clavita McMillan-Brooks, to the stand. She said Ramos was a “jokester” and that their relationship was strained, largely because of his struggles with substance abuse. She’d talked to him about getting sober the last time she saw him.
“He wanted to,” she said, “but he didn’t know how to.”
Travis County Medical Examiner Dr. Keith Pinckard told jurors cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine, bath salts and marijuana were all detected in his body during an autopsy.
During cross-examination, Taylor’s attorneys suggested Ramos acted unpredictably as a result of his drug use and his previously documented bipolar disorder.
The gold Prius that Ramos was driving had been reported to police a day before the shooting.
Naturally the Austin hard left named the “Mike Ramos Brigade” in his honor.
Garza’s hostility to APD officers has been well documented. Normally two mistrials would mean the dismissal of all charges against the person being charged. Given what a political football Garza has made of the case, and how much he (and other Soros-backed DAs) hates cops, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Garza try to try Taylor for a third time.
Beset with controversy that has culminated in a looming removal trial for incompetency, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzales resigned his office, mooting the case, and immediately announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for United States senator with the intent to challenge incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
For those unclear on Texas geography, Nueces County is on the Texas gulf coast, and includes Corpus Christi. Trump beat Biden there by a few points in 2020, but Gonzalez won the DA race by three points.
Gonzales has faced criticism from law enforcement organizations and other groups who have described him as “soft on crime,” dismissing high rates of criminal cases and facing a barrage of other accusations such as failing to qualify for office by properly executing a bond and being suspended by the State Bar of Texas for failing to pay annual dues.
The removal lawsuit, brought by attorneys with Citizens Defending Freedom (CDF) on behalf of CDF State Director Colby Wiltse, was endorsed by Nueces County Attorney Jenny Dorsey and was set to go to trial after a district judge approved the case to move forward.
“This is a great day for justice in Nueces County,” Wiltse said in a press release. “Mark Gonzalez, like many of the Soros-aligned District Attorneys across the country redefined the role of the district attorney in the name of social justice, often at the cost of public safety in the communities they swear an oath to protect.”
Gonzales was quick to pivot out of the controversy and into a new political endeavor: launching a campaign for U.S. Senate. He published a campaign video on YouTube wherein he briefly characterized the effort to remove him as “bull—” and stated, “I was such a threat, they tried to remove me from office.”
He joins front runner candidates state Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-San Antonio) and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX-32) in the Democratic primary race for Texas’ U.S. senator, as well as nine other contenders.
Gutierrez only joined the race in July, so I’m not seeing any polling on him yet. Having two candidates with Hispanic surnames probably helps Allred.
Vacancies in the office of district attorney are filled by gubernatorial appointment for the remainder of the unexpired term, meaning Republican Gov. Greg Abbott will decide who the next Nueces County district attorney will be.
Hopefully he’ll appoint someone who will actually, you know, indict criminals.
Speaking of Soros stooges, Dwight made me aware of GarzaWatch, aimed at Soros-backed Travis County DA Jose Garza and backed by some of the Save Austin Now people (Cleo Petricek and Matt Mackowiak), among others. We’ll see if that effort bears any fruit…
The City of Austin will again be on the search for someone to head its police department after Chief Joseph Chacon announced his intention to retire next month.
Chacon had been in charge of the Austin Police Department (APD) since September 2021, when he was appointed as the permanent chief after serving on an interim basis following Brian Manley’s retirement earlier that year.
“Working at APD has been the privilege of my life,” said Chacon. “Being the Chief of Police is something that I never thought would have been possible, and it has been the pinnacle of my career.”
In a letter to the department, Chacon said he first began considering retirement a few months ago and ultimately decided his 25-year run at APD was nearing its end.
APD Chief of Staff Robin Henderson will be named interim police chief once Chacon’s retirement becomes effective in the first week of September.
Then comes the more interesting part: The stalemate between police who want to do their jobs and the Austin victimhood identity politics establishment who want to prevent them from doing that continues:
During Chacon’s tenure, APD has been marked by staffing hemorrhage; a labor contract dispute with the city council; and a thorny relationship with Travis County District Attorney José Garza, who’s taken an active approach in prosecuting officers for alleged misconduct.
