Trial begins this week in Superior Court for Capt. Gualter Botas, 39, of Pawtucket, and Lt. Kenneth J. Viveiros, 56, of North Providence. The two ACI Correctional Officers face seven counts and four counts, respectively, of simple assault involving four inmates.
Edward Fitzpatrick reports for the ProJo:
During Superior Court testimony on Wednesday and Thursday, former inmate Matthew S. Gumkowski testified that Botas “sucker-punched” him after he made a vulgar suggestion to the captain on June 8, 2005.
At the time, Gumkowski, 27, of East Greenwich, was serving sentences on drug delivery and weapon possession charges, and he was caught with a $20 bill at the minimum-security facility. Paper currency is prohibited at the prison unless inmates are on work release. […] Gumkowski said the punch landed near his right eye and cheek bone and he began bleeding. “It was split open,” he said. “He threw some napkins at me and said, ‘Go ahead and do something and I’ll call a code.’ […]
In February 2007, District Court Judge Madeline Quirk found Botas, Viveiros and correctional officer Ernest Spaziano guilty of assaulting Gonzalez, an inmate who was serving a sentence on a drug conviction. The three officers appealed their convictions to Superior Court. Spaziano, 40, of Burrillville, was the first to go to trial in Superior Court, and earlier this year he was found not guilty of assaulting Gonzalez. Now, Botas and Viveiros are receiving a Superior Court trial. Originally, the trial was to include allegations that Botas forced inmate Michael Walsh to taste his own feces.
But Michael J. Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said Procaccini granted a defense motion to sever that allegation from the others. He said the judge told prosecutors they could either try all the allegations at once while not using evidence that Walsh was “allegedly made to eat his own feces” — or they could use that evidence and try the Walsh allegation separately. Prosecutors chose to have a separate trial.
So, yeah. COs, meet my friend, Justice. Play nice, boys.
Calling all teachers! Are you feeling an uncontrollable impulse to text your 13-year old student/s and let them know the ways in which you are in love with them? Stop! It will backfire, as the above video illustrates.
In other sexy-texting-related news, embattled Detroit Mayor and Sexy-Texter
Kwame Kilpatrick will apparantly attempt to argue in court that no one can prove that someone didn’t hack into his phone and send multiple sexy-texts to his chief-of-staff/lover. Good luck, Kwame!
Ericka J. Atwell, a senior at Rhode Island College, was
impeached from her position as the school’s Student Community Government Deputy Speaker in March, but she’s decided to give politics another go…with more on the line. After having been found guilty of circulating candidacy petitions on behalf of other students—an action forbidden by RIC SCG bylaws—the 22-year-old
has filed to run for District 27 State Representative as a Republican against incumbent
Representative Patricia A. Serpa.
Atwell’s Republican primary challenger, Thomas K. Jones, questions the wisdom of his party in endorsing this controversial young woman. “If the Republican Party is going to be taken seriously in Rhode Island,” he told
the ProJo, “We need to run serious candidates with a track record of being involved in their communities.”
Atwell, who learned a great deal about political integrity during her internship with Governor Carcieri, explains, “I’ve moved on to bigger and better things. I loved serving the students and working with the administration, but I learned that sometimes you have to cut your losses and move forward.”
In an earlier version of this post, I alluded to an inside rumor about Ericka J. Atwell campaigning in a mini-dress and heels. I apologize for including this piece of gossip, although it did come from a fairly credible source. As a young woman active in politics, I often resent the extent to which I must dress more formally and frigidly than my male counterparts in order to be taken seriously, and it would be a shame to propagate rumors about a young female candidate—rumors that very well might be aimed at discrediting her based on her age and appearance—when I myself am so familiar with this struggle. I apologize for including that tidbit. If it’s true, however, it’s still hilarious, not to mention totally inappropriate.
I’m not sure why this has been bugging me for the last twelve hours, but it really has, to the point where I may have even had a dream about it last night:
Yesterday I worked late and skipped dinner, but then decided to head out to the Black Rep for some SoundSessioning. Because the only things to eat in my house are oatmeal and old spinach and uncooked rice, I decided to grab a slice of pizza at a certain place downtown whose name rhymes with Fizza Tween.
The girl working there seemed like she was crazy, or on drugs, and interrupted my order twice to yell at someone else working there for not helping. Fine. Whatever. Feeding the drunks downtown is probably a really irritating job, although one would think that it would be less stressful at 10:30 when the place only had two customers.
