Government Accountability

The title is a misnomer as the reality is that there is no such thing accountability on the local, state, or federal government levels. The entire concept is a fraud. Actors of state and federal government serve the state and federal governments, and not the people. There is not and never really has been accountability to the citizens. They do whatever the hell they want to do and answer to no one.


I am aware of so many different situations far beyond my own that it is overwhelming to think about. Orlando Sentinel columnists Scott Maxwell and Mike Thomas have been writing about various situations that demand answers as long as I've read their columns. Each usually writes about topics of significant importance, and usually sock puppets from the agency in question respond all over the forums with the usual stuff that's always in favor of the cops that killed citizens or car thieves or anyone they manage to justify killing in their own system-sucking minds.

This week Mike Thomas has been writing about the teen that was arrested for false imprisonment for attempting to help a little girl wandering alone at a store front. The minimum wage dolts at the store decided to call the police and the teen was arrested and interrogated ala Michael Crowe for hours. Mike Thomas brought it to our attention that the overzealous whack that arrested the poor teen is Richard Mankewich, now with the Sex Crimes Unit in Orange County, Florida. Mankewich is better known for his 1997 traffic stop of a Miami police major traveling on the turnpike through Central Florida. Campbell is black and the case had major racial overtones since there was no valid reason for the traffic stop to begin with. Before the stop was over, and Campbell was arrested on a list of false charges, I am sure that he considered it more than possible that the good old boy cops intended to kill him.


Mankewich is also known for his heated chase on foot in 2004 of Marvin Williams, also black, through a neighborhood near downtown Orlando. Mankewich claimed he thought the alleged suspect was pulling out a weapon and shot Williams dead, firing as he ran through the neighborhood. The facts here are that Williams was not a suspect in anything to begin with, only ran from Mankewich because of a driver's license issue, and was unarmed. But oh well – just another day for Richard Mankewich, whacko cop leftover from the Sheriff Beary era.

Scott Maxwell has written extensively about the case of John Preston and his magical dog. Preston is now deceased, but his legacy as an investigator with a dog that tracked evidence of nothing lives on. Preston helped the state with a list of cases by testifying in court and successfully railroaded a still unknown number of defendants. The Brevard/Seminole State Attorney, Norm Wolfinger, has so far held off any actual investigation as to which specific cases Preston testified in by claiming to conduct the investigation himself. Well, Wolfinger was with the Public Defender's Office back in the 1980s when all of this transpired, and I know that I wouldn't want an attorney this inept – he did nothing to help his clients and didn't dispute Preston's false testimony back then – investigating exactly how many cases there are.

In my opinion, what we really need is a list of defense attorneys that allowed Preston's testimony about his magical dog's tracking abilities to convict their clients, but there's not much doubt that our State Attorney, Wolfinger, would be on the list. Most of the cases are murder cases, and there was no direct evidence – just Preston's testimony. The two best known cases at this point are the William Dillon case and the Wilton Dedge case, and both men were released from prison after serving more than two decades thanks to Preston and his dumb dog, but mostly thanks to their own inept attorneys.

Anyway, Scott Maxwell has been a moving force in the demand for investigation of all Preston cases. He has also taken on the cause of demanding answers here: 100 bullets, 5 months, zero answers. Orange County deputies fired over 100 shots to stop a car thief, killing him and freaking out the entire neighborhood. Deputies claim that Torey Breedlove, the car thief, intended to kill them with his vehicle. I say that ramming his vehicle with one of theirs, or just blocking it in until a tank unit arrived (yes, we have tanks here), would have resulted in Breedlove's surrender. After all, it was only a vehicle theft charge – I can't imagine that he was willing to die over it.

While I certainly appreciate both Scott Maxwell and Mike Thomas for their demands of accountability in these situations and many others, I feel that it is a losing battle. There hasn't been accountability in this state for as long as I can remember, and my memory is sharp. My own civil suit never had a chance, and I suppose that the bright side to this is that they didn't murder me as they have so many others.

When researching for my own civil suit I came across so many unknown cases of people murdered by deputies that even I was shocked, and in all cases the suits were dismissed. One case involved a teen that was electrocuted (literally) by seven Orange County deputies. The unknown deputies jolted the teen a total of 19 times with Tasers, until he was dead on the ground. The suit was filed against former sheriff Kevin Beary and seven John Doe deputies. The deputies were "John Does" because Sheriff Beary buried and hid the police reports and the mother of the dead teen and her attorney couldn't even get the names or the police report. As usual, the case was dismissed, but is there any possible correct reason for seven deputies to literally electrocute an unarmed 150 lb. teenager?