Garza’s uncle, Jesús Garza, is the interim city manager.
As of March APD has seen 89 officer departures, leaving the department 300 positions down from its 2019 staffing level. In 2020, the city council’s $150 million APD budget cut and redirection removed authorization for 150 patrol positions.
Austin’s police and elected officials have spent much of the last 12 months in a prolonged standoff over a new labor contract.
The Austin City Council, led by Mayor Kirk Watson, rejected a four-year agreement with the Austin Police Association in favor of a one-year extension of the now-expired deal. That leaves APD employment to be governed by Chapter 143 of the Local Government Code.
The impasse came largely over how much authority to vest in the Office of Police Oversight (OPO).
The city’s “reimagine policing” activists wanted to make the OPO significantly stronger, including enabling it to conduct investigations into alleged officer misconduct rather than its current role of simply fielding complaints and observing the process.
You remember the “Reimagining Police” initiative, don’t you? If not, this should refresh your memory.
In 2021, the OPO and its former head Farah Muscadin were found by an arbitrator to have violated the police labor agreement — just the latest chapter in a string of actions by the OPO that’s strained a contentious relationship.
The two sides remain at an impasse, and APA has no intention of giving in to the progressive activists’ demands.
Good.
Kirk Watson was elected mayor in large measure due to his promises to get crime under control and cut back on the radical Social Justice agenda driving the city. So far he hasn’t done much to deliver on those promises.
[Travis County Democratic] District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested and charged with drunken driving Friday night in Northwest Travis County…
According to the arrest affidavit, a witness called 911 just after 10:45pm to report a four-door Lexus wandering into the bike lane and then into oncoming traffic while traveling southbound on FM 620 near Comanche Trail. The car was being driven by Lehmberg, according to the affidavit.
Lehmberg told the deputy that she’d had two vodka drinks earlier in the evening and that she was on a prescription beta-blocking drug. According to the arrest affidavit, there was an opened bottle of vodka in the passenger area of the vehicle within reach.
(Sorry for linking to the Austin Chronicle but a lot of the original stories on the arrest no longer seem online.)
Here’s a pro-trip, boys and girls: If you you find yourself driving around at night (well, any time, but especially at night) while drinking from an open vodka bottle (she evidently had a blood alcohol level of .239), you have a problem, and you should seek professional help and/or check yourself into rehab.
Like, the next day.
Eventually Lehmberg spent 45 days in jail and declined to run for reelection, but wasn’t removed from office.
But the thing I remember most about the Lehmberg case was her in restraints…
Eh, not quite like that
…screaming “Call Greg!” (Dwight even bought me a bumper sticker.) The “Greg” in this case was then Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton, who Lehmberg obviously believed would get the charges dismissed.
Ten or twenty years before, that might have happened, but one big reason it didn’t happen in Lehmberg’s case was dashcam footage. (Another was that Travis County LEOs seemed to hate Lehmberg’s guts.)
Speaking of “Call Greg!”, many of the videos of her arrest I previously linked to seem seem to be dead. (It seems more likely for a book to survive 100 years than an online video to last 10.) So here is sort of a compressed “greatest hits” of Lehmberg at the booking station, including the magic phrase:
Some valuable takeaways still true ten years after the fact:
Being drunk makes you stupid.
Belligerent entitlement and threats don’t make police any more likely to let you off (unless, perhaps, your last name is “Biden”).
No, seriously, shut the fuck up. When arrested, remain silent except to ask for your lawyer.
DWI is expensive, even if you don’t kill anybody. At a defensive driving class many moons ago, the instructor noted that it would be cheaper to hire a limo to drive you to Dallas, stay in a five-star hotel, dine at the city’s most expensive restaurant, down three bottles of their most expensive champagne, and have the limo driver drive you back than it would be to pay the legal fees to successfully fight a DWI in court.
