Inspector General Concludes Woodruff Should Have Disclosed Land Deals But Broke No Ethics Rules Or Laws

INDOT Chief of Staff Troy Woodruff may have failed to disclose his and other close family member's financial interest in land purchased by the state agency for the construction of I-69, participated in costly change orders he demanded in a bridge's design at the request of his uncle and got a job for his mother at the same state agency that already employed him and his wife, but Inspector General David Thomas concluded as he always does in high-profile cases involving political cronies that no laws or ethics rules were violated.

According to an Indianapolis Star report, Thomas' report says that while Woodruff's actions "give rise to the appearance of improprieties" and "diminishes public trust," his actions didn't amount to any criminal or civil violations. Former state lawmaker and law professor David Orentlicher disagrees with Thomas' interpretation of state ethics laws, but it's irrelevant because our useless federal and state prosecutors refuse to do anything to combat the rampant public corruption taking place in state government for the benefit of select political insiders that Thomas has moved mountains and oceans as the state's top ethics officer for the past decade to protect from public prosecution. Woodruff's only punishment, if you can call it that, is that he will be barred from doing work for INDOT for a one-year period as either an employee or contractor.

Thomas' report says that INDOT's ethics officer, Tiffany Mulligan, had advised Woodruff that he needed to disclose his and his family member's interests in the I-69 land deals, but he turned down her advice. Because the Woodruff family's land was acquired through the eminent domain law, Thomas said the conflict of interest rules didn't apply. Orentlicher disagreed, arguing that the transaction still involved a purchase within the meaning of the state's conflict of interest law regardless of whether it occurred through an eminent domain process. Thomas also concluded there was nothing wrong with Woodruff hiring his mother to work for INDOT because she did not report to him. Again, Orentlicher disagrees with Thomas' interpretation of the state's nepotism law. But like I said, it doesn't matter because our useless federal and state prosecutors have already decided they won't second guess Thomas' interpretations of law no matter how warped his conclusions are.

Star Asks If Hogsett Wins Mayor's Race Whether His Law Firm Will Benefit: Does The Sun Rise In The East?

When Greg Ballard was running for mayor in 2007, he liked to make a big point of arguing that his predecessor, a former partner at Ice Miller, spent too much money on "other services" in the budget, which is more accurately described as pinstripe patronage. The big law firms which contribute the most to a candidate are always big beneficiaries of no-bid contracts where they are given a blank check to inflate their billable hours to run up as big of a legal tab as possible when it's a government entity paying the tab. As long as they keep their end of the bargain and continue kicking back money to the mayor's campaign committee, all is kosher.

The Star's John Tuohy has a story asking if Bose McKinney & Evans will benefit from U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett's decision to join the firm starting tomorrow if he is elected mayor next year as many political observers now believe he will be. Yes, the firm will make out well, but so will law Hogsett's former law firm, Bingham Greenebaum Doll, where he worked for many years. Hogsett's former law partners at Bingham will contribute just as generously to his campaign as Hogsett's new law firm, which is likely the reason he made a conscientious choice to select a different law firm to work temporarily between public jobs. He's now got two big cesspools from which he can mine campaign contributions.

. . . By joining the large, respected law firm, Hogsett has immediate access to a cadre of well-paid donors and experts in myriad legal and consulting fields. The firm also benefits because Hogsett lends a degree of name recognition and could elevate the firm's prestige said Cynthia A. Baker, a law professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis

And if the Democrat does run for mayor and wins, it could mean a victory for Bose McKinney. Traditionally, new mayors bring more than themselves to City Hall. They also bring consultants, aides and lobbyists — often lawyers — and reams of no-bid legal work for local law firms .  .  .

The Republican administration of Mayor Greg Ballard has awarded more than $16 million in legal contracts since 2008, about $2.2 million a year. More than $9 million of those contracts have gone to the Indianapolis law firm of Barnes & Thornburg, which is also the city's lobbyist.

The firm's managing partner, Robert Grand, and its lawyers backed Ballard when few others would for his first run for mayor in 2007. Since then, several Barnes lawyers were appointed to top level jobs, including two chiefs of staff (Chris Cotterill and Ryan Vaughn), a public safety director (Scott Newman) and a top lobbyist (Joe Loftus).

