My Appeal To The Board Of Public Safety: November 2006

After FWPD summarily dismissed my complaint about Officer Marshall, I decide to file an appeal to the Board of Public Safety. I started with an initial letter which basically just described why I thought Internal Affairs had failed to properly investigate this matter. That letter follows at the end of this post.

But then I started going through my notes and began to notice something very unusual. There were several circumstance which were a bit strange, but when considered alone could easily be dismissed as mere coincidence. However, when viewed as a whole what I noticed was quite disturbing. All of these events are from the Summer of 2003, when I met and talked with Officer Marshall several times to discuss the problems here and ask for his department’s help.

1) Sunday, August 3: When Officer Marshall first called me, he did so from his home telephone. This did not raise any red-flags as it would be expected that a high ranking officer would probably carry a lot of work home at times. But in hindsight, I can’t help but think that if an officer wanted to do something without the department’s knowledge, then calling from outside of the department would be the way to go

2) Wednesday, October 10: I had stopped at Frost Illustrated Newspaper to speak with a writer there about the situation with FWPD. He said he would do some checking and get back to me. As I rode my bicycle back home, there were police cars in sight nearly the entire way. One of the cars that passed by as I approached my house was patrol car number 105.

Sunday, October 14: I left my house and headed south on Warsaw Street. At this time, patrol car number 105 was parked at the south-east corner of Warsaw and Pontiac, facing my house and parked just a block from it. I thought that was a bit strange, but figured that maybe FWPD had decided to watch my corner a bit closer and this was the officer assigned to do that. What started to make things seem a bit more strange was that as I drove along, there was an unusual police presence along my route, even though I was not taking main routes and was turning a lot.

What was really strange was that as I pulled into the Southgate shopping center, patrol car number 105 passed by me once again. So maybe this was all just a coincidence, but it sure was starting to seem like PC-105 was watching me, instead of my neighborhood for some reason.

3) Thursday, October 1: Officer Marshall came to my house and sat with me on my front porch for more than half an hour to discuss the situation here. Before Officer Marshall arrived, several marked and unmarked patrol cars began cruising through the neighborhood. After that, Officer Marshall called to tell me he was on his way. During our meeting, police cars continued circulating through the neighborhood. It was obvious from just this that Officer Marshall had at least a few other officers checking out the situation for him.

Yet whenever I have talked to any of the officers who work this neighborhood since that time, they seem to have been totally unaware of this meeting. It seems strange to me that when a resident of one of the most active drug neighborhoods in Fort Wayne offers to assist the police, that the member of the Command Staff who receives this information would consider it worthy of passing down to his subordinate officers. For some reason, Officer Marshall decided not to.

4) Friday, October 10: I talked with the President of the FBOP about the situation here. I said it seemed to me that Officer Marshall was purposely ignoring me about the problems I was having here. Four days later (Tuesday, October 14) he called and left a message saying that he was talking with some people and that he’d be in touch with me again. It is natural to assume that Officer Marshall was among those he spoke with, if not the only one.

That evening, I returned to find that my home had been burglarized. Granted, this is a high crime area. But that was the first time anyone had ever crossed that line, and it happened immediately after I had spoken with another Officer about the situation with Officer Marshall. Maybe this was just another coincidence, or maybe this was Officer Marshall’s way of sending me a message to stay out of his business.

5) Wednesday, October 15: Called FWPD to report that several kids were searching a neighbor’s bushes with flashlights, looking for their lost drugs that they had stashed there earlier in the day. When officers arrived, I spoke with them about the problems here. They were surprised at my cooperation because that is not what they normally get from residents of this neighborhood. They stated that their superiors had never spoken to them about me, or my offer to cooperate with their department. Again, it seems really strange that Officer Marshall would fail to inform the patrol officers about this kind of information.

6) Monday, October 20: I called a person who worked for the Mayor’s Office and left a message. We had previously talked in person, so he had some idea what I was talking about. But recent events were making the situation unbearable, so I called and left a message. Basically, I told him that unless he could prove to me that his Mayor (Richard) gave a damn, that I would go to the papers or to his opponent (Buskirk) with my story and let them have some fun with it at the Mayor’s expense.

