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Title: Flag charges dropped
Source:
Citizen-Times/com
URL Source: http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007708030306
Published: Aug 11, 2007
Author: Mike McWilliams
Post Date: 2007-08-11 17:48:21 by YertleTurtle
Keywords: None
Views: 99
Comments: 7
Buncombe County's sheriff and district attorney have dropped charges against a couple accused of desecrating the American flag, saying they stood little chance in court. The Sheriff's Office will continue an investigation into the actions of Deputy Brian Scarborough, who issued the charges after a complaint from a fellow National Guardsman, Sheriff Van Duncan said Thursday. Duncan said he "had rather we responded to that call differently" and that Scarborough "probably shouldn't have been there to begin with." The sheriff said he asked District Attorney Ron Moore to drop the charges against Mark and Deborah Kuhn, who also said the deputy assaulted them. The Kuhns had pinned signs to an upside down American flag that included a photo of President Bush with "Out now" written on it. Their case marked only the third time in North Carolina since 1917 that the state's flag desecration statute had been enforced, according to the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts. U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1989 and 1990 protected flag desecration as a form of expressive conduct under the First Amendment. The state law also was challenged and ruled unconstitutional in 1971. "It's pretty apparent to us where the Supreme Court stands on this issue (flag desecration)," Duncan said. "Also, it has been dealt with in this state in 1971, and we do not feel like we can successfully prosecute the desecration of the flag statute." Scarborough issued charges against the Kuhns on July 25 at their Brevard Road home in Asheville. An ensuing scuffle with the deputy put the Kuhns in jail on charges of assault on a government employee, obstruction and flag desecration, all misdemeanors. Debbie Kuhn said Thursday she was relieved all charges had dropped but wants to the deputy who charged them fired. Scarborough could not be reached. The flag confiscated by the Sheriff's Office was returned. Kuhn said she and her husband plan to post their flag again. It also will be flown upside down but not until the Sheriff's Office investigation is done. "We do want to give Sheriff Duncan the chance to do the right thing," Kuhn said. The couple have not filed a formal complaint with the Sheriff's Office, she said. Duncan said he hoped the internal investigation would be done next week. The office has received "hundreds" of phone calls from people expressing both support and anger at Scarborough's actions, Duncan said. As it's written in the code, state law prohibits anyone from knowingly mutilating, defiling, defacing or trampling the U.S. or North Carolina flags. The Kuhns have said they were displaying the flag upside down to protest the state of the country. An upside down flag is a universal distress signal. The Sheriff's Office has said the signs pinned to the flag, not the fact that it was flying upside down, led to the charges. Sheriff's reports allege the Kuhns assaulted Scarborough as he was trying to place them under arrest, including slamming the door, breaking a glass pane and cutting the deputy's hand. The Kuhns said Scarborough broke into their house and violated their civil rights. "The stories of the people who saw the incident and the deputy's stories are very, very close," Duncan said. Mark Radford, a staff sergeant in the National Guard's Asheville-based 105th Military Police Battalion, is the one who told Scarborough about the Kuhns' flag. Radford would not comment Thursday. Someone, not Radford, had complained to Asheville police about the Kuhns' flag days before their arrest. The city police officer investigated but did not issue a citation. Duncan said it's normal practice to refer calls within city limits to Asheville police unless a crime is committed in the deputy's presence or in an emergency. Scarborough, 25, started at the Sheriff's Office in 2003 as a reserve deputy. He was hired full time June 13, after serving seven months in Iraq with the National Guard. "Whether we agree with someone's actions whether or not to hang the flag upside down, it does seem to be the intention of the Supreme Court, which is the supreme law of the land, to allow that," Duncan said. "So in other words, the Kuhns are allowed to do what they're doing. "On the other side of that, if it weren't for young men like Deputy Scarborough, we wouldn't have those rights." Duncan said the District Attorney's Office likely could have prosecuted the Kuhns on the assault and obstruction charges. Duncan said he wanted to make amends with both sides and bring closure to the issue. "I don't think we gain anything by dividing the charges and going on," Duncan said. "We feel like the sooner we can move on from this, the better all parties involved will be."