The firm has snagged a steady lobbying contract of between $211,000 and $226,000 each year since 2008. In addition, Barnes & Thornburg has rung up $9,389,639 in legal and bond bank counseling fees during that period.

Among the legal work was $100,000 to defend the city against lawsuits by the victims of the drunken driving crash of Indianapolis police Officer David Bisard. The city paid $3.7 million in settlements to Kurt Weekly, Mary Mills and the family of Eric Wells.

By comparison, Hogsett's new firm, Bose McKinney, has received just $471,031 in contracts of all types since 2008 — and none in 2013 or 2014.  

During former Democratic Mayor Bart Peterson's time in office, Baker & Daniels, received a large portion of city business. In 2007, the Peterson administration spent $8.8 million on outside lawyers. Baker and Daniels collected $444,240 in lobbying fees, $863,035 in bond consulting fees and $1,095,000 in legal fees that year . . .

Yet another in a string of campaign promises Ballard broke. He doles out more no-bid "other services" contracts to his campaign contributors than Peterson. Pay To Play is the Ballard way, and Mayor Joe Hogsett will conduct business no differently since he's as much of a political animal as is humanly possible for a public official.

CIA Admits Hacking Into Senate Computers

The treacherous and deceitful man who leads the CIA, John Brennan, said it was "beyond the scope of reason" when members of the Senate first accused the spy agency of hacking into the computers of Senate staff members. Now Brennan is apologizing to the Senate after he says he has determined his employees "acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding" brokered between the CIA and the Senate. The joke is on us. Brennan says he has forwarded his findings to an accountability board led by, drum roll please, former Sen. Evan Bayh. Does anyone actually expect any real fallout from the CIA's illegal acts? Of course not. The CIA spies on Americans more than foreign threats, particularly persons in a position of power or influence, in order to blackmail them into submission. Don't forget that Brennan is a key figure in the false identity fraud of Barack Obama that has been perpetrated on the American people. An employee of the private firm he ran while in the private sector was accused of illegally gaining access to Obama's passport file for nefarious purposes aimed at hiding facts about Obama's past from the public.

UPDATE: Law professor Jonathan Turley best summarizes this latest transgression:

So let's just keep score. We have the recent admission of [the NSA's] Clapper lying to Congress in testimony. He is allowed to keep his position and even put on the board reviewing the very program that he lied about. We have the CIA lying to Congress about torture and destroying evidence. No one is charged and the man who ordered the destruction is allowed to retire with full honors. We have the hacking of Senate computers and lies to Congress by CIA officials. The Senate then thanks the Administration for not investigating the victims and no investigation is ordered of the CIA officials. It appears, as explained by the pig Squealer in Animal Farm, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Lugar Goes To Bat For Export-Import Bank

Richard Lugar has a long history of supporting policies that hurt, not help American interests, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that he emerges to promote saving the Export-Import Bank from the federal chopping block. Lugar makes an astonishing claim in the Indianapolis Star today that the Export-Import Bank saved his family's business that primarily provided manufactured processing equipment for the snack food industry by providing a loan to a Mexican business customer at a crucial point. From the Indianapolis Star:

The Lugars got a breakthrough when a Mexican company wanted to place a sizable order for machinery used to make cookies and other baked goods. An obscure federal agency, the Export-Import Bank, underwrote the contract, the first of many sales the company made in other countries. 

But now the bank's future is in jeopardy because of a philosophical split in the Republican Party between the populist, tea party wing and the GOP establishment tied to business interests — the same split that contributed to Lugar's primary defeat two years ago. 

Lugar said the assistance from the Export-Import Bank was transformative.

"Within three years," Lugar wrote in an opinion piece in a Capitol Hill newspaper recently in support of the bank, "our employee numbers jumped from approximately 50 to 100, and we had repaid loans and other obligations incurred by the factory during leaner years."

A look at the history of the Thomas L. Green company tells us that a long-time employee and its executive vice president, Frank Hubbard, was essentially the brains of the firm after Lugar's father, Marvin, died. Marvin, a farmer, had inherited control of the Green family business by marrying into it. Hubbard is credited with opening the company to markets south of the border, not the Export-Import Bank. Lugar didn't join the company until he returned from service as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy from 1957 to 1960 and left after a few years to devote his time to politics full-time. The Lugar's family business later stalled and was eventually acquired by Reading Bakery Systems in Pennsylvania in 2001.

