This project kind of dissolved a few years ago, but I'm keen to start it back up again as a place to share research tools, conference information, methodological skills and practical advice for researchers and practitioners in the social/health sciences.If so, welcome to The Researcher's Companion.Original aims of the group here:
'Do you need help in planning a social or health research project? Are you struggling to find papers, critically evaluate evidence, or complete a study? Is research all new to you or are you in need of advice around managing a research team? Do you want help with applying for grants or writing academic papers? Maybe you want advice on dissertation writing....
This is a global group for anyone involved in social or health research. It's a place to ask questions about your research, get advice, start debates, archive resources and network.
Everyone's welcome. Whether you are new to research or a senior researcher. The group is open to those actively involved in research, or who use social or health research in their working practice.
The group is based around my book 'The Research Companion' which aims to make social and health research interesting, accessible, ethical and safe'.
Please join and share if you're interested and we can all start posting useful stuff and tackling your practical research problems - be they big or small.
Saturday, 11 February 2012
Breitbart to Occupy Protesters: 'Stop Raping People! You Freaks!' | Crooks and Liars
February 10, 2012 08:00 PMBreitbart to Occupy Protesters: 'Stop Raping People! You Freaks!'
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This just in from Andrew Metcalf. Around 150 or so Occupy members were protesting outside of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this evening when hotel security came outside with shields to keep the group away from the hotel.
Emily Crockett of Campus Progress was standing right next to Andrew (Metcalf) and began filming. (Thanks, Emily!)
The Occupy protesters are repeatedly chanting "Hey, hey! Ho, Ho! CPAC has got to go!" Suddenly, Andrew Breitbart jumps out from behind some shrubs and decides to take it upon himself to take the occupiers to task, and starts shouting "Behave yourself! Behave yourself! Behave yourself!" Before security escorts him away he continues screaming "Behave yourself! You're freaks! You're freaks and animals! Stop raping the people! You freaks! Stop raping the people!"
In response the occupiers start chanting "Racist! Sexist! Anti-gay! Rightwing bigot, go away!" As Breitbart disappears in the distance, you can hear a soft little female voice say "I've never raped anyone in my life!"
That's Andrew Breitbart, always on his best behavior.
Tony Ball: Community Wrecker of the Year Award Ceremony
Tony Ball, leader of Basildon Council, has been nominated for the award of Council Leader of the Year by the Local Government Information Unit "in recognition of his role spearheading the eviction of Travellers from Dale Farm". The award ceremony takes place on Monday 27 ...February at Westminster City Council.member.lgiu.org.uk/whatwedo/cllrawards/Pages/default.aspx.For more info, see:
https://http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/9509681.Tony_Ball_is_up_for_council_boss_of_year/
*
Not wanting to Tony Ball to miss out on ALL of the recognition due to him, we will be presenting him with an alternative 'Community Wrecker of the Year Award'.
In particular, the Dale Farm community would like to thank Tony Ball for his spectacular and unique achievements:
- CLARITY OF VISION: particularly his desire to deal with the problem that there are 'too many Travellers in Essex' [Tony Ball]
- OUTSTANDING COMMITMENT TO HIS ROLE: Tony Ball said he would resign if he did not evict Dale Farm - the eviction was about the continuation of his career and not the welfare of the community.
- EFFICIENCY SAVINGS: spending 'only' £7 million of public money on evicting the Dale Farm Travellers from the land that they own.
- HOUSING: making 83 families homeless, and refusing them to offer them alternative sites.
- PUTTING CHILDREN FIRST: protecting the interests of the first literate generation at Dale Farm by forcing them away from the local school.
- PROTECTING THE GREENBELT: Tony Ball transformed a beautiful home into a bombsite filled with sewage and old scrap.
- ACCOUNTABILITY: upholding the planning law by evicting Dale Farm and giving planning permission to a Dogs Home two months later in the same area of 'protected greenbelt'.
- STRONG RELATIONSHIPS WITH COMMUNITY GROUPS: 'allowing' the displaced Dale Farm residents to stay on the private road leading to their former home in unsanitary and cramped condition, cutting the electricity supply.
*
You are cordially invited to join us outside Westminster City Hall, for the presentation of the award, Tony Ball's acceptance speech and a rowdy reception.
Join us to let Tony Ball know what we think of his 'achievements' at Dale Farm.
