Obama Secret Service Agent Tied to Sex Joke By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON — A Secret Service supervisor who until recently was a leader of Senator Barack Obama’s security detail sent several colleagues an e-mail message in 2005 that included a crude sexual joke about blacks and American Indians, according to documents disclosed last week as part of a lawsuit by black Secret Service agents. The supervisory agent, Victor Erevia, sent the Jan. 26, 2005, e-mail message to five other Secret Service supervisors with what he described as a “joke,” one that referred to “popular myths of sexuality” and ridiculed several racial and religious groups. It appears that Mr. Erevia was not the author of the joke, but shared the message after it had been sent to him.

The message was among e-mail traffic turned over to lawyers for 10 black agents who have a long-running discrimination lawsuit against the Secret Service. Another racially derogatory e-mail message disclosed in the lawsuit last week was received by David O’Connor, now a senior Secret Service supervisor in overall charge of presidential protective details. The July 23, 2003, message was sent to Mr. O’Connor by his brother, Timothy O’Connor, a former Secret Service agent. The message complained about the Rev. Al Sharpton, favoritism toward blacks, political correctness and affirmative action. In a reply, Mr. O’Connor asked if he could share the message with another Secret Service supervisor, who is now retired, because he was “worthy of trust and confidence.” The phrase has a special meaning within the agency because it is the motto of the Secret Service.A lawyer for Mr. O’Connor, Thomas C. Wright, said there was no evidence that his client had forwarded the racially derogatory message to anyone. (to read the Full Article Click Here)

Al Sharpton in town to hear Arthur Bruce Tesler testify By STEVE VISSER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 05/14/08

Atlanta Police Det. Arthur Bruce Tesler said there were more victims than a 92-year-old woman in the botched and illegal police raid on a suspected drug house more than two years ago. "I am a victim," the 42-year-old Tesler told the Fulton County jury when testifying in Superior Court for more than six hours Wednesday. Tesler is the only officer to face a jury regarding his actions on Nov. 21, 2006, when his narcotics team conducted a raid at 933 Neal Street and killed Kathryn Johnston.  The team had been told a drug dealer named "Sam" operated from the house and had a kilo of cocaine but it lied to a judge by saying it verified its informants information. Instead the team was fired on by the elderly Johnston when knocking down her door.  Tesler took the stand Wednesday and told the jury that his former partners Gregg Junnier and Jason "J.R." Smith planned the cover up of the wrongdoing that led to Johnston's death.

He said he got his first inkling that something was wrong with the raid when he saw Smith outside the Johnston house after the botched raid. "JR was scared, he was very nervous," said Tesler, 42. "He came up to me and said I think I killed this woman.' He said, 'You guys got to help me.'" Junnier and Smith have pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and are awaiting sentencing. Tesler's defense concluded its case Thursday afternoon and the jury is expected to begin delibration after closing arguments today.  Tesler, who was stationed at the back of the house, was indicted with lesser offenses of violating his oath of office, and lying in an official investigation and false imprisonment for his role in the raid on Johnston's house.  Prosecutor Kellie Hill grilled Tesler throughout the afternoon. "At some point don't you have to stand up and do what is right?" Hill asked Tesler, who had been on the team since earlier that year, said the officers implicated him in the cover up and he feared they would frame him or harm him if he didn't go a long with their plan.  He broke down in tears on the witness stand when he described how he learned his wife was pregnant with their fourth child during the middle of the cover-up.  "A woman is dead, my wife is pregnant and I was scared," Tesler said. "I was scared of being physically harmed.  These are people who are suppose to back me up on calls and if I go against them, they might not be there if I need help." Tesler, who acknowledged lying to the FBI and state investigators, began cooperating on Jan. 4, 2007.  "I made it very clear that I wanted to cooperate with them," Tesler said, wiping tears from his eyes. "  I didn't want to go to jail." Among those watching Tesler on the witness stand was New York-based civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton, who sat in on some of the morning testimony.

Paterson Meets With Bell’s Family and Sharpton By Sewell Chan New York Times

Gov. David A. Paterson met Thursday afternoon with the parents and fiancée of Sean Bell and with the Rev. Al Sharpton, saying afterward that he understood and respected the large-scale protests that occurred on Wednesday, resulting in 216 arrests, and also that he accepted a Queens judge’s decision to acquit three New York City police detectives charged in Mr. Bell’s shooting. Mr. Paterson said he would review proposals to require alcohol testing for police officers who fire their weapons and to review protocols governing undercover police work.