Hubbard, although not officially the president of the organization, was the recognized authority in the plant after Marvin Lugar’s death. He single-handedly opened new markets for the company’s products in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Hubbard’s knowledge of the machinery and ability to develop good customer relations was one of the major reasons for the company’s growth in the 1950s and 1960s. 

At best, Lugar is telling us we should be happy that federal taxpayers helped grow his family's business by underwriting a Mexican company's contract so they could produce food products there paying slave wages instead of being produced by an American company employing American workers. At worst, his account is a fabricated story by a New World Order sycophant with ulterior motives for supporting continued federal taxpayer support of a bank that primarily benefits businesses overseas that compete with American businesses and workers.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been leading the charge to defund the Export-Import Bank, which he calls "big businesses' big government bank." He complains that the bank sends "huge amounts of assistance to foreign corporations, buyers, and companies that are hostile to our economic and security interests." Cruz complains that the bank has loaned money to countries like the Sudan and the Congo with "horriffic human rights records" "It has financed Chinese power plants and backed Russian billionaires buying luxury planes," Cruz laments. "And, it has provided lots and lots of financing to oil companies in Russia, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that compete directly with America’s energy companies." He points out a federal court criticized the bank for supporting an Indian airline that helped it undercut Delta Airlines and put up to 7,500 jobs at risk. Democratic lawmakers in Michigan and Minnesota complained that the bank's support of an Australian earth-moving company was harming mining interests in their states. That's to say nothing of the dozens of documented cases of fraud uncovered since 2009. The bank's chairman pleaded the Fifth Amendment when recently asked to answer a House committee's questions about fraud within the agency. Agency employees have been accused of accepting bribes from businesses that benefited from its handouts.

According to the Star, only one member of Indiana's congressional delegation, Rep. Larry Buschon (R) has signed on to reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank's charter. Others are wishy-washy, against reauthorizing it or want to see changes made before they agree to renew the bank's charter. This creation of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal has long since outlived its useful life. It's time to close the doors on it, but I fully expect it to survive because most of our members of Congress answer to their New World Order masters, not their constituents, no matter how much harm they inflict on the people they are elected to serve. At any rate, if Richard Lugar cared about Hoosier's interests he would be living here now instead of his permanent home in our nation's capital. Didn't he tell us that Indiana was where he planned to return after he retired from the Senate when he was desperately seeking just one more term in that august body?

Troubled INDOT Official Resigns As Ethics Probe Concludes

The Indianapolis Star is reporting that embattled INDOT Chief of Staff Troy Woodruff will step down from his state job one day before the state's Inspector General is planning to release the findings of an ethics investigation that began more than a year ago after the newspaper first raised serious concerns about ethical wrongdoing on Woodruff's part. In a farewell letter to colleagues, the Star says Woodruff hinted that he would be cleared of any wrongdoing:

"I have always lived my life with no regret, but in leaving this agency I do have one and that is the fact I could no longer stay around waiting on a 2nd Internal Affairs Investigation of myself that started in October of 2012 finally come to an end," Woodruff wrote. "Believe me I wanted it to be out and one day it will be, not so much for me or my family but quite honestly for you all. I wanted to shout from the roof top that the people of this agency are owed an apology. Even as the media accused me of so many things, what they were actually implying is that this agency is corrupt. You don't deserve that."

Gov. Pence ordered an investigation of Woodruff, a former state lawmaker, after the Star reported on land sales and a bridge project related to the I-69 project that personally benefited Woodruff's family members. Woodruff recently requested permission from the state ethics commission to accept new employment with RQAW, an INDOT contractor. Advance Indiana exclusively reported that Woodruff had participated in a decision to restore RQAW's right to bid on state highway and bridge projects after it was suspended a few years ago for allegedly performing faulty bridge work on a project in Gary, Indiana. Woodruff personally signed contracts with RQAW worth at least $500,000 according to the Star. Woodruff has reportedly decided to start his own business for now rather than seek a waiver from the state ethics commission to accept employment now with RQAW, which could mean he'll be working in the capacity of an independent contractor rather than an actual employee for the time being until the one-year cooling off period passes.

Will Mayor Ballard's Latest Tax Increase Plan Actually Result In Higher Crime?