The strange case of Davontae Sanford
The strange case of Davontae Sanford
We haven’t seen her here on the site for the better part of a year, but, for a quite a while, we were getting regular updates from a woman by the name of Taminko Sanford on the fate of her son, Davontae, a prisoner in the Michigan correctional system. Davontae, who was found guilty of murdering four people on Runyon Street in Detroit at the age of 14, as you might recall, was serving a 37 to 90 year sentence. The last time she wrote, if I remember correctly, it was to let us know that Davontae had lost the use of one of his ears, after having his head caught in his cell door. I’d wanted to write about Davontae’s case for quite a while now, but, given how confusing it is (it touches on everything from drug cartels and hit men to police corruption and prosecutorial misconduct), I never felt up to the task. Fortunately, though, Diane Bukowski at Voice of Detroit has taken a shot at it. Following are several clips from her article, which I think should give you some sense as to how complicated this case has become.
Here’s how it begins…
Davontae Sanford is now 18. He has spent the last four years of his short life in adult prisons, convicted of murdering four people on Runyon Street on Detroit’s east side on Sept. 15, 2007, when he was 14. He is 5’6,’’ slightly-built, blind in one eye, and “developmentally disabled.”
Shortly after Davontae was sentenced to 37 to 90 years in prison in 2008, Vincent Smothers, now 28, of Shelby Township, confessed to the Detroit police on videotape that he and a different man committed the murders as part of a series of drug-related hits. Highly placed members of the police department have testified they believe Davontae is innocent, including a former chief of homicide who says Davontae was with him at the time of the murders….
For some reason, though, the Smothers confession hasn’t been enough to free Davontae. This, of course, may have to do with the fact that Smothers now contends that his confessions were coerced. (Smothers, who claimed to have been a hit man for a drug cartel, is presently serving 50 to 100 years on nine counts of second-degree murder and several counts of assault with the intent to commit murder.) As for coerced statements, here’s a little more from Bukowski’s article:
…(Defense attorney Kim) McGinnis said that during (Davontae’s) questioning by police, neither his mother nor an attorney was present. Davontae signed and initialed a typewritten document drawn up by a detective, despite being blind in one eye, and according to McGinnis, reading at a third-grade level. There is no videotaped record of the confession except one in which the detective reads the confession back to him…
McGinnis said, “Davontae saw the police lights after the killings were discovered around the corner from his house, and walked up to the police to find out what was going on. They told him, ‘You know what’s going on,’ and took him downtown. Twenty hours later, he signed a confession which contained only the details that the police already knew at the time.”
In his confession Davontae claimed he committed the killings with a different weapon than the one used in the killings, McGinnis said. Ballistics evidence, delayed due to the shutdown of the Detroit police crime lab two years ago, is still to be introduced in upcoming evidentiary hearings.
“Smothers gave a confession that was very detailed and clear and implicated another man, Edward Davis,” McGinnis said. “The things he says he did are what the police say Davontae did. The woman in the back room who survived said the killer talked to her in a soft voice that was sounded 30-35 years old, but later changed her testimony to say it was an adolescent voice. In his confession, Smothers admitted to going back to speak to her”…
Now, it would seem, prosecutors are trying to place Davontae at the scene of the crime with Smothers. But, according to Detroit’s retired chief of homicide, Commander William Rice, this couldn’t have been the case, as Devontae was with him at the time of the murder. (Rice was then dating Davontae’s great-aunt, Cheryl Sanford.) Of course, cell tower records, we’re told, put Rice thirty miles away, in Mt. Clemens, at the time of the murder. So, I’m not sure where that leaves us.
And, then there’s the matter of the whistleblower case filed against the Kilpatrick administration by Detroit Police Department officer Ira Todd, who claims to have been demoted over his pursuit of the truth in this case. Here, again, is Bukowski:
…Detroit Police Department investigators Gerald Williams and Ira Todd, who helped take Smothers’ confession, have testified that Smothers admitted to the Runyon Street killings and stated that Davontae was not involved. Todd, who was also a member of the Violent Crimes Task Force, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Detroit’s former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
His lawsuit, filed by attorney Michael Stefani, says, “During the continuing investigation, it was determined that Smothers was a killer for hire for a notorious Detroit drug gang that regularly contracted for the murders of members of rival drug gangs as well as dissident members of their own organizations.”
