Live from Austin!

It was recently uncovered that Denver Police Department’s intelligence database was being used to track members of Amnesty International and other similar groups, on the grounds that they were “criminal extremists”. None of the people being tracked had any criminal convictions or arrests on their records. The tracking began before 9/11.

Denver police blamed a secretary for the “mistake”. The “mistake” surfaced because Denver Police shared their database with neighboring cities, and someone with a conscience at one of the neighboring police departments leaked the documents to the press.

As a result, Denver was forced to delete 3,277 innocent people from its database, owing to a complete lack of evidence that they had ever been involved in any kind of criminal activity.

This is the same data which is now being shared with the FBI, and the Justice Department has told the FBI that they don’t need to check any of it for accuracy before adding it to their national database. (See earlier posting.)

If you’re reading this, please join Amnesty and the ACLU. As the saying goes, if we don’t hang together, we will all hang separately.

In October 2001, Chante Mallard, a 25 year old woman in Fort Worth, Texas, was driving her 1997 Chevy Cavalier home. On the East Loop 820 split with U.S. 287, she hit 37 year old Gregory Biggs, a homeless man. Both of Biggs’ legs were broken by the impact, and he was hurled headfirst through the windshield of the car.

Ms Mallard quickly drove the few miles back to her house, with Biggs still lodged in the remnants of the windshield. She parked the car in the garage, then went into the house, leaving Biggs begging for help. It was apparently at least two days before he died of blood loss and shock; once he was dead, Mallard got several of her friends to help her dump the body in a nearby park.

On October 27th, two men found the body. That might have been the end of the story, except that Mallard had told a friend about the accident while at a party. The friend was unable to live with what she knew, and told police. On February 26th, police obtained a search warrant for Mallard’s house. In the garage they found the damaged car, still spattered with blood, hair and other trace evidence.

Explaining her actions, Ms Mallard told police that she panicked after the accident happened, and that she had been drinking and was also on Ecstasy at the time. She also added that she occasionally went into the garage to apologize to Biggs as he slowly died.

Mallard’s attorney says that the police are going too far in charging her with murder:

“I think this is overreaching on the part of the prosecution and the police, and in the end, I believe the law will shake out that this was simply a case of failure to stop and render aid,” Heiskell said.

No word as to whether she has lost her job as a nurse’s aide.

[Sources: The Denver Channel, DFW Star-Telegram.]