If Mayor Greg Ballard gets his way, the local income tax burden in Indianapolis will grow by another 20% on working taxpayers on top of the 65% increase in that burden without relief his predecessor imposed in 2007. But it's much worse than it seems. Part of that tax increase is being imposed for a new welfare program that will provide wealth transfer payments from middle and upper income tax earners to low-income, mostly single-parent mothers equal to more than $6,100 per qualifying child. Think about that. We will have just established a new entitlement program for single-parent mothers worth more than $6,100 per child. Thanks to Gov. Mike Pence's new pilot program, the benefit will only be offered in Marion, Lake, Vanderburgh and Jackson Counties. If Indianapolis is alone in matching Pence's state contribution to the early childhood entitlement education benefit for low-income parents, we have become the most attractive place in Indiana by far for low-income single mothers to live.

Ironically, Mayor Ballard has been saying that Indianapolis has got to reach out and attract higher income earners to move to Indianapolis who pay income taxes upon which we have become dependent to fund city-county government. Yet his plan for the income tax increase he proposes this year and the higher income taxes he wants to levy in the future to support the metropolitan mass transit boondoggle, will make income taxes the highest in the state of Indiana. At the same time, he's locking in a new entitlement program worth more than $6,100 to the lowest income-producing workers who don't even pay income taxes. Why wouldn't a single-parent mother living in Hendricks, Hamilton, Johnson, Shelby or some other county in the state move into Section 8 housing in Indianapolis to take advantage of this new entitlement program so she can drop off her one-parent child to free up more time to do the things that got her into the mess she found herself in the first place? The notion that this new entitlement program is somehow going to reduce crime in the inner city totally escapes me. Do we really believe that a child having a government-paid babysitter when they're four years old is going to make an appreciable difference on whether they're out on the streets committing violent crimes while they're living in that some household when they reach their preteen and teen years?

Frankly, I can make the case that Mayor Ballard's plan to raise taxes yet again and create another costly entitlement program for low-income families is actually going to contribute to Indianapolis' long-term crime problem by making it a less attractive place economically for middle and higher income earners while providing a perverse incentive for those contributing little or no taxes to move into the city. Mayor Brainard is sitting up there in Carmel saying "Go for it." He knows that every time Indianapolis raises its income tax rate, he's going to see more of the people he wants moving to his city to escape the higher taxes in Indianapolis buying new homes and paying taxes. And with Ballard's costly new entitlement program for low-income families, he's sealed the deal on keeping out the people he doesn't want to see moving into his city. And if Indianapolis delivers the mass transit boondoggle it wants so badly, he'll have subsidized transportation to transport those undesirables to and from low-paying jobs in his community that he doesn't want living in his city.

Watch this video of a speech Mayor Ballard gave as a candidate for office in 2007 if you have any doubt about what a fraud he has turned out to be on the issue of taxes and crime. Hat tip to fellow blogger Paul Ogden.


UPDATE: Chicago went all out on early childhood education programs for three and four year olds more than two decades ago. It's worked wonders to reduce crime in their city just like their ban on handguns, right? I don't doubt that many children benefit from early childhood education, but you're only offering false hope if you think at-risk children being brought up in troubled families are going to fare any better when it comes to straying onto the wrong side of the law just because they attended a free, early education program when they were four years old.

Ballard Proposes Tax Increases For Preschool Education Spending And Calls It Public Safety Spending

The downtown mafia doesn't disappoint. They handed a new script to our self-absorbed, incompetent mayor and he ran with it. Yes, Mayor Greg Ballard teases the public with a press release saying he had a big announcement today to make on public safety. Instead, one of the tax increases already on the table for consideration for hiring additional police officers that the last 65% increase in the local income tax failed to produce seven years ago is now being proposed to be uses for a five-year, $25 million preschool program for children who come from lower income families. Education is not the responsibility of the consolidated city-county government, but this mayor will now raise your taxes to spend money that should be paid out of existing school budgets, such as the Indianapolis Public Schools, which we recently learned had a budget surplus of $8.4 million after falsely telling the public it had a $30 million deficit.

Mayor Ballard is proposing using additional money raised through the elimination of the homestead property tax credit, which will net the City about $7 million a year, on his preschool initiative. Ballard plans to turn that $5 million a year over to the unelected board of the United Way of Central Indiana, which the downtown mafia has been rest assured will deliver grant money to the education profiteers who are popping up all over the state and who are dumping big-time money in the campaign committees of corrupt pols like Mayor Greg Ballard. That money will be used to match nearly $25 million in federal and state money Gov. Mike Pence recently announced he would make available to Marion County for his preschool pilot program for children in low-income families.