Poster Comment: This is exactly as I predicted. Next, a lawsuit will be fired, the people will get a big out-of-court settlement, and the dumbass cop's career in law enforcement will be over.
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#1. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
Umm, no they aren't. Mountain Express News: The Kuhns, along with several neighbors and witnesses, assert that a sheriff’s deputy violently invaded their home at 68 Brevard Road. The Kuhns’ account, however, is backed up by Jimmy Stevenson of Ace Hardwood Floors, who was working nearby and says he saw Scarborough break down the door. “I saw that one cop [Scarborough] pull up, and I saw those people come out on the porch and start talking to him,” said Stevenson. “They took their flag down, asked the officer to leave and closed the door. Then he started kicking the door: He kicked it about five or six good times, then he laid right into it. After he got done kicking it, he broke the window out—I saw him hit the window.”
Umm, no they aren't. Do you really expect him to say the deputy was lying? They've in big enough trouble already and are going to get their asses handed to them. Do you really expect him to cut his and the department's throats by telling the truth?
“When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.”-Louis Veuillot
Scarborough, 25, started at the Sheriff's Office in 2003 as a reserve deputy. He was hired full time June 13, after serving seven months in Iraq with the National Guard. "Whether we agree with someone's actions whether or not to hang the flag upside down, it does seem to be the intention of the Supreme Court, which is the supreme law of the land, to allow that," Duncan said. "So in other words, the Kuhns are allowed to do what they're doing. "On the other side of that, if it weren't for young men like Deputy Scarborough, we wouldn't have those rights." oh, gag me. I think he should have to do community service...something like getting together with Officer Jack McLamb, of OPERATION VAMPIRE KILLER fame, and go to every police department in the country trained by the AntiDefamation League [ http://americandefenseleague.com/ / http://americandefenseleague.com/mafia3.htm ], and teach them why the New World Order is the real menace to America, and he should be required to pay for his service, even if he has to take out a loan. That might send a lesson to all those slugs and thugs in uniform who think they have a right to beat up on innocent Americans.
oh, gag me. We all know he's lying. Legally, he has to. Don't you think he's furious at this stupid cop? And once all this is cleared up said cop will never be in law enforcement again?
“When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.”-Louis Veuillot
"This" stupid cop? As I recall it, some other stupid cops arrested the couple and hauled them off to jail: ".... Deborah Kuhn called 911 to report that the officer had broken into the home and was assaulting her husband. The officer then pulled out pepper spray to which Mark Kuhn responded, "Are you going to spray me in my house?" before Scarborough whipped out his billy club and the Kuhn's ran out of the house into the street, pleading for help from their neighbors. "Nine police cars showed up, they whipped out the Tasers, they said 'get down we're gonna Taser you' added Kuhn. The couple were handcuffed, arrested and bundled into a squad car, to the protests of numerous neighbors who demanded to know why the Kuhns were being incarcerated, but were told to leave by police. Contradicting the police's account of the incident, that Buncombe County Sheriff’s deputy Brian Scarborough was injured when the Kuhn's slammed the door on his hand, Deborah Kuhn vehemently maintains that Scarborough smashed the glass of their door with his bare fist before breaking in, a description which is backed up by three other eyewitnesses, one of which appeared on TV later that day. The Kuhn's are now also being charged with "assault on a government employee" - meaning that the new definition of assault is if a police officer cuts his hand by breaking into your house and putting you in a choke hold - you have assaulted him. Scarborough claims that Deborah Kuhn slapped him while she was on the phone to the police, but the audio file of the call (listen here) clearly contradicts this. They each face over a year in prison......" Couple Terrorized, Assaulted and Arrested For Flying an Upside Down U.S. Flag http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=58317 They want to bury the story; hide it under a rug. The Kuhn's have the upper hand...the Supreme Court backs them...let them make an example of this whole Zionist controlled department and use it to start educating the police to what's wrong with America.
