Saturday, May 03, 2008

Bluewash

Anoka County, Minnesota Attorney Robert M.A. Johnson has decided to drop all charges against Robbinsdale, Minnesota Police Officer Landen Beard, who managed to get himself shot in a road-rage case allegedly of his own making:

"But officials ...say there was not enough evidence to get a conviction".

This, despite a grand jury's deciding to indict Beard on felony charges of making terroristic threats, and despite multiple uninvolved eyewitnesses to Beard's seeming criminal behavior, including one who testified that Beard shouted, quote, "I'm going to blow your fucking head off, I don't care if I have to go to jail" multiple times.

Of course, Scott Treptow, the peasant who had the temerity to defend himself and his family against an apparently out-of-control officer who was off duty and out of his jurisdiction while in street clothes and in a personal vehicle, will still have to go to trial on charges of his own in July, and now the indictment-free Beard can testify all day long without worrying about jeopardizing his own criminal case. Convenient, no? How strange that there's just no evidence to convict the apparent cop perpetrator in the case, while there's just oodles of evidence to convict the private citizen that had to defend himself against Beard, despite 911 traffic, eyewitness testimony and forensic information to the contrary.

This is an absolute travesty, in our opinion, and we will continue to follow this case closely to see that Scott Treptow gets the same justice that Landen "I'm A Special Person Because of What I Do For a Living" Beard seems to be getting.


UPDATE: My mistake, it's apparently Doug Johnson, the Washington County Attorney, who has decided that Officer Beard is going to go scot-free in the incident. My apologies for any confusion, as the two county officials share the same last name.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it's premature to conclude that both, err, Johnsons weren't involved.

Special treatment for Beard started early, and continued throughout, and there's no reason to believe that it ended before Doug Johnson's office decided not to prosecute, while the (nonexistent, but theoretical) possibility of a misdemeanor charge against Beard is being maintained to avoid compliance with the Data Practices act on the documentation around it.

bad5555 said...

Police officers get a away with to many wrong doings in todays society. The sad part about it is they get away with it because of thier title.(A bunch of bull crap) Don't get me wrong i appreciate what they do because if we did not have them then we would be in a world of hate and crime, but the cops that do us wrong they need to be convicted like everyone else, and not have any excuses.