I did a search to see what Lehmberg was up to after leaving office, but I couldn’t find out anything. It’s like she dropped off the face of the earth. Hopefully she got some help for her alcoholism.
he Austin City Council on Wednesday voted to fire City Manager Spencer Cronk following his response to the winter storm earlier this month. The council voted 10-1 in a special called session, with only Natasha Harper-Madison (District 1) voting against Cronk’s firing.
Natasha Harper-Madison is an ultra-lefty sort, which makes me slightly more assured that firing Cronk was the right move.
Cronk’s termination is effective Thursday, Feb. 16. He will receive a one-year severance of $463,001.50, under a City ordinance in which he was hired in 2018. The council has appointed Jesus Garza, who served as Austin’s city manager from 1994 to 2002, to serve as interim city manager.
This is where things get interesting. The city of Austin has an Assistant City Manager, Veronica Briseno. Normal procedure is that the Assistant City Manager takes over as Acting City Manager while a permanent replacement is found. Why was that not done here? Could it have something to do with the fact that current Travis County DA and Soros-backed leftist tool Jose Garza is Jesus Garza’s nephew?
What are the odds?
I mean, it’s just plain odd to hire someone who was last city manager 20 years ago. That’s like thinking that M. Night Shyamalan is a sure thing to helm a big budget movie because Signs made a lot of money.
Howdy! Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving! I spent six days up in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, visiting relatives and buying some 180 books, some for myself and some to deal. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm!
We keep hearing that it’s impossible rig government unemployment statistics, but something funny is going on.
A superficial take of today’s jobs report would note that both jobs and earnings “blew past expectations, flying in the face of Fed rate hikes”, and while that is accurate at the headline level, it couldn’t be further from the truth if one actually digs a little deeper in today’s jobs numbers.
Recall that back in August, September, and October we showed that a stark divergence had opened between the Household and Establishment surveys that comprise the monthly jobs report, and since March the former has been stagnant while the latter has been rising every single month. In addition to that, full-time jobs were plunging while part-time jobs were surging and the number of multiple-jobholders soared.
Fast forward to today when the inconsistencies not only continue to grow, but have become downright grotesque.
Consider the following: the closely followed Establishment survey came in above expectations at 263K, above the 200K expected – a record 7th consecutive beat vs expectations – and down modestly from last month’s upward revised 284K…
… numbers which confirm that at a time when virtually every major tech company is announcing mass layoffs…
… the BLS has a single, laser-focused political agenda – not to spoil the political climate at a time when Democrats just lost control of the House as somehow both construction (+20K) and manufacturing (+14K) added jobs according to the BLS, when even ADP now reports that these two sectors combined shed more than 100,000 workers in November.
Alas, there is only so much the Department of Labor can hide under the rug because when looking at the abovementioned gap between the Household and Establishment surveys which we have been pounding the table on since the summer, it just blew out by a whopping 401K as a result of the 263K increase in the number of nonfarm payrolls (tracked by the Household survey) offset by a perplexing plunge in the number of people actually employed which tumbled by 138K (tracked by Household survey). Furthermore, as shown in the next chart, since March the number of employed workers has declined on 4 of the past 8 months, while the much more gamed nonfarm payrolls (goalseeked by the Establishment survey) have been up every single month.
What is even more perplexing, is that despite the continued rise in nonfarm payrolls, the Household survey continues to telegraph growing weakness, and as of Nov 30, the gap that opened in March has since grown to a whopping 2.7 million “workers” which may or may not exist anywhere besides the spreadsheet model of some BLS (or is that BLM) political activist.”
A non-profit bankrolled by some of the nation’s largest corporations and left-wing billionaire George Soros is conducting a racial census of House and Senate staff as part of its effort to establish a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office,” according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Senate and House staff received emails from a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies starting in July asking them to confirm their “racial and ethnic identity” as part of an alleged data collection effort. In at least two cases, senior congressional staffers who declined to provide their races were told by the researcher that the organization’s current data indicated they “may identify as white” and asked the staffers to update if the information was incorrect.
Information collected by the group will be used in its annual report that lobbies for “structural changes on Capitol Hill that would allow for more people of color to be hired in senior positions,” a previous report from the group states. That report is made possible in part by millions of dollars in donations to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies from Apple, Google, Meta, Pfizer, the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, among dozens of other large corporations and nonprofits.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ survey is part of a broader trend by left-wing organizations to pressure workplaces and governments to increase affirmative action policies. Often couched in promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” those policies have received criticism for coming at the expense of competence and offering advantages based on race instead of merit.
