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NEWS FLASH: NEWEST ST.PAUL COMMUNITY FORUMN4ALL



http://spcf.onlinegroups.net/r/post/1PnJBXHen5rjGSLbSHBVUF

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saint paul community forum Welcome to the new St.Paul Community Issues Forum

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• There are 12 posts — by 6 authors — in this topic.
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  From	File	Date
  Marty Owings	Screen shot 2011-01-19 at 3.01.20 PM.jpg	Jan 19 15:10 CST
  Sharon4Anderson	WritProA06-1150_30Jun06B.pdf	11:29 CDT

• Latest post made by Sharon4Anderson at 11:29 CDT

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From: Marty Owings Date: Jan 14 14:25 CST

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This new site is direct response to the desire for a more inclusive, diverse,
democratic and transparent issues forum for the citizens of Saint Paul.

We invite you to help us shape the forum by sharing your ideas and thoughts on
this thread.

We are in the process of soliciting members and volunteers to help organize,
moderate and govern the forum. If you are interested in any of those roles,
please contact either Jan Carr or myself.

Jan Carr - Administrator
jan (at) carrcreatives (dot) com
Marty Owings - Co-Adminstrator
owings1064 (at) hotmail (dot) com

Welcome to what we hope will be a vibrant, vigorous and respectful online space
for civic discourse.
    

From: tjswift Date: Jan 14 17:06 CST

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Hiya Marty!

I think this is an idea that is long overdue, and am looking forward to
substantive debates with lefties and exchanges of ideas with fellow
conservatives....without having to worry I might offend any children.

I'll be passing this URL along to members of the MOB which should guarantee
lively, intelligent and witty dialogue!
    

From: Marty Owings Date: Jan 14 17:14 CST

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Thanks Tom - I hope we can live up to the principles we argued so strongly for
while still being inclusive enough to have those, "substantive debates" you
mention.

I appreciate your joining the group and look forward to your contributions.
    

▶

Marty

From: Bob Johnson Date: Jan 14 21:19 CST

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The rules are adequate. The rules will maintain civility and not hinder free
speech.

When I seen the set up of this page I was apprehensive about posting. Looks a
lot like early days over at that other forum. :) It will take some getting use
to but I will get over it.

Thank you Marty and Jan!
    

From: dann.dobson Date: Jan 14 22:12 CST

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I want to thank Marty and Jan for creating this group. Hopefully we can
recreate some of the original energy of SPIF and restore a truly free exchange
of ideas.

How refreshing not to be under the thumb of Rick Mons and having to look over
my shoulder every time I post.

Dann Dobson
Summit Hill
    

From: Eric Mitchell Date: Jan 15 11:18 CST

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Thanks for the invite.
I look forward to that participation.

Eric Mitchell
East Side
    

From: Marty Owings Date: Jan 15 11:43 CST

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Hi Eric - Welcome to the Forum. Hong Kong Fuey...lol. One thing could you add
your last name to your profile. It's a requirement here.
Looking forward to your contributions.
Marty Owings
    

From: tjswift Date: Jan 15 18:10 CST

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One thing Marty, you might want to find another picture of yourself. You look
like a mug shot of Dutch Shultz....although maybe that's the effect you are
aiming for! ;-)
    

From: Marty Owings Date: Jan 15 19:57 CST

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Good point Tom. This is the pic I used for my Capitol Press credentials and
they said something similar :-)
    

From: tjswift Date: Jan 19 12:57 CST

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Marty, how do we start new topic threads? I'd like to address Coleman's
response to the GOP's first swipe at cutting the budget.

Statement from Mayor Coleman on Republican Budget Proposal

SAINT PAUL - Mayor Chris Coleman released this statement today on SF60:

"Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in the legislature has forgotten that
the campaign season is over and the time for thoughtful consideration in
solving Minnesota's challenges is here. The hundreds of cities throughout this
state and the businesses in them are the economic lifeblood of Minnesota and
they rely on safe streets and reliable infrastructure to do their business.
The Republicans at the Capitol are suggesting we do nothing more than continue
the failed policies left behind by our previous Governor which is to shift the
funding burden for police, fire and public infrastructure to property owners in
cities across Minnesota."
    