So then after I order she gives me the pizza and I sit down, whereupon she starts yelling at the other guy, saying things like “stupid” and “fucking” and “fucking stupid” and “I want a cigarette.” The line (of one) goes down and she’s about to go outside when the phone rings. She picks it up and makes really dramatic faces while somebody orders a pizza. She repeats questions like the person on the other end is stupid.
Then, after the guy’s done ordering and she says it’ll be forty-five minutes, she hangs the phone up all dramatically and then screams–literally screams–”FUCKING FAGGOT! FUCKING FAGGOT!”
Then she goes outside to have her cigarette and then has a conversation on her cell phone loud enough that I (and probably half of downtown) can hear.
But seriously–what would you do in a situation like that? Sheepishly eat your pizza and then move on? Say something? Try to find someone else to say something to? I can’t decide. One of the things I like about living in Providence is that I’m not particularly exposed to homophobia ever, and I know people deal with way worse stuff than this every day. But this was so sudden and strange that I felt like I needed to blog about it in a semi-public forum.
Governor Carcieri spent several minutes last night on national television during an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor criticizing Providence’s mayor and police chief for not endorsing his attempt to curb illegal immigration.
The governor cited the recent arrest in Providence of Marco Riz, an illegal immigrant arrested several times before he allegedly kidnapped and raped a Warwick woman, as an example of the need for his executive order.
(On the subject of this Marco Riz thing, I am SO SURE that a legal U.S. citizen has never kidnapped and raped a woman. I just wish violence against women got this much attention from Carcieri on a regular basis. Sigh.)
I’m not going to even bother posting a clip of O’Reilly’s show. You know the drill. Instead, here is Bill Moyers (you know, a real-life journalist) schooling O’Reilly’s producer in a candid video:
When former Charlotte NC mayor
Harvey Gantt ran (twice) against Jesse Helms, he sought the endorsment of former UNC star Michael Jordan. Jordan’s reply at the time: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
An endorsement from Jordan could have helped the popular black mayor unseat one of the senate’s most bigoted members, but Mike sat on the sidelines. Apparantly, Helms’ death prompted
Jordan to expound on meeting the racist codger, and to finally endorse Gantt:
“A number of years back, I was in Raleigh at some function and I was introduced to the Senator. ‘Hello Senator Helms, nice to meet you,’ I say, offering my hand. He looks up at me, sizes up my hand, and smiles like he’s addressing the help back at the plantation: ‘Nice to meet you too, Fred.’ I’m like, Fred, huh? No, it’s Michael, Michael Jordan, the basketball player. He just goes, ‘Nice to meet you Fred.’ That’s one crazy mother (muffled).”
Someone later told Jordan that Helms had a “humorous habit” of calling all black people “Fred.”
“Yeah, humorous. Hilarious. It was then that I realized I made a mistake, I should have come out to support the brother. Let him know, if he runs again, give my office a call, we’ll hit the campaign up with all the Air Jordans and Jordan brand apparel they need. On the house. It would be my honor to be the official sponsor - along with Gatorade and Hanes — of Harvey Gantt’s next campaign.”
Let’s first note that calling Michael Jordan - one of the most universally respected people on the planet - “Fred” is just plain disgusting. Let’s also note that Gantt declined the endorsement, citing Jordan’s poor management of the Charlotte Bobcats.
I’ve often seen gentrification as a difficult problem to tackle. For many of my friends—young, working people trying to live in diverse areas and support themselves on small, non-profit or public service salaries—it is a struggle to find housing without becoming an agent of gentrification. But a
New York Times piece today about Mount Morris Park, a traditionally-black Harlem neighborhood, explores one of the uglier examples of that phenomenon.
Timothy Williams chronicles the recent dispute over the neighborhood’s Marcus Garvey Park where, since 1969, drummers from Africa and the Caribbean have played an important role in shaping the social fabric and dynamic of the place. “The musicians,” he explains, “who play until 10 p.m. every summer Saturday, are widely credited with helping to make the park safer over the years.”
Across the street from the park however, at 2002 Fifth Avenue, is “a new seven-story cream and red brick luxury co-op with a doorman, $1 million apartments and a lobby with a fireplace.” Predictably, there have been some disputes about the character of the neighborhood.
On last night’s broadcast, a repeat from June 16, Colbert did the kind of thing that I almost never rely on white media figures to do. He was interviewing Kenneth Miller, who wrote a book about how the proponents of “intelligent design” are trying to teach creationism at schools. At one point, Miller compared creationists to women who fraudulently collect welfare checks, saying they’re asking for a government handout, “I would compare them to welfare queens,” he said.