Rush was charged with a second-degree felony, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon family violence. An emergency protection order was issued against him, and he was soon back on the streets after making a $40,000 bond, KVUE reported.
“For $4,000, you can get out, go home, watch Netflix after trying to murder your ex-girlfriend — are you kidding me?” one of the customers said.
So in addition to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possible attempted murder, our super-genius lawyer also violated section 46.03 of the Texas penal code by carrying a gun into a bar. And he bonded out. For all that Democrats blather about “gun violence,” they don’t seem top treat gun felonies with any seriousness when they actually occur. Thanks, Soros-backed DA Jose Garza!
But it turns out that Rush didn’t just go go home to watch Netflix, as he was found dead on Thursday.
In one meeting, Deon Jackson went from South Carolina’s Berkeley County school superintendent to unemployed.
His firing came at the hand of a newly-elected school board, which appears to have declared a judgment day for woke practices in its district.
In its first meeting after the Nov. 8 election, the board fired superintendent Jackson and school counsel Tiffany Richardson. Then it hired Anthony Dixon as superintendent and retained Brandon Gaskins as counsel. And before the day was over, the board banned teaching critical race theory and created a board to review library books for pornographic content.
Moms for Liberty, an activist group that supports parental rights in education, endorsed six of the board’s nine members. Many Moms for Liberty candidates won school board elections this November.
Speaking of disinformation, CNN carries out more mass layoffs, including Chris Cillizza. Let’s have a moment of silences for his careerOK that’s enough.
Legal Insurrection conducts a 2024 presidential preference poll. Not surprisingly, DeSantis comes in first and Trump second. Nikki Haley third over Ted Cruz is a mild surprise. Greg Abbott ranked dead last, tied with Liz Chaney, is a much bigger one.
The soft-on-crime policies enacted by the Democrats who run Austin and Travis County have degraded the quality of life for law-abiding Austinites. And for many the consequences of putting convicted felons back out on the street without bail has been deadly.
The suspect in an August 6 Austin homicide was out of jail on personal bonds in two different counties for multiple felony charges when he shot two men, killing one and paralyzing the other.
Shots were fired after a fight broke out in a parking lot on E. 7th Street in Austin, right across the street from the ARCH homeless shelter downtown. Dionysius Thompson was killed, and Josh Noriega was left paralyzed.
The suspect is Nathan Nevah Ramirez, charged with murder and aggravated assault.
Ramirez fled the scene but was later identified by another individual involved in the scuffle and HALO surveillance cameras as having been present when shots were fired. Ramirez allegedly shot both Thompson and Noriega.
Police arrested him an hour later that day at his apartment, where he was found with a loaded Glock 22, 2.5 ounces of marijuana, 44 grams of cocaine, about $8,000 cash, and a box of .40 caliber bullets. Ramirez was charged with another unlawful carrying of a firearm count along with possession of a controlled substance.
In a sane county, being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm should be an immediate tip back to the slammer under Sec. 46.04 of the Texas penal code.
He has since been charged with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony aggravated assault.
On August 8, before he was arrested for the shooting-related charges, Ramirez was released on personal bond for the charges of unlawful carrying of a weapon and felony possession of a controlled substance from two nights before.
Two days later, Austin Police Department (APD) ballistics analysis positively identified Ramirez’s pistol had fired the rounds. U.S. Marshalls arrested him later that day.
Ramirez had been out of jail in Travis County since he was granted personal bond on May 27, 2022 for the June 2021 charge of unlawful possession of a firearm. Ramirez had been on the lam since the incident last year until he was arrested on May 26, 2022.
Austin Municipal Court Associate Judge Stephen Vigorito granted the bail on the condition that Ramirez not possess any firearms or engage in criminal activity. His pretrial for that charge is set for August 26.
During the bond proceeding, he was given “indigent” status, a metric by which the Austin municipal court prioritizes personal and low cash bonds to poor offenders.