From: Marty Owings Date: Jan 19 15:10 CST

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Hi Tom,
There is a little yellow dialog box at the bottom of the post list, can you see
it?
If so just click "post to a new topic".
Let me know if that works?
Otherwise call me and we can walk through it quick.
Cheers,
Marty
Martin Owings612.599.3030





> From: 
> Subject: Re: [saint paul community forum] Welcome to the new St.Paul
Community Issues Forum
> To: 
> Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:00:01 +1300
>
> Marty, how do we start new topic threads? I'd like to address Coleman's
response to the GOP's first swipe at cutting the budget.
>
> Statement from Mayor Coleman on Republican Budget Proposal
>
> SAINT PAUL - Mayor Chris Coleman released this statement today on SF60:
>
> "Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in the legislature has forgotten
that the campaign season is over and the time for thoughtful consideration in
solving Minnesota's challenges is here. The hundreds of cities throughout this
state and the businesses in them are the economic lifeblood of Minnesota and
they rely on safe streets and reliable infrastructure to do their business.
The Republicans at the Capitol are suggesting we do nothing more than continue
the failed policies left behind by our previous Governor which is to shift the
funding burden for police, fire and public infrastructure to property owners in
cities across Minnesota."
    

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>
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The following file was added to this topic:

Screen shot 2011-01-19 at 3.01.20 PM.jpg (65KB)

From: Sharon4Anderson Date: 11:29 CDT

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Thanks, Will Post when I have time  Files are extensive re: St.Paul City
Council  www.sharon4council.blogspot.com Here are Briefs.
Used for educational purposes Title 26 501c3
Sharon is an advocate for forensic files www.scribd.com/sharon4anderson
www.slideshare.com/sharon4anderson  Free Programs
www.facebook.com/sharon4anderson and www.twitter.com/sharon4anderson
    

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WritProA06-1150_30Jun06B.pdf (190KB)

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CitySt.Paul Police Brutality_PayOut

St. Paul police brutality claim being settled for $270,000
Council expected to approve $270K payment to woman
By Frederick Melo fmelo@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 03/08/2011 11:40:18 PM CST
Scrool to next post for pdf files

The city of St. Paul will pay a St. Paul woman $270,000 to settle an alleged case of police brutality under a proposed agreement expected to be approved today by the city council.
The plaintiff, Cosetta Morris, 35, maintained that an officer used excessive force when he attempted to break up her domestic dispute with her roommate and tossed Morris across the room, causing her arm to go through a glass door. She needed surgery to repair tendon damage. The city has admitted no wrongdoing.
The payout is one of St. Paul's larger, though not the largest, settlements of a police misconduct case.
The incident occurred March 15, 2009, and Morris was later convicted of interfering with a 911 call, a misdemeanor.
Her roommate had called police for help, and officer Adam Bailey and his partner arrived at their Minnehaha Avenue apartment at 9 p.m.
What happened after that depends upon which side you ask.
According to Morris' civil suit, officers arrived to find the roommate seated on a couch, with Morris pressed against her, holding her in place and attempting to remove a ring from her finger. "(The roommate) was screaming at this time," reads Morris' complaint.
Bailey told Morris to get off her, and according to the suit, "before (Morris) could comply, (Bailey) forcefully grabbed her from behind and violently and unlawfully flung her to the floor in an uncontrolled manner."
As a result, her left arm went through a glass pane of a French door leading

to an adjoining room. Bailey then turned her over, placed his knee on her back and "held her face down as she continued to bleed," the suit states.
His partner escorted the roommate from the apartment, and Morris was taken to Regions Hospital in St. Paul to be treated for damaged tendons. She underwent surgery several days later. Morris, a pension processor, had to miss months of work because of her injuries and incurred more than $21,000 in medical expenses, the suit states.
She had sought $1 million in damages and attorney's fees. She accused Bailey's partner of trying to convince the roommate that Morris had fallen through the glass as a result of tripping or struggling with Bailey. She also said Bailey's partner "further attempted to cover up (Bailey's) unlawful behavior by reporting that (Morris) was choking (her roommate)."
In a June 2009 response to the suit, city attorneys maintained that Morris' "alleged injuries and any damages sustained by (Morris) were proximately caused by her own acts or misconduct."
From his vantage point, Bailey maintained he could not tell whether Morris was removing her roommate's ring or doing something worse. As for later holding Morris down, that was a result of the fact she was struggling with him, according to the court filings.
"Officer Bailey alleges that at some point after Plaintiff sustained the injury to her arm, he had to turn Plaintiff over and place his knee in her back to gain control of her," the response states.
John Keating, a police spokesman, said the police department reviewed the facts of the case, and no internal disciplinary action was taken.
In June 2009, Morris was charged with interfering with a 911 call, fifth-degree assault and disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors. She pleaded guilty to interfering with a 911 call in October 2009 and was sentenced to a day in jail and one year of probation in addition to domestic abuse counseling and anger management treatment. The two other charges were dismissed.
A domestic abuse "no contact" order was lifted in December. Morris was represented by the law firm of Flynn, Gaskins and Bennett.
Only once has the city paid out a larger sum to settle a police misconduct case. In December 2005, the city paid $400,000 to the family of Charles Craighead, who was fatally shot by a police officer as he struggled with a carjacker in December 2001.
The previous record settlement was in 2004, when police paid $270,000 to Robert Kearney, who said officers broke his leg while taking him from a sober house to a detox center in May 2002.
Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.