In the lawsuit, Todd claims he was removed from the Task force, demoted and otherwise mistreated because his investigation into the Smothers’ killings led him to Smothers’ alleged accomplice, Ernest Davis, and to Davis’ cousin James Davis of Kentucky. Todd said James Davis claimed to have a “business relationship” with Kilpatrick, and that when he reported that, his investigation was shut down and he was transferred…
And then there’s the fact that Smothers was, not too long ago, found to be in possession of a cell phone, which, as you might imagine, is kind of difficult to do in prison without friends on the inside. Davontae’s mother, among others, think that this proves that Smothers is somehow connected to law enforcement officials. As Taminko points out:
…One of the people Smothers confessed to killing was Rose Cobb, wife of Detroit police sergeant David Cobb. Smothers said Cobb hired her to kill his wife outside a CVS pharmacy on E. Jefferson near their home, as she waited in the car while her husband was in the store.
Although the police department arrested Cobb, (Prosecutor Kym) Worthy never charged him in the murder. Cobb was later found hanging from a tree, an apparent suicide…
Oh, and, then, just a couple of weeks ago, Russell Marcilis Sr., the 67-year-old father of Detroit homicide detective LaTonya Brooks, who worked with Ira Todd on the Smothers case, was murdered at his home in a firebombing attack.
So, what do you make of all that?
In a city where something like 8 out of 10 murders go unsolved, I doubt we’ll ever really know.
[If you like, you can join the Free Davontae movement on Facebook.]
FREE DAVONTAE SANFORD! | VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought
FREE DAVONTAE SANFORD!
- Taminko Sanford (center), mother of Davontae, with his family outside court July 29, 2010/Photo Diane Bukowski
Serving 37-90 years since age 14 for four drug-related murders, despite confession by another man, police testimony that he is innocent
By Diane Bukowski
DETROIT – Davontae Sanford is now 18. He has spent the last four years of his short life in adult prisons, convicted of murdering four people on Runyon Street on Detroit’s east side on Sept. 15, 2007, when he was 14. He is 5’6,’’ slightly-built, blind in one eye, and “developmentally disabled.”
Vincent Smothers
Shortly after Davontae was sentenced to 37 to 90 years in prison in 2008, Vincent Smothers, now 28, of Shelby Township, confessed to the Detroit police on videotape that he and a different man committed the murders as part of a series of drug-related hits. Highly placed members of the police department have testified they believe Davontae is innocent, including a former chief of homicide who says Davontae was with him at the time of the murders.
“Davontae’s a warm, loving person who the kids always said was my favorite,” said his mother Taminko Sanford. “He was born on Thanksgiving Day, and I always felt he was my gift from God.”
Davontae is her first son, the second oldest of five children, and she along with his stepfather and siblings have waged a relentless campaign since his arrest to free him, garnering broad-ranging support.
Davontae at 14
“Davontae was about to start the ninth grade at Osborn High School the day after his arrest,” Ms. Sanford said. “He loves rap and computers. He is so close to his brother and his three sisters. His brother has all Davontae’s letters from prison pasted up all over his bedroom walls, and his little sister has all his childhood photos on hers.”
Davontae has 1249 Facebook supporters from all over the world, including the United Kingdom and Sweden. He has support from media personalities like Bill Proctor of Detroit’s Channel 7, who runs his own Innocence Project. His case has received extensive and generally sympathetic coverage from the Associated Press and Detroit’s daily media.
The Rest of Their Lives (sentencing children to life without parole in the U.S.) Human Rights Watch
Elish Delaporter of the UK is following his case on her MySpace website, part of her campaign against this country’s exclusive practice of sentencing juveniles to life in prison without parole. That policy is expressly condemned by the UN Commission on the Rights of the Child.
But in a seemingly never-ending series of evidentiary hearings since July, 2009, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is vigorously fighting Davontae’s motion for a new trial, citing what his defense attorney Kim McGinnis calls a “classic false confession.”
During the most recent hearing Jan. 14, in front of Davontae’s trial judge Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Brian Sullivan, Assistant Prosecutor Joseph Puleo once again ignored another of McGinnis’ requests that the prosecution grant “use” immunity to Smothers. That would allow him to testify in court about his role in the murders without fear of having the prosecution use his testimony to charge him in the cases.
Wayne Co. Prosecutor Kym Worthy
Puleo said he is worried about Smothers’ constitutional rights, because he could face life without parole if he admits to the killings.
Smothers is already serving 50-100 years in maximum security on nine counts of second-degree murder and three counts of assault with intent to commit murder, along with various felony charges, stemming from other cases in which he testified he was a hit man for a drug ring.