While judges set bond, the Austin City Council passed a policy directing the municipal court to prioritize reduced bond for indigent defendants in 2017 and fired judges who disagreed.
Additionally, after winning office in 2020, Travis County District Attorney José Garza released relaxed bail and sentencing guidelines that his office would recommend to the bench in criminal proceedings.
Garza’s tenure has been a boon to felons seeking to continue their criminal activity while out on bond, but a disaster for law-abiding Austinites, especially those who don’t want to be murdered.
Among those items is the emphasis placed on a presumption of release with “least restrictive conditions necessary” for higher-level felonies.
Garza’s policies, the attempt to turn Austin into a Mecca for drug-addicted transients, and the Austin City Council’s refusal to fund adequate staffing levels for the Austin Police Department have all contributed to making Austin radically less safe than it was just four years ago.
The kangaroo court proceedings against 19 APD officers for daring to enforce the law and keep order rather than letting the hard left’s pet Antifa/BlackLivesMatter rioters go on a spree of destruction continues to grind away, but five of the indicted officers are fighting back.
Five of the 19 police officers indicted on aggravated assault charges stemming from the May 2020 protests have filed a lawsuit against the City of Austin, the Travis County District Attorney’s Office and various social justice groups [Austin Justice Coalition and the Mike Ramos Brigade].
The officers filing suit are Joshua Jackson, Rolan Rast, Todd Gilbertson, Derrick Lehman and Alexander Lomovstev. They’re all on administrative leave pending the outcome of the criminal charges.
At least 19 APD officers face indictments linked to May 2020 protests.
They misspelled “attempted riots.”
The lawsuit states “plaintiffs were ordered to respond and were given less than lethal beanbag rounds, for which they were provided no training and some of which proved to be defective or expired[.]
Adam Muery, the attorney representing the five officers, says they filed now because the statute of limitations for certain legal action stemming from the May 2020 protests expired last night.
“We brought this suit now because it’s only been three months since their indictments and that’s when the fullest extent of damages became known to my clients. Because before that their damages were different,” said Muery.
Snip.
The lawsuit also alleges numerous times the crowds were “riotous” and the officers followed orders to keep the crowds safe. Causes of action in suit claim, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, malicious prosecution, negligence and negligent hiring/supervision/training and retention, among other things.
“None of them had training on using these types of weapons while wearing gas masks,” said Muery. “Which is obviously difficult because, in this situation, they made the decision to put the CS gas out onto the interstate. And these officers are now having to use these weapons with these masks that block their field of vision and make it more difficult. Some of these officers were also not specialty officers and were not part of this special response team. So some of these officers had no training on how to use these less-than-lethal rounds.”
I hope not only that the lawsuit is successful, but that discovery for it also reveals all sorts of criminal collusion between Travis County DA Jose Garza, the Austin Justice Coalition and various George Soros front groups to deprive American citizens equal protection under the rule of law in the name of radical social justice.
There’s been a lot of news on the Austin Police Department and Soros-backed Travis County DA Jose Garza popping up, so let’s dig in:
In case you missed it, Austin police staffing levels have fallen so low that police will no longer respond to “non-emergency” calls. “Collisions with no injury or burglaries no longer in progress or where the suspect has left, would not warrant a 911 call. Austin residents in these situations and others like it will have to call 311 and file a non-emergency report.”
In an affidavit filed Tuesday, Austin Police Department (APD) Detective David Fugitt went to blows with Travis County District Attorney José Garza over his alleged tampering with Fugitt’s testimony in the prosecution of Army Sergeant Daniel Perry.
Last month, a grand jury indicted Perry for charges including murder, aggravated assault, and deadly conduct after he shot and killed Garrett Foster, a former Air Force mechanic who was protesting in downtown Austin at a Black Lives Matter demonstration on July 25, 2020.
Fugitt, who is spearheading the investigation into the incident in question, insisted that Garza quashed exculpatory evidence he planned to provide to the grand jury. He indicated that witness statements gathered by Foster’s relatives and their lawyers “were inconsistent with prior interviews” and video of portions of the incident.