Perhaps spending more money on preschool education is a swell idea, but it's not the responsibility of City-County government. I realize Mayor Ballard wants to create new programs and hand out money to campaign contributors for his re-election bid, but if Gov. Pence's Path to Quality program is worthwhile, then the school districts to whom we're paying precious property tax dollars every year should be funding it. They're not part of the equation because the education profiteers would be shut out, and that's what this is really all about. Ballard is already wasting millions of our tax dollars a year administering charter schools his office has approved for the benefit of his various campaign contributors, which under state law the City is entitled and should be assessing on the education profiteers. Now he wants to give away $5 million a year in new taxes and spending to an organization run by people who are not in any way accountable to the public or even representative of the taxpayers of Indianapolis.

Meanwhile, the Marion County Income Tax Council began deliberations last night on plans to raise your income taxes at least another $25 to $30 million a year supposedly to hire additional police officers on top of the $7 million a year they plan to raise through the elimination of the homestead property tax credit. That of course is a total lie because we know the downtown mafia's new criminal justice center to be built, operated and maintained by a foreign consortium starting next year will cost city-county taxpayers most of the promised new revenues in new annual outlays, leaving no additional revenues in the long-run to support hiring the 100, 200 or 300 new police officers these irresponsible public officials speak of funding on any given day with yet another tax increase as yet another diversion from their true motives for getting their hands on more of your tax dollars.

This is the only place you will get straight talk on what's really going on with your public finances. The management of the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis Business Journal and each of the local TV stations in town are all in bed with the downtown mafia on these bait-and-switch, shell game schemes to launder more of your tax dollars into the self-serving purposes of the ruling elite who could give a damn less about you or your children's station in life. They will feed you nothing but propaganda about these proposals and will silence anyone with a dissenting viewpoint. Wake up, people.

UPDATE: A reader points out that Ballard's plan is a retread of an idea first tossed out during the last mayoral election by his Democratic opponent, Melina Kennedy, to repurpose Rebuild Indy money to fund grants for early childhood education.

Man Wins $1 Million Playing Hoosier Lottery Twice Within Three Months

What are the odds? An Indianapolis man, Robert Hamilton, bought a $1 million lottery scratch-off ticket three months ago in Jasonville. This month, he purchased his second winning $1 million scratch-off ticket in Indianapolis. Lottery officials say the odds of winning the lottery's $120 million Cash Spectacular Scratch-off are one in more than two million. Hamilton's wife, Donna, says they are "just everyday, normal people." Robert Hamilton has no plans to stop working. He plans to use the money to grow his business after taking care of some financial obligations, purchasing a new home, taking a vacation and buying a new truck for his father. He also plans to buy a new motorcycle.

Public Safety Is Job One Mayor Plans To Make First Big Announcement On Public Safety In Seven Years

When Mayor Greg Ballard first ran for office in 2007, the first line of virtually every speech he gave during that campaign was to assure voters he planned to make public safety job one if we was elected mayor. Shortly after he began his first term in office, the City-County Council passed an ordinance shifting control of the  recently merged police department back to the mayor's office from the sheriff's office. Ballard quickly delegated control of the police department to his public safety director and thereafter had little to say on the subject. Despite having the benefit of the public safety tax enacted by his predecessor that contributed to his defeat in the 2007 election, Mayor Ballard actually oversaw a police department force that shrank rather than grew in numbers as he signed into law a series of new taxes to benefit the billionaire sports team owners and the downtown convention business while diverting more than a half billion dollars to the TIF slush funds used to finance the private real estate development projects of his campaign contributors, mostly in the downtown area. Morale within the police department is reaching an all-time low under the leadership of one of the most unqualified and incompetent police chiefs ever to hold the position. As he now prepares to seek a third term as mayor next year, he suddenly has a "big announcement" to make on public safety this morning. Will the voters be fooled again?