"Nine police cars showed up, they whipped out the Tasers, they said 'get down we're gonna Taser you' added Kuhn. Speaking of Tasers, have you all seen this? TASER Causes Severe Injuries to Police Reports are coming in of police officers who have been permanently injured by TASERs The police have been deceived to boost the sales of TASERs TASERs are not a toy! by Christopher Bollyn, Independent Journalist 18 December 2006 Photo: Police in Mansville, Ohio, shock each other with 50,000 volts from the TASER. While they may think it is harmless fun to shock each other with the TASER - it is not. The TASER barbs act as cauterizing pins which damage and burn the soft tissue and organs. Many police have suffered severe long-term injuries as a result of a TASER shock as brief as one second. Police officers should refuse to allow themselves to be TASERed and start treating their TASERs as weapons, not toys. Police are told that they should experience TASERs. This is as stupid as telling police to shoot each other with guns so that they know what those weapons feel like. The company that produces TASERs is simply trying to boost sales by creating the impression that TASERs are harmless. The injuries a person receives from a TASER depends on where he gets hit, the amount of fat in his body, his physical size, and other variables. TASERs can damage nerves and organs. Some people have been permanently injured -- and even killed -- from TASERs, but subtle internal damage may not become apparent for months or years. The lack of immediate and obvious damage creates the impression that TASERs are safe....... .....There are reportedly some 230,000 TASER weapons in circulation and it is currently being used by some 9,800 agencies, primarily police departments in the United States and Canada. Local law enforcement agencies using the TASER often train officers to use the weapon by actually shocking each other. The use of the TASER on each other in training is meant to prove to the police officers that the weapon does not cause serious injury or permanent damage. For some officers, however, the TASER shock cripples them and they are left permanently damaged by the "non-lethal" stun gun. One severely injured deputy from Utah relates what happened to him on a website for TASER-injured police officers: Let me tell you my experience with the TASER. I worked for 16 years as a deputy/paramedic in Davis County, Utah. We had TASER training, in which the trainers said it was a highly recommended to take a hit. They also said there was no worry as to injury, because the TASER wouldn't harm or cause any long term medical problems. I had a 5-second ride. It was the worst experience in my life. To make a long story short, the TASER ruptured C-5,6 and C-6,7 in my neck. I have had to have my neck fused, because of the severe pain. I also have nerve damage, which has left my left triceps, chest, and back muscle paralyzed. Not to mention I can't feel with the first three fingers including my thumb and trigger finger on my right hand. They feel like fat little stumps. I was able to bench press 350 lbs. and do push-ups all day. Now I can't do 1 push-up, and I can't even bench press the bar! I scored in the top of the physical fitness test at the department and got a day off, now I can't even pass the fitness test. The Davis County Sheriff's department has turned its back on me. I've been fired from work for B.S. reasons. I'm on disability now, and I have to retrain in something else, at 43-years-old. It turns my stomach to think of going back to school. My suggestion to all officers is NOT TO TAKE A HIT FROM THE TASER. You probably won't have any problems, but then again I thought that also and look what has happened to me. Don't take the chance – it's not worth it. Within a two-week period, police officers from five states filed lawsuits against the manufacturer of TASER, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based TASER International, claiming they had been seriously injured after being shocked with the electronic stun gun during training, the Arizona Republic reported in August 2005. http://www.taser.com Four of the suits were filed in Maricopa County Superior Court on behalf of officers in Florida, Kansas, New Mexico and Ohio who claimed they suffered "severe and permanent" injuries, including multiple spinal fractures, burns, a shoulder dislocation, and soft-tissue injuries. Among them was a Hallsville, Missouri police chief, Pete Herring, who said he suffered heart damage and two strokes when he volunteered to be shocked while hooked up to a cardiac monitor as a way to demonstrate the safety of the TASER to his officers. Herring filed a lawsuit claiming "painful, permanent and progressive" hearing and vision loss and neurological damage in addition to the strokes and cardiac damage. The 2005 lawsuits pointed to the injury of former Maricopa