by David T. Lashgari, Esq.
Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005 at 6:02 PM
LashLaw@AOL.com 770-612-9400 Lashgari & Associates, Attorneys at Law, 2470 Windy Hill Road, Suite 214, Marietta, Georgia 30067-8617
The Ideologically-driven forces of the extreme right have secretly been nourishing and empowering a brutal police-state system of justice in Los Angeles. The main component of this system consists of a 600-person army of corrupt, LAPD-sanctioned so-called judges whose main task is to coverup acts of LAPD misconduct and brutality.
CORRUPT JUDGES & DA BREED POLICE BRUTALITY OF LAPD
REMOVE LAPD-INSTALLED DA STEVE COOLEY
REMOVE BUSH-SUPPORTED & LAPD-FINANCED CORRUPT JUDGES IN LA
Bush, DeLay, Rove, Libby, and other reactionary members of their criminal organization are now far more fearful than ever before that other District Attorneys around the country may follow the lead of Ronnie Earle, District Attorney of Travis County, Texas, and bring criminal indictments against them for their years of criminal activities and conspiracies. However, Bush and his gang feel no fear of criminal indictments against them coming out of the prosecutorial office of the largest county in the nation, Los Angeles County.
Bush and the gang know that they have a loyal friend in the office of Los Angeles District Attorney, Stephen Cooley, the puppet DA whom LAPD financed and installed in office in 2001. In fact, Bush and the fascist-oriented forces of the extreme right have quietly been supporting unprecedented growth of systemic corruption in Los Angeles. They have been instrumental in empowering the LAPD (the largest police force in the World) and its corrupt puppets to become the most powerful and dominant political force in Los Angeles County.
Today, the LAPD and its thugs, with full support from Washington, rule with an iron fist in Los Angeles. The criminal justice system of Los Angeles has been transformed into a repressive machinery of injustice to cover up brutality of the LAPD and its numerous daily acts of police misconduct. Nowhere else in the U.S. has the extreme right succeeded so effectively in institutionalizing corruption of a criminal justice system as it has in Los Angeles. The LAPD, its reactionary puppet DA Stephen Cooley, and its army of close to 600 puppet judges, emboldened by Bush’s active support, have been wreaking havoc against defenseless residents of Los Angeles and victims of police brutality.
Steve Cooley, who received $1 million dollar in campaign contribution from LAPD officers for his election to DA office in 2001, first closed the Rampart Scandal investigation shortly after taking office. Cooley has since refused to prosecute numerous LAPD police brutality cases during the past 5 years, including the shooting murder of Margaret Mitchell, a frail 5’1” 102-lb. 55-year-old mentally ill homeless woman by LAPD’s 250-lb. Edward Larrigan who Cooley said was justified in shooting the old African-American woman in the chest who they falsely claimed had threatened Larrigan and his partner with a screw driver.
Instead, Cooley in conspiracy with LAPD-elected judges of LA Superior Court has aggressively been seeking criminal convictions against victims of police brutality and misconduct by LAPD.
Legally, a criminal conviction bars the victim from filing future civil rights suit against LAPD, and therefore permanently closes any potential investigation of the case. One such case is that of Mrs. Maria Lashgari, a 35-year-old wife and mother, whom Cooley and corrupt LA judges have held incarcerated and separated from her family for more than three years without a conviction on charges fabricated by LAPD. Cooley and his LAPD masters insist that the mother must plead guilty before she can be freed to go back to her husband and her 6-year-old son whom she has not seen for more than three years. Today, the mother continues her resistance by bearing inhumane and torturous conditions at the overcrowded, uninhabitable, and disease-infested Twin Towers jail.
While insisting to continue to keep an innocent mother incarcerated without a conviction for more than three years, Cooley and LAPD-puppet judges finally succeeded, in December 2004, in quietly overturning the criminal convictions of the only three LAPD officers who had been convicted on November 15, 2000 in Rampart Scandal by a Los Angeles jury of felony obstruction of justice and evidence fabrication. The overturning of the unanimous felony verdict of a Los Angeles jury against three corrupt LAPD officers and letting them go free represents the depth of the LAPD’s control and domination of the Los Angeles criminal justice system during Bush’s rule. The ramification of the overturned felony criminal convictions of LAPD’s Ortiz, Liddy, and Buchanan is frightening and shocking since it reveals that the only individuals who went to prison as a result of Rampart Scandal were the two officers who broke the LAPD’s code of silence and blew the whistle on Rampart Corruption Scandal, former LAPD officers Rafael Perez and his partner Nino Durden.
The protection and support provided by Bush and forcers of the extreme right to the growth and empowering of the LAPD and its thugs as an institution of repression have been calculated and multi-faceted. On the one hand, there has been a quiet and gradual reversal and undoing of the reforms imposed upon the LAPD as a result of the federal lawsuit (USA v. LAPD) of November 2000 by the previous federal administration. In that lawsuit, former US Attorney General, Janet Reno, declared that, “LAPD routinely engages in false arrest, excessive force, and unlawful violations of constitutional rights of persons in Los Angeles.” One of the first acts of Bush was to fire the US Attorney in Los Angeles (Alejandro Mayorkas) who had filed the federal lawsuit against the LAPD. Then, Bush quickly replaced him with Debra W. Yang, a former LAPD-sanctioned LA Superior Court Judge.
In a series of other calculating moves, Bush and reactionary forces have quietly been appointing LAPD-sanctioned LA Superior Court Judges to the federal bench in Los Angeles. Since LAPD and its thugs have gained control of local courts of LA, the Federal District Court in Los Angeles is the only judicial forum left for victims of LAPD brutality to seek redress and justice. Six of the eight life-time federal judges Bush has appointed to the Federal District Court in Los Angeles since 2001 are former LAPD-sanctioned Judges of LA County who all had been receiving, and some continue to receive, official illegal bribes from LA County government defined as “extra monthly benefits.”
All LA County Judges have received the illegal “extra monthly benefit” (presently around $5,000 per year) since at least 1997. Chief Justice of the State of California (Ronald George) has described the monthly bribes as “double-dipping.” (See LA Times, 08/20/2000). Today, while slashing vital life-saving medical programs for the poor, the corrupt LA County officials continue to pay around $30 million annually in illegal bribes to the 600-member LAPD-infested army of LA judges.
REMOVE COUNTY JUDGES RECEIVING ILLEGAL BRIBES & BENEFITS!
STOP CORRUPT LA COUNTY OFFICIALS FROM BRIBING LA JUDGES!
REMOVE & PROSECUTE LAPD PUPPET DA COOLEY!
STOP BUSH FROM APPOINTING LAPD JUDGES TO FEDERAL COURT!
CLEAN LA COURTS & BEGIN PROSECUTION OF LAPD BRUTALITY!
COMMEMORATE ANNIVERSARY OF APRIL 29, 1992, THE 20th CENTURY’S LARGEST POPULAR UPRISING IN AM