Or so read the headline yesterday on one of my favorite blogs,
History Is a Weapon. And when you look at the late Senator’s resume, he’s left us little reason to mourn. Here are a few of his most remarkable achievements:
Fighting integration;
Opposing Martin Luther King day;
the Helms-Burton act, the centerpiece of the embargo against Cuba;
Disputing ALL Affirmative Action programs;
Voting to bail out the savings and loan industry AND to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families;
Hating all gay people;
Supporting apartheid in South Africa;
Routinely fighting against AIDS research from the beginning, blaming people suffering from the disease for it;
Leading the fight to discontinue Pell Grants for inmates;
And, in 1993, singing Dixie to the first African American senator, Carol Mosely-Braun, and promising to make her “cry.”
I think HIAW sums it up well, when they proclaim: “Hell burns hotter tonight.” Want some more inspiring food for thought? Check out “
The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” a speech given by Frederick Douglass in Rochester on July 5, 1852.
This morning I got an email from some jackass referring to himself as Timothy Stuff. Already intrigued by the subject line: “Hi Moira Buy Heroin, cocaine and other shit from timothystuff,” since, you know, I buy all of my illegal drugs online, I opened the email to read the following:
“Welcome to the site timothystuff dot com, it’s us again, now we extended our offerings, here is a list:
1. Heroin, in liquid and crystal form.
2. Rocket fuel and Tomohawk rockets (serious enquiries only).
3. Other rockets (Air-to-Air), orders in batches of 10.
4. New shipment of cocaine has arrived, buy 9 grams and get 10th for free.
5. We also offer gay-slaves for sale, we offer only such service on the NET,
you can choose the one you like, then get straight to business.
6. Fake currencies, such as Euros and US dollars, prices would match competition.
The honorable Matt Jerzyk has a post to this effect over at
RIFuture, as does Sir Ian McKellen Donnis
at N4N, but I feel the need to reiterate: what’s up with the AG? While 42 other attorneys general signed on to support the Free Flow of Information Act, which would create a qualified federal shield law for reporters, Patrick Lynch did not. Lynch, who on June 19 was elected president of the
National Association of Attorneys General, does justice (no pun intended) to that organization’s alias: the
National Association of Aspiring Governors.
I think a lot of Rhode Islanders take for granted an important lil’ Rhody anomaly: most states have
district attorneys and
attorneys general, these being two distinct positions and offices. We’re small enough that the two positions are lumped into one office. Our attorneys general, therefore, spend the majority of their time and energy prosecuting criminals and upholding severe criminal justice policies rather than representing the larger interests of all our citizens.
In March, I was privileged to attend the
11th Annual Liman Public Interest Colloquium at the Yale Law School. In keeping with the topic of the conference—”Liman at the Local Level: Public Interest Advocacy and American Federalism”—we had the opportunity to hear from Connecticut Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal, Ohio Solicitor General
William Marshall, San Francisco City Attorney
Dennis Herrera, and
James Tierney, Director of the National State Attorneys General Program. These four fellows have used their positions as state and city attorneys to compensate for the failings, negligence, and misguided decisions of the federal government and judiciary.
I understand one of his many vetoes this legislative session: the courthouse construction bill, a piece of legislation pledging $88 million to the construction of a new Blackstone Valley courthouse.
According to the ProJo, Carcieri said in his veto message, “Never, not even once, has any Rhode Islander — save a legislator or a judge — ever spoke to me of the pressing need to build a court-house in the Blackstone Valley.”
On the urgency of the project, however, Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams declared in an April speech:
The need to better serve our citizens in northern Rhode Island and to decongest a severely overcrowded Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence by building a Blackstone Valley Courthouse is not going to go away.
As a legal intern with the
RI Office of the Public Defender, I may not be privy to every aspect of life at the Garrahy complex. I do, however, work there 4 days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and I’m a bit perplexed by the congestion with which the Chief is concerned. In fact, things can get pretty slow around there, and I’ve taken to reading
The New Yorker in between Judge Higgins’ arraignments in Courtroom 4C, where I am usually stationed.
So let’s say you’re walking down the street and you come across $190 lying in the gutter. What would you spend it on? Drugs? Some new sneakers? A donation to your favorite charity? Or would you do maybe make a couple of extra car insurance payments, buy a new vacuum, or just blow the whole thing on scratch tickets and a post-scratching manicure?
Well, if you live in London, you have another option now:
A burger. From Burger King.
