{"id":1700,"date":"2011-07-27T19:22:37","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T23:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/quartzsite-police-chief-puts-most-of-the-dept-on-leave-for-whistleblowing.html"},"modified":"2011-07-27T19:22:37","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T23:22:37","slug":"quartzsite-police-chief-puts-most-of-the-dept-on-leave-for-whistleblowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/quartzsite-police-chief-puts-most-of-the-dept-on-leave-for-whistleblowing.html","title":{"rendered":"Quartzsite police chief puts most of the dept. on leave for whistleblowing"},"content":{"rendered":"They were complaining about the conduct of the police chief.\nHe also put them under curfew and selective house arrest.\nThis is the town where\n\nactivists were dragged out of city council meetings and arrested by\nthat same police chief, over the protests of the mayor.<\/a>\n

\nTory Rangel wrote for abc15.com 21 July 2011,\n\nTown of Quartzsite puts more than half of its police department on leave<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nAn Arizona town has put more than half of its police department on leave\nand officers tell ABC15 they feel it’s retaliation for speaking out\nagainst their boss.\n

\nWilliam Ponce said he now feels he could lose his job with the Quartzsite\nPolice Department after he, and eight other officers, came forward and\naccused the police chief of misconduct and abuse of power.\n

\n\u201cI feel this is retaliation against the officers that signed this\nletter and came forth speaking out against corruption,\u201d said Ponce.\n

\nAfter complaints from officers, DPS launched a criminal investigation\ninto allegations Chief Jeff Gilbert had workers run criminal background\ncheck on people he didn’t like.\n<\/blockquote>\nMaybe the chief felt he had to\n\nlook into their character.<\/a>\nI wonder if he made them\n\nall take drug tests?<\/a>\n

\nThat was a week ago.\nAs of yesterday,\n\n\naccording to\n\nRady Ananda in COTO Report<\/a>:\n

\nThough state and federal laws are being openly violated,\nthe state has yet to stop any of it.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s from a blog that says it is “a group of people who openly recognize that corporations are destroying Earth, our home”.\nToday the blog Fellowship of the Minds, self-described as\n“Conservatives who love America”,\nposted a video from Judge Napolitano’s show on Fox News,\n\nWhistleblower Cop Speaks Out Against Quartzsite Police Chief<\/a>,\nshowing one of the furloughed officers breaking curfew and speaking on TV:\n
\n“I’m concerned for my safety and for the safety of the officers who\nare still working.”\n<\/blockquote>\nIt seems that suppressing whistleblowers\nis unpopular across the political spectrum.\nFor good reason, since if it can happen to whistleblowers,\nit can happen to you.\n

\nWhat’s the police chief’s excuse for all this?\nBack in January, after federal Judge John Roll was killed\nand Congress member Gabriel Giffords was shot,\n

\nChief Gilbert warned the Council in an open meeting on January 11 that\nthe same level of anti-government rhetoric exists in Quartzsite (starting\nat about 6:24), which he characterized as warning signs similar to those\nexhibited by Jared Lee Loughner, Roll’s assassin:\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s from COTO Report<\/a>,\nwhich includes video of the Chief Gilbert saying those things.\nWhy does that sound familiar?\n

\nYou’ve seen the video of\n\nthe previously-arrested activist addressing the town council.<\/a>\nShe asked them to get current on the laws of their own state\nregarding open meetings and free speech.\nWhich sounds more dangerous to you?\nWhat she said, or what Chief Gilbert is doing?\n

\nAs the TV news host asked:\n

\n“Where’s the governor? Where’s the Attorney General?”\n<\/blockquote>\nWhere, indeed?\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They were complaining about the conduct of the police chief. He also put them under curfew and selective house arrest. This is the town where activists were dragged out of city council meetings and arrested by that same police chief, over the protests of the mayor. Tory Rangel wrote for abc15.com 21 July 2011, Town […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,48,40,70,2,3091,3],"tags":[1124,1097,4027,4029,3532,4033,8701,2129,4030,4031,4032,4034,7,1683,8865,689,4028],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-ethics","category-government","category-quartzsite","category-transparency","tag-arizona","tag-attorney-general","tag-civil-liberties","tag-curfew","tag-free-speech","tag-gabriel-giffords","tag-georgia","tag-governor","tag-house-arrest","tag-jeff-gilbert","tag-john-roll","tag-judge-napolitano","tag-lowndes-county","tag-open-meetings","tag-quartzsite","tag-state-law","tag-whilstleblower"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-rq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}