County sheriff's Deputy Samuel Powers, who filed the first product liability suit against TASER International in February 2004 claiming that his back was fractured when he was shocked during a training exercise. A doctor hired by TASER International concluded that a one-second TASER jolt was responsible for Powers' fractured back. Four of the lawsuits charged TASER with misrepresenting Powers' injury to shareholders and the public as a minor shoulder injury. Phoenix lawyer John Dillingham said that if TASER had taken steps to warn police departments of the possibility of injury, other officers might have avoided serious injuries. Rather than being honest with police departments about the dangers of being TASERed, the company now requires that police officers involved in TASER training sign a document called a "Liability Release and Covenant Not to Sue." [Did the Kuhn's get the opportunity to read and sign this? Did Chris Bollyn? Did Roger Holyfield? http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn-tasers.html ]. "Any person that volunteers to experience a TASER device electrical discharge ('TASER Exposure') must read and sign this Form prior to any TASER Exposure," the release says. Given the very real danger that a TASER shock can severely injure a person, an officer would be well-advised not to sign the 6-point TASER release – or allow him or herself to be TASERed. The TASER release is here in a PDF format. In signing TASER's "Liability Release and Covenant Not to Sue," the police officers individually "assume all risks" and forfeit their legal rights for protection or compensation under the law in the event they are injured. That's really asking quite a bit from a police officer who may feel pressured to go along and participate in TASER training against his better judgment. On August 15, 2006, I was assaulted and TASERed on my front lawn by three unidentified and heavily-armed men after calling 911. http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn_abused_by_Zionist_Gang.html I later learned that the officer who had TASERed me, while I was handcuffed and **** held down by two men, had worked with the ******** Department of Homeland Security in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The assault left me with a broken elbow and feeling quite ill for several weeks. A retired staff scientist from Livermore National Laboratory and a medical scientist both told me that the 50,000 volts of a TASER had probably caused permanent damage. I realize that the TASER is extremely dangerous to one's health and that the public is not being told the truth about the dangers – or the victims. The conditions under which I had been TASERed, for example, were completely misrepresented by the police to the local press and the Chicago Tribune. The press, however, repeated what the police had said, saying that I had been TASERed after "a prolonged struggle" and in order to subdue me – both utterly false. After a 9/11 memorial event I hosted on Veteran's Day, one of the participants told me that he had heard that a police officer from Kane County (Illinois) had been severely injured in TASER training. He only knew that the officer's last name was Rink. I called the sheriff's department for Kane County and the police departments of the towns in the county, but no one had heard of an officer named Rink who had been injured by a TASER. Then I called a number of households bearing the name Rink without any luck. A few days later I started from the back of the list and reached a man named Richard Rink who lived in a small town called Elburn. I told Richard that I had heard of a police officer named Rink from Kane County who had been injured with a TASER. "Do you know anything about that?" I asked. "Yes," Richard said. "He's my son Gregory." Mr. Rink told me that his son had been very badly injured but that he was "on his feet" again. I asked him where this had happened. "Naperville," he said. Naperville is a large, well-to-do, and suburban town west of Chicago, home of British Petroleum (BP) USA, along with its 130,000 residents. It is actually just a few miles south of where I live in Hoffman Estates. Mr. Rink was reluctant to say much about the details of the incident or his son's injuries and took my contact details, which he said he would pass on to his son. "He's had it," Rink said. "He's just about ready to talk to the media." But the younger Rink is apparently not quite ready, so I scoured the Internet and newspaper clippings to see what I could find about Officer Gregory Rink's experience with the TASER. There were articles about Greg's high school achievements in track and football and about the songs he wrote for his sister's record album. There were articles about police incidents the 34-year-old Rink had been engaged in and awards he had won – but there was not one word about his being injured by the