Plop down your money at one West End BK location and be whisked away to a VIP area, full of tablecloths and Shiraz and custom Coke bottles. (You need to call ahead first, and the whole thing is so exclusive you can only luxuriate on Thursdays.) Then comes the real treat:
Made from Wagyu beef, topped with white truffles and Pata Negra ham (which owes its nutty flavor to the fact that the pigs are fed on acorns), the burger nestles in a bun spread with organic-white-wine-and-shallot-infused mayonnaise, plus pink Himalayan rock salt, and dusted on top with Iranian saffron. It is served with Cristal champagne onion straws (inspired by the “angry lobster” dish at David Burke & Donatella Manhattan restaurant) and a garnish of lamb’s lettuce.
And while I’d kill for some organic-white-wine-and-shallot-infused mayonnaise right now, the real question is WHO THE HELL WOULD EVER WANT THIS?! SERIOUSLY?! Especially since, as the article mentions later, food safety requirements in the UK require that pretty much all meat be dry and overcooked all the time.
Just when you thought there was nothing else that Hillary’s minions could say or do to make you dry heave in terror (like, for example, claim that perennially pampered Florida voters are facing
Zimbabwe-esque levels of political oppression), Harold Ickes has gone and done it.
Yes, it’s true that today’s
DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting was an overall win for Obama, in that, shitshow* notwithstanding, the Committee decided to seat the FL and Michigan delegations with half-votes each, and to give Obama the uncommitted delegates from Michigan. Yes, Obama is still going to be the
nominee, as he now has 2050 delegates, needs 2118 to clinch, and will pick up at least 40 between now and the final primaries in South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, meaning that he needs only 20 of the remaining 200 superdelegates to finish the job. And yes, Hillary did indeed have every right to fight for her desired outcome, which her surrogates did in a losing effort to seat the Florida delegation with full votes before unanimously backing the half-vote compromise.
But Harold Ickes needs to get a grip. When it came time to talk Michigan, a state where Obama (and Edwards) had taken his name off of the ballot, where “Uncommitted” had garnered 45% of the vote, where turnout was absolutely
anemic because there was only one candidate running (in Soviet Russia, election wins you!), Ickes had the gall to say that Hillary should get her delegates and Obama should get none, and then got so huffy about it that he threatened to take that dispute to the convention.
Huh? For a campaign that has been playing fast and loose with the word “disenfranchisement” it’s pretty befuddling to think that counting the results of an election with only one candidate on the ballot, where more people stayed home than voted, without any consideration of those factors is not basically the worst solution. Wouldn’t such a solution
disenfranchise those non-voters? And what about all of the African American voters who went with uncommitted, you know, the ones who will be absolutely crucial to winning Michigan?
“Fannie Lou” Ickes cannot be bothered with such trifling matters. Here he is debasing himself in a duke-it-out with Sen. Carl Levin:
The R.I. state seal consists of two key design elements: an anchor, that heavy thing you throw overboard in a last desperate attempt to stabilize a foundering ship; and the word ‘Hope’, as in “I hope there’s someone at the helm who knows what the hell he’s doing before we run this thing onto the rocks”. The
cover story of yesterday’s ProJo reveals how carefully the Governor is spending taxpayer money in his administration while asking others to tighten their belts. Amanda Milkovits (complete disclosure, she’s a friend) does a masterful job of explaining just how Rhode Island’s adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Robert T. Bray seems to be collecting paychecks from both the state and federal governments for a job he basically sucks at when he even bothers to show up. Remember this?
STATE RECORDS show that Bray has taken only one sick day through the end of 2007. It was Dec. 13, the day a snowstorm crippled Rhode Island and left 100 Providence schoolchildren stranded on buses for hours. The outcry over the poor response prompted Governor Carcieri, who was in Iraq at the time, to say Bray should have taken the lead in communications. Asked about his whereabouts during the storm, Bray said, “I was in an advisory role.” He did not say he had called in sick. That was revealed later by Robert J. Warren, the state EMA’s executive director, whom Carcieri and Bray fired on Dec. 18.
After the snowstorm, Carcieri said he wanted Bray to lead the state’s response to an emergency when the governor is away.
The response from the RI National Guard for various documents pursuant to the Journal’s request, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, “was slow and incomplete”. We are a nation of laws, Governor, or don’t Republicans subscribe to that quaint notion any more.
Entries
Trial begins this week in Superior Court for Capt. Gualter Botas, 39, of Pawtucket, and Lt. Kenneth J. Viveiros, 56, of North Providence. The two ACI Correctional Officers face seven counts and four counts, respectively, of simple assault involving four inmates.
Edward Fitzpatrick reports for the ProJo: 
