Mayor Glover to return Suburban to Police Department

The Mayor of Shreveport apologized to the City Council Tuesday and said that he will return a vehicle that was bought with police funds. The council had criticized Glover for assigning the new Suburban, which was purchased and outfitted by the Police Department, to the mayor's office for his use.
Glover also announced that he will forego his $450 month car allowance and will no longer provide car allowances for his staff. He told the council that he did not intend to undermine their authority.
It's good to see a political figure step up and admit a mistake and correct it. Although many thought the mayor had a lapse in judgment in acquiring the vehicle as he did, rather than putting it in the mayor's budget, they can take heart in his actions Tuesday.
There actually is honor in His Honor.

Pentagon Developing Plan to choose site for Cyber Command

The Air Force will spend the next several months devising the methodology to select the base that will be home to new Air Force Cyber Command, its head learned in a conference call Friday with top service brass. "It was the Pentagon guys informing the rest of us that they have to come up with ... an eight-step process to do this (National Environmental Protection Act evaluation)," said Maj. Gen. William Lord, who is commander of the new command, starting up in a provisional form at Barksdale Air Force Base.
"They're experts at this, so it's not like they have to invent it from scratch, but they have to document it, and ... get the secretary's general counsel to OK that process. That's what they're doing right now. "The process will determine the effect basing the 541 people of Cyber Command's headquarters could have on area schools, infrastructure, communications and transportation, and how these will affect the operation of the command. He agreed with spokesmen for Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne, who said the process will delay selection of the new command's home base "into the fall of this year."
excerpt from The Times

Rabbit vs Snake

Just to lighten things up a litte, I thought that this YouTube video of a fearless rabbit would make some great viewing.

Garbarino Incident is International Story

Since we were the first to carry this story after KTBS, we are pretty visible for people searching this on Google. In addition to hundreds of hits and page views from all over the United States, just in the last 16 hours (since midnight) we have had hits from a number of foreign countries. It is not unusual to have some international hits on the blog, but to have this number who all were searching this particular subject on Google is pretty striking. There are many more over the last two days.
There are 23 videos posted on YouTube relating to the incident with over 250,000 views. I didn't check Google Video or MySpace, but I imagine they are there too.
We are putting up this video of the ABC News coverage of the incident. At the present time, it has more comments than any other YouTube video in the news & politics section.



Our international hits from 12AM through 4:00 PM Thursday:
Maple Ridge British Columbia Canada
Geneva Switzerland
Ljubljana Slovenia
Canada
Singapore Singapore
Korea, Republic Of
's-hertogenbosch Noord-brabant Netherlands
Munich Bayern Germany
Stockholm Sweden
Osijek Osjecko-baranjska Croatia
Malmö Skane Sweden
Stockholm Sweden
United Kingdom
Ljubljana Slovenia
Germany
Uppsala Sweden
United Kingdom
Madrid Spain
Stockholm Sweden
Las Palmas Canary Islands Spain
London England United Kingdom
Uddevalla Vastra Gotaland Sweden
London England United Kingdom
Barcelona Cataluña Spain
Vienna Wien Austria
Ottawa Ontario Canada
Brussels Belgium
Kanata Ontario Canada
Barcelona Cataluña Spain
Germany
Berlin Germany
Versailles Ile-de-france France
Colombia
Bologna Emilia-romagna Italy
Switzerland
United Kingdom

Shreveport Police Chief Statement Video

Shreveport Police Chief Henry Whitehorn made a statement Wednesday concerning the incident with Angie Garbarino in which Officer Wiley Willis was terminated. The chief, with Mayor Cedric Glover at his side, said that Willis was terminated for violating department procedures. The file has been turned over to Caddo Parish District Attorney Paul Carmouche.
Whitehorn also announced that Bill Flanagan, Assistant US Attorney, had contacted him saying that his office and the FBI will be investigating the incident. The chief pledged his full support to the investigation.
The Shreveport Police Union is opposing Wiley's firing.