SuspiciousObserver's Mobile Observatory Journey Rolls Into Carmel

Regular readers of this blog know what a big fan I am of the work of Ben Davidson's Suspicious Observers in educating and enlightening the public on the powerful forces our Sun and space weather bring to bear on weather events we experience daily on Earth from earthquakes and volcanoes to severe weather, hurricanes and temperature extremes. Much to my delight, the 29-year old Columbus, Ohio resident and and his lovely wife, Katherine, rolled into Carmel's arts district today with their Mobile Observatory to greet his many area fans and well-wishers and engage in wide-ranging discussions with them that could have gone on for days. Davidson graciously took time out for a quick interview with me. The Mobile Observatory's journey across the United States and Canada began in earnest in April. Davidson's goal is to spread his love of science and the vast amount of knowledge he's gained about the impact of our solar system's Sun on daily weather events here on Earth.

In our interview, Davidson discusses his research and that of others that has completely debunked the global warming meme that fossil fuel emissions are largely responsible for climate changes we've experience on Earth in the industrialized era. For at least the past 17 years, Davidson says the data unequivocally proves that global temperatures have not been heating up on Earth despite the constant refrain we here from global warming theorists. To be sure, Davidson doesn't discount the need for vigilance in protecting our Earth from the harmful, adverse effects from manmade pollution, but he is critical of global warming theorists who ignore the evidence that the Sun has been weakening for a significant period of time now, which could just as well lead to another ice age.

Davidson's most fascinating work as of late has led him to develop a model for analyzing solar activity to predict major earthquake events with a relatively high degree of certainty. He shares his thoughts about the impact of the meltdown of three of six nuclear power plant reactors at Fukushima following the great Tsunami triggered by the powerful March 11, 2011 earthquake centered off the coast of Japan in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, Davidson shares with us his thoughts on the Chemtrail phenomenon, which he agrees with me are real.

God must have been listening to my interview with Davidson. Just as I arrived at my downtown home in the Lockerbie neighborhood this evening, the sky opened up and began pouring rain in my neighborhood. Our historic condominium building sustained substantial water damage from the brief but significant rainfall.

If you want to follow the journey of Davidson's Mobile Observatory across our country, you can follow it by clicking here. You can also follow Davidson's informative daily reports uploaded to his YouTube channel to keep up on the latest space weather and how it's impacting weather on Earth.

IMPD Officer's Drunk Driving Arrest Raises Questions

The Indianapolis Star's Jill Disis has a story discussing newly-filed court documents filed in the arrest of Officer Kevin Brown early Monday morning for operating a vehicle while intoxicated, his second such arrest in less than a year. Although her story doesn't seem to pose questions about the timing of his arrest and the administering of a blood-alcohol test, the recitation of the facts in her story certainly give rise to suspicions that his fellow IMPD officers may have taken steps aimed at protecting him from registering over the legal limit following his arrest, which should have been made by Morgan Co. authorities where he was driving at the time of his arrest but instead was made by IMPD.

Disis indicates that the court documents say that Officer Brown had gone out for drinks Sunday night after working all day at the Brickyard 400. He reportedly consumed six beers, including four, 20 oz. glasses of Blue Moon at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Plainfield. Brown and his girlfriend were dropped off at his home in Camby by a friend. Brown later decides to drive his police cruiser to a White Castle on Ind. 67 near the Marion, Hendricks and Morgan Co. lines around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. because he was hungry. This is where it gets confusing. At around 4:00 a.m., one to three hours after he left his home in Camby, someone places a 911 call to complain that a plain-clothes IMPD officer who appeared to be drunk was witnessed using his loud speaker and lights while going through the drive-thru at White Castle. Apparently, Brown was messing with some friends he recognized in a car in front of him. Before he left the White Castle, an occupant in the car in front of him got in Brown's police cruiser, and Brown drove the person to their home in Mooresville, which is in Morgan County.

An IMPD officer who responded to the 911 call figured out that the officer involved was Brown. Surely the officer knew about Brown's arrest for drunk driving last August. That officer told Brown to pull his car over. At that time, Brown was in Morgan County on Ind. 39. The officer arrested Brown around 5:00 a.m. and took him to IMPD's Southeast roll call site at 1150 S. Shelby Street; however, a blood-alcohol test was not administered on Brown until 6:41 a.m., almost two hours following his arrest and nearly three hours after the 911 call had been placed. Brown tested just over the legal limit at 0.09. IMPD spokesman Kendale Adams told Disis that "it is standard practice to take someone suspected of drunken driving to a place that has instruments for recording results taken from certified chemical tests." "Those tests, which give investigators evidence that can be submitted in court, are only available in certain locations, Adams said." But why was Brown's arrest handled by IMPD instead of Morgan Co. authorities since he was apprehended in Morgan Co.? And why did so much time pass before the BAC test was administered? When he tested over the legal limit, IMPD took Brown back to Morgan Co. where he was booked into the jail. The police report sounds kind of fishy. What do you think?

