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-- Anonymous, March 04, 2001

Answers

Please see end of last week's thread for yesterday's background on my public backstabbing from Olive council member Bruce LaMonda.

What do I want? In the broader sense, truth and justice, that's no big surprise. For particulars, I'd like a public admission at the next neighborhood watch meeting that I was not disrespectful to an officer. As a matter of saving my own life, I need to get this resolved positively. I have high blood pressure, I was up for hours in the middle of last night, and up early again this morning. It's only recently now that the mascot issue is less intense that I've not been waking up many nights in the middle of the night worried about who would vandalize my tires and take a chance of hurting my family. I can't let this stay unresolved.

From the letter I emailed Lucia later that day, trying to persuade her to formally file her complaint with the Olive police: "If you would feel more comfortable having me along, I'd be happy to accompany you. I found Officer Wittl to be perfectly professional in my case. Perhaps we could make an appointment to see if he was available?" Hardly the wording of someone who had just spent a full hour dissing the officer in question.

I don't now know if my case has been entirely thrown out by the Olive police, or what. I want clarification of that, and I want to know if it is being considered by the state police along with Curry's, Meg and Tobe's, and Donna's cases, and if not, why not. I'm re-writing the piece on the physical and circumstantial evidence, "just the facts, ma'am" style, in a way that contrasts the police's original vague dismissals with the corroborating evidence. I'd also still like to have the police officer's not doing what he said he would do, and the withholding of the case from the state police acknowledged. My incident does have the only link to Lucia's unofficial circumstantial lead on an individual perpetrator. Slim lead, but better than nothing.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2001

Carol - I have been thinking this through and through and it just doesn't make much sense to me.

Who was at the community watch meeting when Bruce La Monda responded to you this way? Perhaps he felt as if he was publicly being put on the spot and he spoke defensively. I know La Monda, a little, and his worst fault is that he can definitly stick his foot in his mouth. Especially being a politician. Ann Marie K. knows him well and she may be helpful if you know her.

But I also feel La Monda is harmless and was probably miscommuniciating something maybe Witl said. Or perhaps they mistook you for Lucia who bears the distinction of having Ras T., her partner, call Christopher Columbus a racist in front of a packed Olive house for the mascot debate. Lucia and Ras T didn't make any friends at that meeting.

I would try to resolve this in the most straightforward and diplomatic way as possible. Please don't let yourself get emotional and distraught over this situation. It simply not worth it. I'm sure that no one in the town officialdom is targetting you and this can be easily resolved. I would not involve anyone else other than Witl or La Monda at this point. If you like I will speak to La Monda for you or even Witl. Let me know what you think.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2001

Jim, all I have to offer here is my credibility and my integrity. When someone slanders me by saying I was disrespectful to a police officer, this in a room filled with a number of police officers from many different branches, I'm concerned that it can perhaps be open season on me, aside from the way it makes me look to my neighbors.

Tobe, when I found out it never made the state police blotter, that was when I took my records in to Cervini in the fall and gave them to him directly. His nervous insistence several times that if the records didn't get to him it wasn't the fault of his staff, made me think that Wittl's not passing them on was anomalous and improper.

I do not at this moment intend to have any contact with LaMonda without a lawyer present. I'd prefer not to have Bert there, I found him rambling and somewhat incoherent.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2001

Barbara Schultis (the postmaster), Jane Fox, Helen [Avery? LEanne's mom], Paul Friedman (I'll call him tomorrow for debriefing), Amy Witkus-Schiff, Carol Carboni, Al and Jan van Blarcum, Bert, Bruce, Dawn of the Olive police, 2 DEP cops, one cop from the sheriff's dept, another Olive officer I hadn't seen before, and a couple of others I don't know.

I certainly didn't put Bruce on the spot, I carefully said only "one of the police commissioners" and did not mention his name, was not going to mention his name. I didn't know he was there, if I've ever been introduced to him I certainly didn't recognize him.

I remembered today that he seemed to say something queer. I was not going to mention the officer's name, but I'm pretty sure Bruce said "I don't need to know the officer's name" -- but my original letter to him in November had given Wittl's name. Why play coy about that, especially when it seems like he's then gotten it as hearsay from another layer of hearsay?

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2001

Hi Carol, I sympathize over what's happened, what a drag. And I agree that it would be good to resolve things to make you feel better and clear up any misunderstandings. How?

For now, at least, I think you should look upon things as a serious of mistakes/miscommunications/incompetence and try to resolve things in a friendly personal small town way, especially with LaMonda and Witl. Try not to be upset: there is certainly a subtext here, but you're looking to resolve things on a more or less superficial level, no? (As in: we are part of the same community, despite our differences....)

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

I'm sure it has already spread like wildfire, given the "friendly personal small-town way" the "news" about me was released. Remember, the Neighborhood Watch is the archetypal permission for talking about your neighbors and saying "ain't it awful?" about all sorts of things. It'll never get out of the memepool then, not even if we skywrite over the reservoir in mile high letters that I am actually polite and helpful to police officers.