McGinnis called the plea deal for such a number of hit killings “virtually unheard of,” and Proctor called it “the deal of the century” in news coverage of the sentencing on July 23 of this year.
Judge Craig Strong at Smothers sentencing
Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Craig Strong, who sentenced Smothers, even pleaded with him, “You cannot bring back those who were killed but you can correct wrongs for those who were wrongfully convicted of killing people that you killed.”
Proctor reported that Strong “seemed highly concerned about a pre-sentence report that indicated Smothers had confessed to murders that were not a part of the plea deal. It spelled out in part how Smothers had confessed to the murder of four people on Runyon Street on Detroit’s east side and how 16-year-old Davontae Sanford was in prison for those killings.”
The Associated Press quoted Smothers’ attorney at the time, Gabi Silver, saying, “The police have his statements. It’s not him who doesn’t want to correct things.”
A You Tube videotape of portions of the sentencing, along with others related to the Smothers cases, can be viewed at http://wn.com/%22vincent_smothers%22.
Smothers is now contending that his confessions in the cases for which he was convicted were coerced, and has appealed. Among his contentions is that the police threatened to charge his wife if he did not confess. He is represented by Attorney Mitchell Foster, also of the State Appellate Defenders’ Office.
The prosecutor’s office does not appear so concerned about Davontae’s constitutional rights.
Davontae in court at age 17
McGinnis said that during the child’s questioning by police, neither his mother nor an attorney was present. Davontae signed and initialed a typewritten document drawn up by a detective, despite being blind in one eye, and according to McGinnis, reading at a third-grade level. There is no videotaped record of the confession except one in which the detective reads the confession back to him.
“It was a classic false confession,” McGinnis said. “Davontae saw the police lights after the killings were discovered around the corner from his house, and walked up to the police to find out what was going on. They told him, ‘You know what’s going on,’ and took him downtown. Twenty hours later, he signed a confession which contained only the details that the police already knew at the time.”
Robinson house on Runyon Street where killings occurred
The victims in the killing were “Michael Robinson, 33; D’Angelo McNoriell and Brian Dixon, who were in their early 20s, and Nicole Chapman, 25. Valerie Glover, 30, was critically wounded but survived the attack. A 7-year-old boy was found unharmed.” according to published reports. In his confession Davontae claimed he committed the killings with a different weapon, an M-14, than the ones used in the killings, an AK 47 and a .45 caliber pistol, according to McGinnis.
“Those are the weapons that Vincent Smothers uses, and the whole crime is his exact MO,” McGinnis said in published remarks.
Ballistics evidence, delayed due to the shutdown of the Detroit police crime lab two years ago, is still to be introduced in upcoming evidentiary hearings.
Three accomplices are also identified in Davontae’s confession, but they were never charged, leaving a question as to how one child could kill four people in an alleged drug house.
“Smothers gave a confession that was very detailed and clear and implicated another man, Edward Davis,” McGinnis said. “The things he says he did are what the police say Davontae did. The woman in the back room who survived said the killer talked to her in a soft voice that was sounded 30-35 years old, but later changed her testimony to say it was an adolescent voice. In his confession, Smothers admitted to going back to speak to her.”
She added, “The prosecutor has spent a lot of energy trying to tie Smothers to Davontae, but has never been able produce any such evidence. It is absurd to think that professional contract killers were going to allow a 14-year-old boy to tag along with them.”
Detroit’s retired chief of homicide, Commander William Rice, who spent 25 years on the force, was dating Davontae’s great-aunt Cheryl Sanford at the time of the Runyon Street killings. Rice testified Oct. 28, 2009 that he was with Davontae at her house at the time of the murders, from 8 p.m. to 11:45 p.m., and that he left to take another man home to Mt. Clemens and then take Davontae home.
How much training does a cell tower forensics expert need?
But during the November hearing, Assistant Appeals Prosecutor Patrick Muscat challenged Rice’s testimony.
A Detroit police investigator, Arthur Wimmer, testified. He said he is assigned to the Violent Crimes Task Force composed of the DPD, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the MDOC, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, and other agencies at all levels.
Wimmer said he had 120 hours (three weeks) of specialized training in cell tower forensics conducted by the FBI and private corporations, and was allowed to testify as an expert witness. Michigan currently has no licensing process for such experts.
Wimmer claimed Rice’s cell phone records showed he was in Mt. Clemens, a city about 30 miles east of Detroit, at 11:18 p.m. the night of the murders.