According to IMPD policy, an officer is subject to discipline whenever a blood-alcohol level of 0.02 or higher is registered at the time of his arrest. That discipline can go all the way up to firing. It's unclear what discipline Brown received following his drunk driving arrest last year, although he was reportedly placed on administrative leave immediately following his arrest.

UPDATE: Officer Brown has resigned according to WTHR.

Clark County Sheriff Arrested By FBI In Prostitution Sting

UPDATED: The two-term Democratic sheriff of Clark County, Indiana, Danny Rodden, has been a bad boy according to the FBI. A federal grand jury in New Albany has indicted Rodden on charges of attempted evidence destruction and making false statements to FBI agents during an investigation of his relationship with a prostitute. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, Sheriff Rodden is accused of providing law enforcement credentials to a prostitute last year so she could rent rooms at a Louisville hotel at government discounted rates. Rodden is accused of meeting the prostitute at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Louisville where he allegedly paid her $300 to perform oral sex. Rodden is not seeking re-election this year due to the state's constitutional term limits barring him from seeking a third consecutive term. Clark County Commissioners are huddling with their attorneys to determine how to proceed in handling Rodden's possible removal from office before the end of his term.

Last month, Boone Co. Sheriff Ken Campbell (R) was forced to step down due to his relationship with a prostitute. An Indianapolis Star report this evening cites a source as claiming the same woman involved in the investigation of Sheriff Campbell is at the center of the charges now brought against Sheriff Rodden. Campbell has still not been charged despite his resignation last month when law enforcement officials became aware of his relationship with the woman in question.

An interesting sidebar is a conversation I had last year with a source involved in the escort business after I questioned the practice of undercover Carmel police actually engaging in sex acts with prostitution targets before placing them under arrest. This source told me that undercover Indianapolis police had actually completed sex acts with an escort before arresting them. According to the source, the undercover officer would only engage in sex with the prostitution target if he was physically attracted to his target; otherwise, the arrest would be made as soon as an agreement had been reached to exchange sex for money.

Another law enforcement source contacted me after Indianapolis police busted up a high-end prostitution ring that was being operated out of the Sheraton Hotel at Keystone at the Crossing where johns were paying $550 an hour and up for the sexual services of very attractive escorts. The law enforcement official complained that very prominent persons in the Indianapolis community were known by police to be utilizing the services of these escorts, including one of Indianapolis' most prominent criminal defense attorneys, but none of the johns were arrested in the sting to protect these  high-profile clients from public embarrassment.

More On Arrest Of Carmel Doctor And Attorney In DEA Drug Sting

Current In Carmel's Adam Aasen has a lengthy editorial on last week's arrest of a Carmel-based drug addiction physician, Dr. Larry Ley, and criminal defense attorney Andrew Dollard, along with three other doctors and several clinic workers for operating a "cash and carry" drug distribution business for Suboxone, a controlled substance prescribed to persons with drug addiction problems that's well worth the read. Aasen writes that Dr. Ley had reached out in the recent past to the online news publication to speak out as an expert on drug addiction, and the newspaper had been urged on by Dollard to rely on Dr. Ley for expert opinions.

The editorial has an interesting discussion about the two's political relationships in Hamilton County. The newspaper spoke frequently to Dollard when he was a recent candidate in the Republican primary for a Hamilton County council seat being vacated by Meredith Carter, who endorsed Dollard in his unsuccessful bid against Fred Glynn, Jr. The editorial notes that Dollard had previously worked at a Nobesville substance abuse clinic while he was attending law school out-of-state in Michigan. He was later appointed as a public defender by Judge J. Richard Campbell after he finished law school and was admitted to practice law in Indiana in 2010. The editorial alludes to Dollard's backing by the Hamilton Co. GOP, although the party's executive director, Andrew Greider, sought to distance the party from Dollard according to Aasen. According to a probable cause affidavit in the case, Dollard was still working at Dr. Ley's clinic in Noblesville at the time of his arrest helping dispense Suboxone prescriptions to his patients.