Video of Chief Whitehorn's statement

Video of Angie Garbarino on Good Morning America

Officer Willis Deserves Due Process

Thirty-Six Hours ago, the only references on the internet to the incident involving Angela Garbarino and Shreveport Police Officer Wiley Willis were the original story by KTBS and the blog post by My Bossier. Now the media, local and national, and the blogosphere are buzzing with this story.
There are now several You Tube videos of the incident. The original one has had over 32,000 views and more than 650 comments. Unfortunately, some of the users were posting Officer Willis' home address and phone number in the comments section. That's why we pulled the video from our site.
The Times, exhibiting some sort of passive-aggressive behavior, only ran an article after the whole country was buzzing about the incident. ABC's 'Good Morning America' ran the story yesterday morning. The local paper didn't run it until 3:30 yesterday afternoon.
Now they are asking everyone with a 'bad cop' story to 'share' with them. Good Lord, anyone who has ever received a ticket has a 'bad cop' story!
Chief Whitehorn is scheduled to hold a press conference this morning dealing with the incident. Hopefully, he will call on an outside agency, perhaps the Attorney General, to fully investigate the incident. Until it is investigated in a thorough manner by an unbiased source everyone should withhold judgment.
The tape looks bad. The fact that Officer Willis had previous incidents that alleged improper behavior, and the fact that Chief Whitehorn fired him, also looks bad.
But Officer Willis is innocent until proven guilty of any crime, and he is entitled to due process. Let cooler heads prevail.

More on Angie Garbarino - Officer Willis

UPDATE: The Times finally put the story up at 3:24PM!

As of 2:30 Tuesday afternoon, The Times online still has no reference to this story. KSLA did pick it up this morning. The Times does have some new headlines about the Wisconsin Primary today, about the Netts sending Kidd to the Mavericks and one about 'Girls Night Out' from Red River Moms. I guess they have their own priorities over there.

The story aired on Good Morning America on ABC today. Here is a link to their story with a warning - it has some very graphic photos of the injuries.

Since I wrote the last entry at 7:15 this morning, we have had more than 200 more views from Google searches.

Note: I removed the YouTube video from the last entry because users on YouTube are posting the officers address and phone number in their comments, and we don't want to link to that.

No Coverage from The Times

Since we published the story below (Shreveport Police Officer Fired), we have received multiple hits on our humble little blog from people searching for this story on Google. We got it from KTBS and, of course, gave them all the credit. It was also picked up by WKRG in Mobile, Alabama. I could find nothing on the websites of KTAL or KSLA about it. Why is the local media avoiding this story?
We had hits from:
Henderson, NV
West Lafayette, IN
New York, NY (multiple hits)
Arlington, VA
Alexandria, VA
Hyattsville, MD
Austin, TX
Newnan, GA
Sydney, Australia
Tulsa, OK
Reston, VA
Marrero, LA
Jacksonville, AR
Mountain View, CA
Los Angeles, CA (multiple hits)
Alhambra, CA
Las Vegas, NV (mutliple hits)
Lafayette, LA
Monroe, LA
Atlanta, GA
Burnaby, British Columbia
Flemington, NJ
Spartanburg, SC
Minneapolis, MN
Seattle, WA
Shawnee, KS
Montreal, Quebec
West Chester, PA
Longview, TX
Baton Rouge, LA
Agoura Hills, CA
Montgomery, AL
So you can see, this story isn't exactly a secret - except at The Times. Not a word. Not one. Why is it that people all over the country (world) are looking for information about this incident, and our own local newspaper hasn't run a word of it.
Good for KTBS, they are doing what good journalists should do - report the news, not cover it up.
Oh, and it's on YouTube too. Below is the video.

REMOVED

Shreveport Police Officer Fired

This from KTBS News - see link at the bottom for entire article and video:
A Shreveport police officer has been fired after an incident in which a female prisoner taken into custody on suspicion of DWI wound up lying on a floor at the police station in a pool of blood.
Much of what happened was recorded on a videotape – but there is a gap of undetermined length. During that time, the woman wound up injured. She said she was beaten up; the officer said she fell.
The woman, Angie Garbarino of Shreveport, was argumentative when she was brought to the DWI unit’s office last November. The videotape shows she did not want to listen to Officer Wiley Willis as he read her rights. . . . .
The situation escalated and the videotape shows the officer push the woman against the wall; she fell to the floor crying and telling him not to touch her.
She later tried to leave again. What happened next was outside the view of the camera but the woman can be heard screaming before she is placed back in a chair.
Seconds later, the tape is turned off. It is not known what happened while the tape was off, but when it was turned back on Garbarino was lying on the floor on her side in a pool of blood.
Willis turns her on her back and tells her, “Lay down; don’t move, ”the videotape shows.
“I can't believe you just did what you just did. I really can't,” she said.

Read the complete story and see the tape at KTBS

Louisiana Ethics 101