Until this year, I did not think much of parades and I learned differently. Parades are especially important when name recognition is an issue. The Sheriff's race is non-partisan so there is not even a party label on the ballot to help build support. Parades also build community, it is an easy way for community leaders to reach out and connect with community members. Add literature, stickers and good presentation to a parade, and it is the best political outreach.
The Matt Bostrom for Sheriff campaign outreach in parades was extraordinary! First of all, the candidate, Matt Bostrom, is amazing. Matt is obviously in great physical shape, so he greets everyone that he can, going from side to side, sometimes running to catch up. Matt Bostrom has great charisma because he really cares about people and it shows. Then we have a team of happy smiling folks handing out literature, handing out stickers and handing out candy. One person is constantly introducing Matt and leading the "Say hello to Matt - Hello Matt" shout-out. With everyone in the emblazoned black and gold shirts, some just carrying signs, it is quite a crowd. An antique police car leads the parade group, occasionally announcing its presence with a siren. Sometimes the antique car needs to "rest" a few minutes, and to the great amusement of the crowd, a half dozen Bostrom people push the car. Can you tell that we are having great fun? This is a group enjoying each other on a social occasion that happens to also be political. At the end of the parade, we share the best Vote-Matt-Bostrom stories from the event, and sometimes surprising stories. Like we had a great response from the Vadnais Heights parade and Vadnais Heights is where our opponent Bob Fletcher lives. That caused me to start using the phrases, "To know Matt Bostrom, is to like him! To know Bob Fletcher is to NOT like him!".
More readers have been emailing me with pictures of lawn signs planted by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher's campaign on vacant property. Once again, as far as I know you can only plant signs if you have the consent of the owner. Furthermore and once more as far as I know, banks and businesses cannot host lawn signs on their properties.
Keep the evidence coming ... eric at mnprogressiveproject dot com.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, aka Gestapo Bob, is flaunting election laws. He is placing lawn signs throughout Ramsey County on vacant properties. Reports have been trickling in, but now the evidence is mounting. If you see a Fletcher lawn sign on an foreclosed, abandoned or vacant property, please take a picture and email me the picture along with the address at eric at mnprogressiveproject dot com.
This photo was taken by a reader at W. 7th St. and Dousman (400 block of W. 7th).
[please see end of diary for Bob Fletcher's response]
[and now, see also link to a flickr page with some pictures I just snapped]
St. Paul's East Side has been plastered with obnoxious colored yardsigns for everyone's favorite sheriff, Bob Fletcher.
I happened to be driving down East 3rd St. (which becomes Kellogg Blvd. once one crosses the bridge out of Dayton's Bluff and into Lowertown) on the day that the Sheriff's goons, I mean, campaign volunteers, were putting up signs.
I noticed later that signs had appeared in the yards of many registered vacant houses. For those who aren't familiar with this term, registered vacant houses are houses which are empty and registered as such with the city (presumably to keep out squatters). Many of them are foreclosures. In order to legally place a sign on one of these properties, one would have to contact the owner of the property (in many cases, a bank) and get permission.
When you see 6 or 7 such houses in a single block, all of which have Fletcher signs, you start to wonder. Especially when the signs were all put up systematically on the same day. Did they really get permission from all of those owners? It seems unlikely.
Ten Ramsey County deputies are in this picture, waiting a least half hour before a hearing on Sheriff Fletchers Gangnet Database. There are more off camera, since I could not capture them all in one shot. Sheriff Fletcher is standing in the hall, so he has to know and approve of all of these deputies being here. So that raises some very important ethical problems and budget problems!
So if all these deputies were ordered here on the clock, then that explains Sheriff Fletcher constant over budget problems and lack of ability to maintain good Gangnet data. Hmmm, Sheriff time used to fill a political room, a really bad waste of taxpaper money!
And if the deputies are here on their own time, then why are they wearing uniforms? When I asked the deputies if they were on duty, most would not answer. One deputy finally said that he was on vacation. Yet all the deputies were in uniforms, doesn't the use of uniforms on off duty time have to be directly approved? Did Fletcher approve of the use of uniforms for a very political activity? That would be a high contrast policy in comparison to other professional police organizations. Also, how can the department afford to have more than ten officers on vacation at the same time?
The Star Tribune reports that Patrick Uzalac, the gentleman suing Sheriff Fetcher for lack of medical treatment on frozen feet, has now died. It will take an autopsy to determine cause. If there is cause from the jail treatment, then we will have yet another wrongful death case.
Even more telling, is that more and more cases of lack of medical treatment are coming forward. This is also confirmed by the anonymous notes that I have been receiving:
"What has emerged is a pattern of, I don't think neglect, but almost to the point of affirmative abuse," Hajek said. "One guy fell off a cot and broke his heal. He went without medical care for two to three months ... now he's disabled. Another guy, he had broken stitches from an appendectomy and they didn't treat him."
Hajek said he expects to file additional lawsuits.
What the Star Tribune is failing to say, let me say very clearly. This is a widespread pattern of mis-management that displays that Sheriff Fletcher ought to retire to Florida immediately. This is a peace and justice issue of the highest urgency! Only the voters of Ramsey county can manage to force Sheriff Fletcher's retirement. Fortunately, a number of us have been able to persuade a current St Paul Assistant Chief Matt Bostrom to take on the challenge. Matt Bostrom is the opposite of Sheriff Fletcher is in every way: professional, capable, calm and reliable!
At the Ramsey county sheriff's office, Sheriff Fletcher rules everything by personal command, so anything that is not standard procedure has to go through Sheriff Fletcher. It gets worse: the standard procedures and processes do not cover much. In fact, the processes and procedures have rarely been revised. Now since I wrote this, I do expect Sheriff Fletcher to do a last minute election revision. Rarely does any government get as badly broken as Sheriff Fletcher's jail. Innocent people now have to fear Sheriff Fletcher's jail, as Patrick Uzalac found out.