Public Safety Director Criticizes Churches For Not Contributing To Public Safety Foundation Controlled By Downtown Mafia

The downtown mafia recently created yet another nonprofit organization about a year ago, the Indy Public Safety Foundation, to which part of the million bucks in crime prevention grant money doled out by the City of Indianapolis is funneled through the Central Indiana Community Foundation, which administers the grant money. Public Safety Director Troy Riggs sits on the board of the public safety foundation, along with the usual suspects who scheme to operate Indianapolis city-county government for their own self-enrichment purposes.  Comments Riggs attributed to Riggs in a recent column by the Star's Erika Smith has set off a bit of a firestorm among churches. It seems Riggs and the Indy Public Safety Foundation went around hitting up churches to kick in money for a program sponsored by the foundation to create make-work jobs for inner city teens to keep them busy so they won't be breaking into people's homes and shooting each other during their summer break from school. Here's what Riggs told Smith:

. . . We have a hard time working together for the common good because all of those things get in the way.

For an example, look no further than Riggs’ current source of ire — churches.

In preparation for the long-hyped plan to create jobs for teens who otherwise would be running the streets this summer, Riggs spent weeks canvassing the community for donations to the Indy Public Safety Foundation. He ended up with about $35,000, mostly from large institutions.

“We didn’t get a dime from any church,” he said. Instead what he got was resistance.

That meant a few hundred kids who wanted a job this summer couldn’t get one.

Next up, Riggs wants to help the thousands of teenage mothers who are trying to break the cycle of poverty — and violent crime — by finishing school, becoming self-sufficient and being good parents. He needs donations. But he’s not optimistic about that one either.

“I’m not making any political statements here. It’s just the way the world is,” Riggs said. “We have a group of wealthy, predominantly suburban churches that are against abortion. We have young ladies in the inner city that have been sexually assaulted — had a child because of that sexual assault because they made a decision to keep that child because, morally, they thought that’s what they needed to do.

“Why in the world aren’t these churches helping these young mothers?”

First of all, Riggs' job is to direct the various public safety agencies, not fundraising for a nonprofit foundation. Secondly, the foundation is trying to create entirely new programs that compete with existing government-funded and other nonprofit programs that have been around a lot longer than the past year, a number of which are administered by various church organizations. Only a few weeks ago the Indy Parks run by the administration in which Riggs serves complained that it was going to have to cut back hours of operations at the city's pools this summer because it couldn't find enough lifeguards to fill all of the summer job openings. Just who does Riggs think he is to demand that churches give money to a newly-created foundation with programs at cross-purposes with existing programs, and to seemingly blame them for the crime problems the city faces?

Riggs, by the way, gave an interview to radio talk show host Amos Brown. Ironically, Riggs had to call into the show from Texas where he was with his sons, who were attending a church-run sports camp in Texas where he formerly lived. He reiterated his concern that churches and businesses aren't doing enough to help combat the crime and violence in Indianapolis. If Riggs really gave a damn about public safety, he might ask one of his fellow board members, Pacers Sports & Entertainment's Jim Morris, to give back some of the tens of millions of dollars annually his billionaire boss is selfishly hogging for the Pacers before he criticizes others not on the public dole for not doing their fair share. Riggs might also stop wasting more taxpayers' money by creating a new high-paid position in his own office for retiring fire chief Brian Sanford, a position he said only a couple of years ago was not needed and spend that money instead on hiring more police officers. Interestingly, the $35,000 Riggs said the foundation raised was given to certain inner-city churches to run summer jobs programs, which might explain why some churches were reluctant in the first place to waste money on programs that have been exploited for personal use in the past by a few unscrupulous ministers who always seem to get their hands on this money.

IMPD Officer Arrested Second Time Within A Year For Operating A Vehicle While Intoxicated

A 16-year veteran of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Officer Kevin Brown, was arrested in Monrovia by Morgan County officials early Monday morning for operating a vehicle while intoxicated, his second such charge within the last year WRTV is reporting. He also faces an enhanced felony charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated with a prior conviction within the past five years. Officer Brown was driving his IMPD police cruiser at the time of his arrest according to WRTV. Five other IMPD officers have been arrested for drunk driving since Brown's first arrest last August.