With respect to a charge of threatening imminent bodily injury, Fugitt had also planned to say that the complaining witness “never once suggested that Daniel Perry” had threatened her by purposefully driving his vehicle in her direction.
According to the affidavit, Fugitt described an interaction he had with Assistant District Attorney Guillermo Gonzalez in which the detective had asked Gonzalez what “ramifications” there would be if he did not abide by the DA’s request to exclude the evidence favorable to Perry. Fugitt says the office merely told him again which evidence he was not to discuss in front of the grand jury.
“In my mind, after this directive from José Garza, is when the conduct of the District Attorney’s Office [went] from highly unethical behavior to criminal behavior,” Fugitt deposed.
“I firmly believe the District Attorney’s Office, acting under the authority of José P. Garza, tampered with me as a witness.”
When Fugitt refused and stood by his finding of justified homicide, Garza retaliated. That retaliation implicates Austin PD acting Police Chief Joseph Chacon and Assistant Chief Ricardo Guajardo, according to the filing and several others in the case which PJ Media has obtained.
Snip.
The documents call for an evidentiary hearing to determine the facts surrounding Det. Fugitt’s direct accusations against Garza, which include new evidence and also implicate the two leaders of APD. The documents also note that Garza opposes such a hearing, which Sgt. Perry’s defense attorneys interpret as evidence of Garza’s guilt.
The document accuses District Attorney Garza of felony criminal conduct under the Texas Penal Code 36.06(a)(1)(A), unethical conduct, and violation of Sgt. Perry’s right to a fair trial under the law as a defendant.
You may start to understand why rank-and-file APD officers were less than wild about Chacon being made police chief…
In the Sgt Daniel Perry case, @JosePGarza doesn’t want you to see the court filings. He’s filed a motion to seal so you can’t see what’s going on. We’re fighting back. pic.twitter.com/4gqAZ8lPwp
That’s not the only thing Garza doesn’t want you to see:
4 months after an open records request Jose Garzas DA office has asked the AG for relief. They are lying about my request. They include my request in with others that are asking for other info. See screenshot 4 my email specifically says NO applicant info requested. This is BS! pic.twitter.com/KLl3KhcIpE
“Austin Office Of Police Oversight Director Farah Muscadin Investigated For Spending Enormous Taxpayer Money To Push Critical Race Theory Training.”
Farah Muscadin, Director of the Austin Office of Police Oversight, has once again pushed to offer bribes to people in the community to take Critical Race Theory (CRT) training. For completing a 22-hour course, people are cashing in with $550 gift (read grift) cards. $55,000 was defunded from the Austin Police Department to fund this radical training course. Guess who is paying for this ridiculous CRT propaganda?
It is well past time for Austin citizens to demand their own Office of Government Oversight Committee to watch over how these people continue to waste taxpayer funds on pushing this Marxist-influenced indoctrination that is inherently racially divisive.
The influential driving force behind these shenanigans is Muscadin. Muscadin was ousted from a similar position at Chicago State University for employing the same shady tactics she is pulling here in Austin.
Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday said they investigated Farah Muscadin, the director of the Office of Police Oversight, and found some disturbing information about her past career at Chicago State University. Casaday sent a letter to Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk noting Muscadin’s name was mentioned in a lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to falsely accuse a professor of sexual harassment while she was working as Dean of Students at Chicago State University. He also provided board of trustee meeting minutes mentioning Muscadin had been “terminated.”
This blatant waste of money simply boils down to further defunding of the police. The goal of Muscadin and her ilk is to strip the Austin Police Department of every resource possible.
Indeed, Muscadin’s name appears in that lunatic Reimagining Public Safety Task Force document, the entire purpose of which was to transfer money from APD to various leftwing activist groups.
While Austin crime and homicide numbers continue to exponentially increase, these extreme-left radical groups keep chipping away at morale and funding to continue the downward spiral Austin is on in terms of law enforcement and public safety. While the excuses and denial are endless, accountability is in short supply. If you want to address the record breaking murder numbers, look no further than these anti-police radicals’ war with the police.
Three former Austin mayors come out for Proposition A:
