Posts tagged Seth Brigham
Brigham-Gate and Tom Carr's Past by Rob Smoke: Boulder Colorado
May 18th
Boulder’s City Attorney Tom Carr professes Seth Brigham a growing menace, progressing daily closer to violence against the Boulder city council. It’s an entertaining notion — Seth kidnapping council and turning them into his personal slaves would make a great horror-flick — however it is crap.
Interesting that Brigham-gate should touch on that issue of unpredictable violence, when the most discussed issue of Tom’s 2009 lost Seattle city attorney campaign hinged on the same issue in another context.
During Tom’s tenure as Seattle city attorney, there were extensive “excessive use of force” complaints against the police department of the city of Seattle. Imagine you’re the mom of a developmentally disabled
teenager who gets his face smashed by a Seattle police officer — an officer who had done something similar
on other occasions, but was still on the force because of corrupt internal review. Let’s be clear: Under
Tom Carr there were 400 back-to-back-to-back non-disciplined “excessive use of force” cases.
In other words, the officer was not held accountable with removal or suspension of his job — and in many cases, where an adjunct review board did recommend to Tom that he take disciplinary action, which Tom was actually
responsible for doing, he did nothing.
The Federal Justice Dept. came in, and the Deputy Attorney General of the Human Rights Division, Thomas Perez, cited the entire oversight process as broken. In point of fact, he could have cited Tom Carr, but instead cited everyone including Tom. It was, however, up to Tom to act if others wouldn’t — or at the very minimum,
act more appropriately on a case by case basis with victims of brutality. Google “Seattle police brutality”.
In other videotaped cases, an innocent hispanic man is kicked in the head by an officer while lying on the ground.
In another case, a pregnant woman was tasered multiple times by three officers and Tom appealed a Federal judge’s
ruling to allow the woman to move forward with a civil claim for damages.
Tom did not lose the 2009 Seattle city attorney’s race to a relative newcomer
by some weird accident, or, as he claims, because it was a “bad year for incumbents.”
No, he lost the race in an absolute landslide because people were sick to death of seeing reports about police brutality and suffering victims. Jon Kita, an asian restaurant owner, interviewed in the Seattle press about the videotaped “excessive use of force” assault he endured, put it this way, “How is it possible to get to 400 cases in a row with no discipline?”
Indeed, how is it possible? It must be noted, Tom absolutely oversaw the contracts for
civil claims defense of police officers alleged to have harmed people. During Tom’s tenure, the bill added up
to over $18 million dollars, which all went to one law firm which Tom helped choose. If at any time during those
400 non-disciplined cases there was a turnaround towards implementation of discipline, that would have caused the costs for handling those cases — the billings — to nosedive. Tom prevented that from happening. By the way, Tom’s replacement in Seattle, made it a first order of business to dissolve that highly questionable contract — and guess what? The firm itself has since dissolved.
The question remains, at what point in time did Tom become aware that the city of Seattle was receiving bad publicity for its brutality problems? Was it a year before the election? Could Tom have a rational understanding that he would lose — that in fact, the other side could nominate a doorknob, and he’d probably lose? In other words, what was the nature of Tom’s commitment to having this highly-paid bunch of lawyers defend brutal officers? Did Tom somehow feel that his own personal sense of justice and duty serving the city of Seattle was more significant than the information he was getting from the ever-growing list of injured residents seeking bare compensation or apology for their suffering?
Or did someone pay him to take his election loss with a smile and the “it was a bad year for incumbents” remark?
And how did the city of Boulder manage to hire him, at a pay increase of about $50k per year, without ever discussing
the 2-to-1 margin of loss in the 2009 election, and the brutality issues which always went unresolved and which were
lead stories in the local news, time and again — the hallmark of his term as city attorney?
Rob Smoke is a columnist for Boulder Channel 1. He writes about city of Boulder Politics
Boulder Colorado: Seth Brigham restraining Order hearing moved to mid June
May 12th
The city of Boulder vs Seth Brigham restraining order hearing scheduled for Tuesday May 15 has now been moved to mid June. The city psychologist is in therapy until then and cannot be available. The city has submitted depositions from council members including Macon Cowles. Cowles has made reference to an AK 47 and it was not clear if cowles intended to shoot Brigham with an assault weapon.
The city has also gone through of 25 years of Brighams writings and excerpted quotes from Brighams poetry, articles and fiction. Legal experts tell Boulder Channel 1 news that the city would spend $25,000 to $50,000 just collecting depositions. They could spend an additional $50,000 preparing form the Hearing. They city will spend $100,000 before it evens gets to court.
Brigham’s attorney David Lane will virgorously defend Seth. They have decided to move ahead with a law suit against the city. This will cost Boulder an additional $100,000 to defend. Their likelihood of winning according to constitutional expert is zero and the city could stand to lose 1,000,000 to 5,000, 000 million dollars in this kind of suit.
Since the city is financially broke this money will have to come out the city 25,000,000 emergency fund.
Both the restraining order hearing and law suit by Brigham has opened the door for other first amendment suits against the city and could produce a spate of them.
The city has a history of human rights violations with Brigham and other free speech advocates: namely the Public access TV producers group where Brigham got his start of challenging the city .
Seth Brigham has been a columnist for Boulder Channel 1 and has participated in other investigations of the city including a 2006 congressional inquiry conducted by the US congress.
Brigham said late Monday May 14th that he was not going to back off. He said he would abide by the temporary restraining order, but that it was the city and not him who was in trouble.
Meanwhile , a ground swell of support seems to be rising. Former city of boulder Human Rights chair rob Smoke plans a protest tomorrow night at city council. Boulder weekly has a cover story coming out on this situation on Thursday. Westword has been writing about it daily. the Daily Camera seems to have sided with Brigham too.
Boulder channel 1 News has covered Brigham’s travails since 2005.
Capt Underpants don’t want no Pledges of Allegiance to no America he doesn’t believe it
Feb 18th
There is an assorted list of fascist policy decisions, laws and ordinances in recent years coming from of our Boulder City Council, that question resonated with me, What’s next?
How about a seminar about violence in the workplace where our City Attorney declares not all the public speakers who go beyond the 2 minute rule are threats?
Now, councilman Karakehian comes up with a novel idea, let’s pledge allegiance to the flag before every council meeting.
Councilwoman KC Becker responds that if people do not want to “pledge” before meetings, “I’d be interested in hearing why.”
Therein lies the problem.
Pledging, “Under God,” or under anything at all, even refusing to stand! like me, those who have been taught to questioning authority? The act is repugnant.
Have you ever been ostracized and harassed?
I refused to pledge allegiance in middle school and high school in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
My parents taught me well.
Ironically, my homeroom teachers both taught history and I took a ruler on the knuckles or a slap on the head from time to time, just for not standing up while other recited “The Pledge.”
The purpose of the pledge seems to divides us all into the patriotic vs. the non-patriotic, the believers vs. the non-believers.
How to escape? While many in the Council Chambers stand to recite cobweb loyalties and factitious duties.
Some of us feel that pledging allegiance to the wall is unpatriotic, especially, when those leading the pledge have forgotten to uphold the “with liberty and justice for all” part.
The small “violations” of that pledge itself, camping tickets, curfews… are examples of a reoccurring problem of our Boulder City Council.
We’ve got a long way to go, baby.
Some of us feel we are going backwards.
Must we must support anything, however bad, because we were born or live in a particular place?
Why?
What is a pledge or promise of allegiance?
Curiously, such lessons in supposed good citizenship in the form of reciting a pledge of allegiance are rarely, iever, accompanied by deeper introspection.
So, it should be no surprise that reciting “The Pledge” has been proposed by members of the Boulder City Council.
What’s next?”
Seth Brigham
3383 Madison Avenue
W225
Boulder, Colorado
80303
720-298-6711
Seth Brigham is a sometime contributor to Boulder Channel 1 News
God bless Seth and God bless the United States of America