Sharon4Anderson
Saint Paul, MN

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Judge it!
#42
13 min ago

Thanks for publishing as NO PUBLIC HEARING However the Public must know that Judge Ostby signed the "Order" for Payout in Feb. 2011 pdf files at www.sicko-citystpaul.blogspot.com and RES 11-412 Version: 1 Name: Settlement between the City of Saint Paul and Cossetta R. Morris Type: Resolution Status: Mayor's Office In control: City Council Final action: 3/9/2011 Title: Approval of the settlement agreement and release between the City of Saint Paul and Cosetta R. Morris. Sponsors: Dave Thune Attachments: Settlement Agreement and Release.pdf, Judge'sApproval.pdf, Financial Analysis.pdf, Administrative Code 3.02.pdf History (1)Text

City of Saint Paul - File #: RES 11-412

City of Saint Paul - File #: RES 11-412

File #:

RES 11-412 Version: 1

Name:

Settlement between the City of Saint Paul and Cossetta R. Morris

Type:

Resolution

Status:

Mayor's Office

In control:

City Council

Final action:

3/9/2011

Title:

Approval of the settlement agreement and release between the City of Saint Paul and Cosetta R. Morris.

Sponsors:

Dave Thune

Attachments:

Settlement Agreement and Release.pdf, Judge'sApproval.pdf, Financial Analysis.pdf, Administrative Code 3.02.pdf

Racially Based Code Enforcement Case reaches US Supreme Court

Racially Based Code Enforcement Case reaches US Supreme Court

It is a sad reality that many communities use code enforcement to promote an illegal racially motivated agenda. The ACLU outlines their view of the problem in an article, Renting While Black.

We see it here in Milwaukee where at least one Alderman appears to use Aldermanic Service Requests in a way that only the ku klux klan would be proud of.

Even if so called community leaders are not actively involved in the racially motivated inspections, a complaint based code enforcement that permits anonymous exterior complaints opens the door for neighbors to promote their biases through code enforcement

There have been a number of federal lawsuits over the years alleging racially motivated code enforcement. A list of some of those cases can be found here.

Typically if a case gets to the point that the property owners may win the municipality quickly and quietly settles. Usually not for the full compensation for the harm caused by the racially motivated enforcement. But lets face it, it takes a lot of financial and mental tenacity for a small landlord to slug it out against cities with seemingly endless resources to defend their bad behavior.

However there is one such case that the landlords have held on for something like eight years now. After the Federal Eighth CIrcuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion favorable to the landlords, the city of St Paul has petitioned the US Supreme Court for review (link to petition for review). You can read the amended original complaint that started this case here.

If the Supreme Court hears this case it will have a huge impact on all landlords who follow fair housing practices, i.e. don’t reject tenants tenants simply because they are a different color, nationality, religion, etc than their neighbors. One must really respect these property owners for the amount of sacrifice they have made to get this far.

The case alleges that St Paul housing inspection programs were used in a racially motivated manner to force racial minorities out of St Paul and that such actions violated the Fair Housing rights of the occupants. A very interesting point is a number of city employees including inspectors are on the hook personally in this suit. From a legal perspective they must defend themselves as they and their employer have disparate interest; for the city to win if the allegations are proven true they must claim rogue employees acting outside of the law. For the inspectors to win they must argue that they were following instructions that they believed were legal. The inspectors may have a hard time claiming ignorance however as the owners had provided the inspectors with documentation that the inspectors’ acts were contrary to Fair Housing, yet the inspectors continued with their agenda. At some point the inspectors will have to name their union as third party defendants as the union failed to stop management from allowing/forcing them to violate the rights of the tenants and owners

From my conversations with two of the plaintiffs over the past six or seven years they seem to be just a handful of hard working landlords who independently found themselves on the losing end of government behaving badly. The current case is a consolidation of three or four cases that started independent of each other, but the claims were so similar that the federal court combined them.