Yes, there is that maxim I'm fond of, "Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence." And maybe Bruce is as nice a fellow as everyone says, and some day he and I can get together and laugh about everybody's sensitivities. But my alleged sensitivities or Officer Wittl's alleged sensitivities aside, my concerns are based both upon Lucia's reporting of her response from the Woodstock police, and upon what may be improper police procedure here.Bruce is not speaking with his Everybody's Buddy hat on here, he was speaking as Police Commissioner LaMonda. I don't think that police mis-handling of my case is superficial, and I am very angry at the way my integrity has been publicly called into question on a basis of unsubstantiated hearsay. If Bruce is going to make those remarks about me, he will need to make a comprehensive public retraction, or be prepared to substantiate them in writing and be held accountable for them.

Let's also put the only "specific" accusation from LaMonda into context -- it was not just that I was "very disrespectful" in an unspecified way, but that I used the words "good old boy" to Officer Wittl.

Many, if not most, of us on this board come from a time and milieu when “fuck the pigs” was a fairly common epithet that police had to grow thick hides against, rather than merely being Saturday night conversation fodder in an Internet zoophilia chat room these days. I would have thought that “good old boy” would be far down the scale from that in terms of its flammability quotient, but perhaps it means different things to different people. So I decided to research what its accepted meaning seems to be for most people. A search on my hard drive reveals that I have not used the term “good old boy” in writing, and neither my husband and I have any memory of my using that term to refer to Officer Wittl.

An online search brought a bewildering plethora of meanings, but they all seemed rather positive, and in fact “Good O’ Boys Round-up” is a term used by themselves for yearly private gathering of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and other federal law enforcement officers . One black Secret Service agent described good o' boy as an "endearing term" used in the South. A black ATF agent said it was not derogatory but rather used for people who are "friendly" and not "trouble makers." Another black ATF agent did not consider the term racist because he grew up in the South and heard both whites and blacks call each other good o' boys…

Some other definitions I encountered: “A regular fellow; accepted member of a group;” “the soul of decency, a solid, unpretentious, and reliable character;” someone who “is honest, straightforward with you, he is not going to steal from you; what you see is what you get;” someone who will "be up front with you, [who] is going to tell you what the hell he thinks right there, you don't have to worry about him lying to you or stealing from you." There is a growing usage that suggests a melding of the term with the British term “Old Boy network,” with almost 1400 entries coming up on a search for “Good Old Boy Network.” The vast majority entries seemed to use it as a positive or value-neutral term.

There were, however, an interesting cluster of exceptions. I did a search on “Good Old Boy” and “derogatory.” It seems that those who particularly find it a disrespectful slur are white supremacists, who have extensively documented slurs and dynamics of racism toward white people of European extraction in their Resisting Defamation site. Its syllabus at http://www.resistdef.org/ states “ Its purpose is to combat slurs and negative stereotypes expressed against Americans of indigenous European origins in print and electronic media, by government officials and in school and university texts.“ The Resisting Defamation syllabus is quoted approvingly on the Stormfront white supremacist web page, at the militant European- supremacist “National European-American Student Union” at http://www.natesu.org/, and is a featured link at http://www.christianbiblestudy.org/MOS/Matofsxx.html (scroll down from “The jew is the anti-christ”). You will, of course, remember the Stormfront website from our Final Conflict research.

Food for thought, isn’t it?

Anyone who wishes to play hardball head games involving meanings of words may not want to try them on a researcher who collects slang dictionaries, it really isn't wise.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Carol, you are awesome... Tobe

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001

Judge orders Millman to let D'Orazio have counsel in D'errico matter.

-- Anonymous, March 08, 2001

A Note from Charles: Update...

This afternoon I sent a new packet of information to the Dept of Ed, their new focus is on the unresponsiveness of the New York Commissioner of Education related to our complaints and those of Robert Eurich in total the complaints span more than five years. Seems their focus is narrowing in more on his inaction than anything else. Charles

-- Anonymous, March 10, 2001

Well Carol, for what it's worth ....I have had a new and remarkable kind of relationship with the local police in my life and I feel moved to comment on your recent postings. I do not believe that you can trust the local police. Anything important should be reported to both agencies but expect nothing from the local cops. Of course, Virginia, many cops are wonderful people, but as RRicken reminded me very directly,you must behave as if all police are assholes because they are often unpredictable and dangerous. I believe that this is not so generally true with State Police. There is more attention to form. I think you must respond to this event which occured and I agree with you that the officer must be asked to clarify his version of events, that if they do not correspond damn directly with the publically stated version you are absolutely owed an apology.Public as the accusation.I would make these requests by mail. I would cc. anyone I damn well pleased.This is not acceptable behavior by public officials and frankly I believe they must be called on it .Honest to God < I feel you and yours are quite safe from retaliation. I think these are sort of culture wars and not really representative of an urge to hurt. Like my kid says, stupidity rocks.I have seen nothing more bred in the bone than the local boys closing ranks around one of their own cops.I would expect nothing in the way of vindication, but sometimes that is not the only reason to go through all this.Forget the lawyers in this . It will just cost money and distance yourself from the fray. What was the WDsTK Police response to Lucia's complaint that you referred to?The news about the destuction of the statues of the BUDDHA, were the only news that has made me cry out loud in a long time.

-- Anonymous, March 10, 2001