McGinnis challenged cell tower testimony as sometimes inaccurate. She said later that the testimony may have shown that Rice was off base in his exact estimates of time, but did not discount Davontae’s presence with his family for most of the time prior to the killings.
“He would not have had time to prepare, or to hook up with Smothers and get to the site to commit the murders,” McGinnis said.
Thumb Correctional Facility houses many younger prisoners, is Security Level 2
A Department of Corrections official also testified about alleged “gang” materials and graffiti found in a search of Davontae’s cell in the Thumb Correctional Facility. The official claimed scars on Davontae’s arms were remnants of gang tattoos.
“Anything that happened after the night of the murders is not relevant,” McGinnis objected. But Judge Sullivan allowed the testimony to go on record.
“The tattoos were about the movie ‘Bloodline’,” Ms. Sanford said. “Both Davontae and his brother had them. They just stand for their connection to each other, nothing else. They were separated from each other for part of their lives.”
In addition to Rice, Detroit Police Department investigators Gerald Williams and Ira Todd, who helped take Smothers’ confession, have testified that Smothers admitted to the Runyon Street killings and stated that Davontae was not involved. Todd, who was also a member of the Violent Crimes Task Force, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Detroit’s former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick
His lawsuit, filed by attorney Michael Stefani, says, “During the continuing investigation, it was determined that Smothers was a killer for hire for a notorious Detroit drug gang that regularly contracted for the murders of members of rival drug gangs as well as dissident members of their own organizations.”
In the lawsuit, Todd claims he was removed from the Task force, demoted and otherwise mistreated because his investigation into the Smothers’ killings led him to Smothers’ alleged accomplice, Ernest Davis, and to Davis’ cousin James Davis of Kentucky. Todd said James Davis claimed to have a “business relationship” with Kilpatrick, and that when he reported that, his investigation was shut down and he was transferred.
Neither AP’s Muscat nor Puleo would comment outside of court on the case.
Assistant Prosecutor Maria Miller, who is chief communications officer for Worthy’s office, said, “Because the case remains in progress we will not comment on issues directly related to it outside of court. It was appropriate for the APA handling the case to also not comment outside of court. The case is in open court and our assistant prosecutor is responding in court.””
Just prior to Smothers’ sentencing, the jail was locked down after guards discovered that he had been able to obtain a cell phone while locked up.
Rose Cobb
Taminko Sanford says she believes that may indicate he had connections with law enforcement officials. One of the people Smothers confessed to killing was Rose Cobb, wife of Detroit police sergeant David Cobb. Smothers said Cobb hired her to kill his wife outside a CVS pharmacy on E. Jefferson near their home, as she waited in the car while her husband was in the store.
Although the police department arrested Cobb, Worthy never charged him in the murder. Cobb was later found hanging from a tree, an apparent suicide.
Miller did not respond to a question regarding whether Smothers may have been a hit man for corrupt police officers.
During the hearing Nov. 23, Davontae appeared polite and happy to see his mother and other family members, but there was an air of quiet desperation about him.
Sanford said Jan. 12 that she was very worried about Davontae because she had not heard from him for two weeks. He was recently transferred from Michigan’s Thumb Correctional Facility, which houses a large number of younger prisoners, to the Michigan Reformatory at Ionia, with Level Four prisoners over the age of 17. In Michigan’s prisons, Level Five is the maximum security grade.
Michigan Reformatory at Ionia houses males 17 and older, Levels II and IV
“Davontae used to call me every day, sometimes more than once a day,” Sanford said. “I’ve been praying to God to let me hear from him so that I know he is OK. It’s a new atmosphere for him and I’m so worried because I’m afraid that he is losing hope. He can get very depressed.”
Davontae’s next court hearing is tentatively set for January 28, 2010 at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit.
Davontae’s Facebook Page is Free Davontae Sanford at http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=108713425818908.
Occupy Central - DUE TO AN UNINTENDED OFFENSE TO ANONYMOUS... WE WILL BE SUSPENDING ACTIVITY... HOPEFULLY TEMPORARILY. WE INTEND TO TRY AND MAKE AMENDS... BECAUSE WE HAVE GREAT RESPECT FOR ANONYMOUS. WE DIDN'T MEAN TO PISS THEM OFF. PLEASE STAY TUNED
WE DIDN'T MEAN TO PISS THEM OFF.PLEASE STAY TUNED...
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