TASER. How odd, I thought. I called the local newspaper in Naperville and the Chicago Tribune's local office and asked them if they had heard about the story. Although the editors were both very interested, they said they had not heard a word about it. All of my calls to the police department and the officials at city hall were routed to an Officer Dave Hoffman, who was not answering his phone. Finally, I got through to Sgt. Lisa Burghardt. I asked her about Rink. She admitted that she knew about the case. "Is he was back on the job?" I asked. "No," she said. When I asked how badly he was injured and when it had happened, Burghardt said, "Due to city policy, I can't talk about this case." "I cannot confirm or deny anything about this case," Hoffman, the designated spokesman, said when I finally reached him. "Risk Management" has to approve what he can say about the case, he said. I then called the legal department for the government of Naperville and was told that I could talk to the City Attorney Margo Ely. I told Ely that, as a journalist, I am looking into the TASER-related injury of Officer Gregory M. Rink of the Naperville Police Dept. Ely immediately went on the attack. She wanted to know who wanted the story and how I had found out about it. She said I was "irresponsible" to be asking questions about Officer Rink's condition. When I said that I thought Naperville should be open about what happened to Officer Rink, a public servant, because he had been TASERed on the job, with a device paid for by the taxpayers, Ely said my opinion did not matter because I had not been to law school. I said that Rink's story is an important story that needs to be told because it is the public that is usually on the receiving end of the TASER. I also said that I found it hard to believe that Naperville had suppressed the story for so long. She rejected the characterization that the story had been suppressed and refused to say anything more – hanging up the phone. Facing a wall of silence, I wrote an open letter to Peter T. Burchard, the city manager for Naperville. "If TASER International sold these TASERs to Naperville having told them that they are harmless and non-lethal, then you should sue TASER for having lied in their description of the product," I wrote. "It does not benefit the government or people of Naperville to suppress this story about the injuries suffered by Officer Rink as a result of being TASERed. "This story is clearly being suppressed. If a police officer is injured on the job due to the use of a TASER this is not a private matter. This is a public matter. It is the public of Naperville who is most likely to be on the receiving end of a TASER in the hands of the Naperville police. The public paid for the TASERs and the public pays the police and elects the city government. This is NOT a private matter of the health of Officer Rink. This is a public matter at the center of an international debate about the use of the TASER by police. "If the TASER is causing such injuries to police, what is it doing to the public? What makes you think this is a harmless device that will not cause permanent damage to people who are TASERed?" I asked the city manager. "I think you would agree that such a subject concerning public health should not be suppressed. I would hope that Naperville would see the wisdom of discussing this matter openly," I concluded. I have, however, not received a single response from any of the officials of Naperville. They evidently intend to keep the story of the TASER-damaged police officer away from the public. Bollyn's previous article on the death of a person by TASER: Bollyn-tasers.html http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn-TASER-2.html ================================== The Kuhn's are lucky they weren't tazered. They might have died, and the department COULD have buried this under the rug. Why give them the chance to do it to someone else, someone's child perhaps, maybe someone's daughter who didn't want to strip for some pervert with a badge who forced her car over for some trumped-up charge on some lonely and dark road? This is a perfect opportunity for the Kuhn's upside down flag incident to be the spark that takes this country back.
"The stories of the people who saw the incident and the deputy's stories are very, very close," Duncan said.
#2. To: SmokinOPs (#1)
"The stories of the people who saw the incident and the deputy's stories are very, very close," Duncan said.
#3. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
#4. To: YertleTurtle (#3)
Officer Jack McLamb, of OPERATION VAMPIRE KILLER
#5. To: AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt (#3)
"On the other side of that, if it weren't for young men like Deputy Scarborough, we wouldn't have those rights."
#6. To: YertleTurtle (#5)
#7. To: All (#6)
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