After locking himself out of his apartment in the pre-dawn hours of a bitter January day, Patrick Uzalac started tossing snowballs at his neighbors' windows for help.
Somebody called the cops.
What followed, according to Uzalac, was 42 hours of suffering with red, frostbitten feet as his pleas for help fell on the deaf ears of New Brighton police and then Ramsey County jailers...
At the Ramsey County Adult Detention Center, Uzalac said he again complained about his painful and, now blistered, feet. Jail staff ignored him, he said, and placed him in a cell.
(Star Tribune Article by James Walsh)
This follows a long history of medical help failures even leading to death and a long history of courts assigning damages to be paid out by Sheriff Fletcher. More details and new information below the fold.
"Deposits in the bank of trust" is what the St Paul police call the long work in building community relationships. From two in-depth interviews that I had with Matt Bostrom, Assistant Chief, and Todd Axtell, Watch Commander, there are strong themes running through their decisions. And, indeed, many casual conversations with St Paul police officers back up these common themes of building trust.
Surprisingly, the first deposit in the bank of trust is the personal volunteering with young people by the St Paul police. The drug education program, D.A.R.E., has long been in St Paul schools. Matt Bostrom and many law enforcement officers are involved in coaching sports. Todd Axtell is involved in the YWCA youth achievers' program on police techniques. This is direct personal contact by high level officers, not just an organization hosting a volunteer program. The payoff for working with young people has to be at least five years down the road, a very long range project. Yet I had one person say in a meeting that he supported the police because of the "way" that his son had been arrested 16 years ago. St Paul is a place where people stay, where you are a newcomer until you have been here at least 10 years. So while I was marginally aware that my children had had training in school programs that involved police officers, it was not until my interviews that I realized the depth of that involvement.
Courtesy and kindness is another deposit in the bank of trust by the St Paul police. Obviously, as law enforcement, the trend of encounters is negative and confrontational. Yet Todd Axtell describes the St Paul standard training where a police officer gives a ticket so courteously that the receiver actually thanks them. Matt Bostrom tells a story of a law enforcement officer going to a door greeted by a pointed gun. Yet the person with the gun sees the St Paul police officer, lowers the gun and greets the St Paul officer like an old friend. That friendly greeting was the benefit of many years of courteous visits to the same house. Make no mistake, to try to be actively courteous is extra effort when the natural trend of the encounter is to be negative.
Ramsey County Sheriff Fletcher keeps a database of gang members, called GangNet, where the criteria is so open, that Sheriff Fletcher's own name should be on the database, since he regularly "associates" with known gang members by talking to them and by arresting them. The qualifying rule is:
2. Is observed to associate on a regular basis with known gang members.
In fact, just by writing this article I now qualify to be on that GangNet because I am writing about gang activities. The qualifying rule is:
9. Corresponds with known gang members or writes and/or receives correspondence about gang activities.
And in fact, you just read this, which you might now qualify as "receives correspondence" which could be interpreted to mean that you, the reader, are now qualified to be entered into the GangNet.
A joint legislative public safety hearing questioned the Department of Public Safety Commissioner Campion on resolution of resolving all issues on the Metro Gang Strike Force. Metro Gang Strike Force (hereafter MGSF) was the pet project of Ramsey Sheriff Fletcher, who had multiple roles including being the fiscal agent. Although Commissioner Campion's department had been poor on oversight, once problems had been found, Commissioner Campion had acted quickly and forcefully. Which was why today's hearing was a surprise.
Legislative question: Does the Metro Strike Gang Force still exist? Did you shut it down or not?
It sounded like Campion could not stop the MGSF board from meeting and was unsure if he could stop the MGSF fiscal agent ( Pssst that is Sheriff Fletcher) from distributing money. The legislature, specifically Representative Paymar pushed back, said that they believed that Commissioner Campion did have that authority. Commissioner Campion basically wussed out, saying only that he would exert what influence that he had. The implicit question really was who was in charge: Commissioner Campion or Sheriff Fletcher?
What is amazing about the "Chicken Little" title being assigned to Ramsey County Sheriff Fletcher is that this title is coming from a undercover cop, who should normally be one of the Sheriff's strongest supporters. In "Cop Book" a retired 27-year veteran of the Bloomington Police Department, Richard Greelis writes about a honcho cop he calls "Chicken Little". Ruben Rosario quotes Richard Greelis in his column:
"He wanted the credit for saving St. Paul from the sky that was, according to him, falling fast," Greelis writes. "In addition to airing his concerns, he tended not to play well with other cop-types who did not work for him - like our intel unit."
According to Greelis, this official was so adamant that his unit remove an informant who infiltrated a reputed anarchist group that he actually followed Greelis from a Minneapolis surveillance spot and pulled him over as if he was executing a routine pull-over traffic stop.
(St Paul will be in an election year in 2009 that determines the heroes and the villains from RNC - promoted by Grace Kelly)
As the many tentacles of the disgraceful Bush empire pass into infamy, the evil elves are scurrying to destroy environmental protection, to enact nation destructive policies that will be hard to reverse. They do anything that can keep us aimed for the dark ages.
The ever present right wing blower charged up again to stir up the hate and fog the truth, both stratagems essential to the right's actions. The local fascist newsletter, the Strib, featured not one but two major articles in Monday's paper about SS General Bob Fletcher and his relentless campaign to destroy the anarchists. It seems that even after a federal cash infusion of some $50 million and his successful infiltration program, there are still anarchists roaming free. We should all be terrified of these anarchists doing whatever it is they do and not yet being drawn and quartered.