Most of the cases claimed RICO (racketeering) on the part of the city employees. The RICO elements were dismissed due to procedural errors. I’m certain that some future case will go to trial on that issue, whether in St Paul or somewhere else.

Posted in Code Enforcement, Fair Housing, Government Behaving Badly 1 Comment »

DeathCertificates TenantinCommon Bill,BerniceA.Peterson

Corruption in the current Minnesota Office of the Attorney General

LennyAnderson v CitySt.Paul_JoelEssling_DSI

http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/103106699.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

Home Local + Metro St. Paul

Jerry Holt, Star Tribune

Lenny Anderson, 70, with his friend Carol Berg at his home in St. Paul, said a camper, a boat and a water scooter were among items hauled away by the city from his backyard. He estimated the loss at $75,000 to $100,000 and said he plans to sue. He had a similar run-in with the city in 1999.

Hauled away in St. Paul

A St. Paul man says the city overreacted when cleaning up his property. The city says ample warning was given.

By CHAO XIONG, Star Tribune

Last update: September 17, 2010 - 8:00 AM

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Lenny Anderson’s backyard

Lenny Anderson, Star Tribune

Lenny Anderson, Carol Berg

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It's hard to know when things went wrong at Lenny Anderson's home on McKnight Road in St. Paul.

The 70-year-old was storing a friend's camper, boat, water scooter and other items in his heavily wooded backyard when someone complained. The city got involved, and after a year of bickering, 10 Dumpsters and a recycling truck's worth of Anderson's and his friend's belongings were hauled out last week, bound for the landfill.

Anderson asserts the city overreacted; the city says it had to take whatever actions were necessary to clean up the property because of Anderson's continued violation of city ordinance.

"I feel very violated," said Anderson, who had a similar run-in with the city about a decade earlier. "They could've taken [some of the belongings] to the impound lot. They're inflexible."

After two complaints, the city inspected Anderson's land in April 2009 and asked him to clean it up. Anderson challenged the complaint, and appealed his case from the city level up to the state Supreme Court, which refused to hear it.

Things came to a head nearly a year -- and several warnings -- later when Anderson failed to meet the city's deadline, and the city decided it had to take matters into its own hands.

"He had his chance to remove it to somewhere compliant, and he failed to do so," said Angie Wiese, spokeswoman for the city's Department of Safety and Inspection. "The order [to clean up the property] says we will remove [items] from your property, not we will remove it and give it back to you later."

After exhausting his appeals, Anderson began clearing six large shipping containers, wood and steel beams from his backyard, which is not visible from the road. He asked for more time in July. The city agreed, but reinspections on Aug. 3 and Aug. 16 didn't show enough improvement, according to court documents.

The city sent Anderson a letter on Aug. 20, announcing its intention to "remove all items found not to be in compliance" on Sept. 8.

When the cleanup crew showed up, it was the manner of removal that agitated Anderson. He watched in horror as an excavator smashed, grabbed and dropped a boat, water scooter, camper, several metal trailers and other belongings into large Dumpsters.

Anderson and his attorney, James Roban, said it was the destruction and disposal of perfectly functional belongings that was unnecessarily malicious. They said that although they expected the cleanup crew, they didn't know so much property would be thrown away.

The city also discarded seemingly innocuous items, Anderson said, including a cast iron planter in his front yard that contained perennials, a park bench in the woods behind his home, $3,500 in firewood, a garden hose, and a large garbage can full of sand and salt for the winter.

Wiese said the only things the city impounds are titled, functioning vehicles. A truck was impounded and later reclaimed by Anderson.

"He had an opportunity to remove [his property] as he wanted," she said.

Anderson and the city went through a similar incident in 1999 involving some of the same items. The city hauled away some items that Anderson later reclaimed. The city billed him $25,000 for that job. It has estimated the most recent one at $30,000.

Anderson said he plans to sue the city for damages. He estimates his loss at $75,000 to $100,000.

"It says they can remove things," Roban said. "It doesn't say they can destroy anything. I don't think it's reasonable to destroy everything."

Chao Xiong • 612-270-4708