“I must commend the advocates, many of them, over 200 arrested, for participation in civil disobedience in a way that made their point without any excess activity,” Mr. Paterson said at a news conference at his Midtown Manhattan office after meeting with the Bell family. He said the advocates on behalf of Mr. Bell’s family had acted in “a completely professional way.”

Mr. Paterson met with Sean Bell’s parents, William and Valerie Bell, and his fiancée, Nicole Paultre-Bell. Earlier on Thursday, the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, and members of the team that prosecuted the three detectives met with Mr. Bell’s family. “The meeting was very cordial and, while there were expressions of frustration, Nicole Paultre-Bell and Mr. Bell’s parents thanked the district attorney’s office for their efforts in the case,” Kevin R. Ryan, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said in a statement.

Mr. Paterson, discussing the protests, stopped short of endorsing them:

• The process of civil disobedience, by its definition and by its nature, inconveniences fellow residents, fellow citizens. That is the art of civil disobedience; it’s a disruption. No public servant can condone civil disobedience, because we represent all the people and we do not like to see any members of our society inconvenienced. Therefore, we would rather that this group have not gone to the extent that they did to demonstrate their issues. However, from the point of view of advocacy, which was very well explained to me by Valerie and Nicole and by Reverend Sharpton, the reason that the civil disobedience occurred, from their point of view, is because the other redress opportunities of society had failed them. Legislation in the past, though it has in some respects set up new guidelines, did not stop that incident from occurring last year that claimed the life of Sean Bell. The meeting with different organizations, the protests in the past, the involvement of elected officials in the past, the calls for justice and peace by our clergy, could not stop that incident from occurring. And so they felt that they had no other choice but to take the action that they took. I respect the decision that they made to take that action.
• Mr. Paterson noted that federal authorities had begun a criminal investigation into whether the officers violated Mr. Bell’s civil rights.

Asked about the inconvenience experienced by drivers stuck in traffic as a result of the protests, Mr. Sharpton said: “We did not interfere with subways yesterday. We did it purposely on motorists because we wanted them to think as they were going home that all Sean Bell was doing that night was going home in a car.” (To Read the Full Article Click Here)

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216 Held in Protests of Police Acquittals By THOMAS J. LUECK NY TIMES

In the largest public protest against the acquittal of three detectives in the shooting death of Sean Bell, 216 people were arrested on Wednesday in carefully orchestrated demonstrations that halted traffic at busy intersections in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the police said. The demonstrations, described by the Rev. Al. Sharpton as “pray-ins,” played out on a bright spring afternoon as boisterous displays of civil disobedience in which people signed up to be arrested, assuring organizers and lawyers that they were carrying proper identification to show to the police.

Once positioned at the intersections, demonstrators dropped to their knees or sat and prayed briefly before hundreds of police officers escorted them to buses and police vehicles. “We believe deeply in what we are doing today,” said Hazel Dukes, the president of the New York State chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., who was one of a dozen people arrested after they knelt and blocked traffic about 4:30 p.m. on the Canal Street ramps to the Holland Tunnel. “We have come to raise our voice for justice,” she said before being placed in white plastic handcuffs and taken to a police van. In all, it appeared that more than 1,000 people participated in the protests, although they attracted so many onlookers that it sometimes became difficult to distinguish protesters from tourists or people out for a stroll after work who had stopped to watch the commotion.

“It’s good to see people stand up for their rights,” said Julia Mordaunt, 27, a graphic designer from Burlington, Vt., who was on her way to buy jeans and stopped to watch about 100 demonstrators who had gathered at the southwest corner of 60th Street and Third Avenue, near an entrance to Bloomingdale’s. About 3:50 p.m., that group marched east toward the Queensboro Bridge, linked arms and sat along Second Avenue, blocking traffic on and off the bridge. Thirty-six people there were arrested. The protests were staged at six locations in the city. In the largest one, about 400 people assembled about 4:30 on the Centre Street approach to the Brooklyn Bridge and blocked Brooklyn-bound traffic for more than an hour. About 60 people in that demonstration were arrested, including Mr. Sharpton and Nicole Paultre Bell, who was to have married Mr. Bell on the day he was killed in a hail of 50 bullets fired by the officers outside a nightclub in Jamaica, Queens, in 2006. (To Read the Full Story Click Here).

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