Another fun police chase. But I do believe this one happened a few years ago. But still one of my favorites because of the airport factor.
“I have no explanation for it, except for the grand jury disregarded the law,” he said. “She got consent from these women to conduct a search inside their clothes.”
Baskett said that Helleson passed a polygraph about:
1. Did she explain what she was going to do? Baskett said Helleson explained the search to the women.
2. Was their penetration? Baskett said there was no penetration.
It is not clear whether Farrell has an attorney yet.
Post at 1:57 p.m.: A Dallas County grand jury Monday indicted a former Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who performed body cavity searches of two women on the side of the road using the same latex glove.
Kelly Helleson was indicted on two charges of sexual assault and two charges of official oppression.
The two women that Helleson searched, Angel Dobbs and her niece, Ashley Dobbs, were called before a grand jury Friday. They are suing two troopers and the head of DPS in federal court. The head of DPS is no longer a part of the lawsuit.
The searches of the womens vaginas and anuses were captured on a dash cam video.
For those nearby: We come in peace, but we’re pissed.
As we had previously announced, DFW NORML planned to participate in the Dallas St. Patrick’s Day festivities by entering our 420 Truth Car & Hydro the NORML Boat in the parade. The goal? Raise awareness about marijuana prohibition in a unique, positive way to help further the discussion both legislatively and locally. We filed our application early and waited.
Unfortunately the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association decided to decline our request. It’s interesting to note that Budweiser, Bud Light and Monster Energy Drink are sponsors this year, despite statements that the event would be “family friendly” with “less of a focus on drinking.” For many of us, DFW NORML is more than volunteering, it’s a family working towards a change for all of us. To be discriminated against like this is something that we simply must protest.
People have literally flooded the GAABA Facebook and event pages with words of support for us. Because of this injustice, we’ve decided to host a peaceful protest during the event. The idea being that by standing together, as a large group of NORML tax-paying, law-abiding, voting citizens, we can attempt to raise the awareness we’d hoped to raise in the first place. Our goal is to make our presence known without disrupting the parade for people simply trying to enjoy the event. We’ll have free information to pass out and we’ll interact with everyone we can but remember that protests are only a right when peaceful. We want to represent this cause respectfully but effectively, so everybody please be cool.
The parade officially starts at 11:00am, so we’re rallying at 9:00am at the Lovers Lane DART Station. As of now, we have over 60 people RSVP’d on Facebook. Imagine the impact we could have if hundreds of us show up. Ironically, by denying us the right to partake in the parade, we’re getting more media attention than probably would have had they just included us. The Dallas Observer wrote an article about it and we’ve contacted the local media to hopefully get some coverage. We’ve done everything we can and now we need you.
So please, on behalf of the Texas effort to end cannabis prohibition, join us for a NORML St. Paddies Day Protest. Let’s show the world just how green DFW really is.
Herb’s the word.
The Dallas Morning News IMO has the best coverage of police misconduct issues in the state, not only because of top-notch reporters like Tanya Eiserer, Kevin Krause and Scott Goldstein, but also because Dallas never opted into the state civil service code - which closes most records about police misconduct - and so there is much more transparency regarding officer discipline under the Public Information Act than in any other major Texas city. A story published yesterday (“2 Dallas deputy police chiefs disciplined over handling of actions involving fired officers,” March 9) provides a good example, exposing discipline against errant supervisors who failed to initiate an investigation into police officer testilying in a drug case. Reported Eiserer:
Dallas police announced late Friday that an investigation into the handling of two fired officers accused of lying about the arrest of a drug suspect had led to a major departmental shake-up and the disciplining of two deputy chiefs.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said he reassigned Deputy Chief Andrew Acord and ordered “verbal counseling” for Acord and Deputy Chief Ches Williams because they failed to initiate an investigation when they became aware of possible misconduct in the drug case.
Brown also said he was moving two more deputy chiefs and two assistant chiefs into new roles as part of a wider reorganization of the department’s command structure.
The announcements came one week after Brown and his second in command, First Assistant Chief Charles Cato, denied allegations that top police commanders were slow to investigate allegations of misconduct on the part of Officers Jon Llewellyn and Randolph Dillon in a December 2011 bust on Ravinia Drive in Oak Cliff.
The two officers were fired last week — more than a year after questions were first raised among police officials about the drug raid. On the day of the firings, the district attorney’s office announced it had dismissed at least 60 cases Llewellyn and Dillon had handled. …
Police did not open a criminal investigation into the conduct of Llewellyn and Dillon until late last year after a judge ruled that they repeatedly lied during a civil forfeiture proceeding in which authorities were seeking to keep money seized in Williams’ case.
In cities with closed disciplinary files under the state civil service code (which only applies to police and firefighters in jurisdictions that have opted in - most of them many decades before closed-records provisions were added to the law), such disciplinary actions against administrators would have remained secret forever. Credit first-rate reporting by the Morning News, but also the luck of the draw that Eiserer and her colleagues don’t happen to work as reporters in a jurisdiction where most police officer discipline remains secret, as would have been the case in Austin, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and around 70 other departments out of the 2,600+ law enforcement agencies in Texas.