He never returned my call, but Officer Marshall called me three times that day. When he finally reached me, he sounded almost desperate to convince me that he and his department were willing to work with me. It had been over a month since I had spoken with Officer Marshall, and several messages I had left during this time went unreturned. Although Marshall never mentioned it to me, it was obvious that the man I had spoken with had lit a fire under his ass. During this conversation, Officer Marshall suggested coming to my house the next day to speak with me again. He wanted me to drive through the neighborhood with him and tell him everything I knew.

That evening, as I was setting on my front porch, one of the drug bosses here approached my house and asked to speak with me. I had never met this man before, yet he came right out and asked if I was trying to “shut things down” in this neighborhood. Again, perhaps this was just another coincidence, but is sure seems strange that only a few hours after I had arranged to give Officer Marshall detailed information about the drug activities here, one of the guys who runs things would come and ask me to back off.
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When I finally made a summary assessment, what struck me as most odd was that after having spoken in person or on the phone with Officer Marshall (a member of the Command Staff) on several occasions, and after having offered to allow FWPD to station cameras and officers inside my home to take care of the problem here, none of his subordinate officers ever seemed to have heard anything about this. Furthermore, the times that I had spoken to Officer Marshall’s peers and superiors about his apparent lack of interest in enforcing the law seemed to draw an immediate reaction from the criminals here.

It was as if talking with Officer Marshall was the same as talking with the drug dealers themselves. And yet Officer Marshall was of high enough rank that if any other officer brought my situation to his attention they would confidently believe Officer Marshall saying “I’ll take care of this.” So as far as I could see, Officer Marshall was definitely not working to enforce the law here and was likely acting to keep other officers from working with me as well. It’s very possible that he was even connected to the drug dealers themselves. In my appeal, I formally accused Officer Marshall of Behavior unbecoming of an officer, Conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement, and Racketeering.

I had first tried to find out how the process of filing an appeal worked, but was unable to get any answers. I had hoped that I would be called before them to speak about the matter, but I didn’t even know if that was allowed. As far as I knew, this was my final chance to speak on the matter, outside of filing a lawsuit, so I opted for saying too much over not enough. I closed my appeal by stating that if the Public Safety Board failed to properly investigate this matter, and that if it were later determined that my charges were accurate, that this would open the City itself up to significant liability.

Considering Officer Marshall’s high rank, and the fact that he had already shown how well he could manipulate the situation, I wasn’t sure what type of reaction this complaint might draw. To be safe, I sent copies of my complaint to the Allen County Sheriff, the Superintendent of Indiana State Police, the Allen County Prosecutor, and The Indiana Attorney General. Basically, if I ended up dead or without a home, I wanted to show that I had made all appeals for help that a reasonable person should be expected to do.

I sent all of these letters by certified mail, and I attached a cover letter to them as well. I received two responses. Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards was nice enough to write and tell me that this was none of her business. Indiana State Police Superintendent Paul Whitesell wrote me a very nice letter. He first commended me for doing so much to actively work against the crime in my neighborhood. He then went on to say that he was confident that FWPD chief Rusty York could handle the situation. Steve Carter (Indiana Attorney General) and Jim Herman (Allen County Sheriff) never wrote back.

I think it was a couple months later before I finally heard anything back about my appeal. This letter was from the City Attorney’s office, so I expect they had to spend a bit of money just to get those people to review it - perhaps it was my implied threat of a lawsuit against the city that caused that. Anyway, that letter was basically the same as the one I had received from Internal Affairs. They did not feel that my charges could be substantiated. And their reasons for this were????

That’s right, just like with the original complaint, there was no real explanation given. I don’t know whether Officer Marshall denied what I said, or if FWPD simply thinks that type of behavior is acceptable. Hell, I don’t know if they even bothered to question Officer Marshall or anyone else about this. I never was invited to meet with anyone to discuss this matter. No one bothered to question me to get clarification on any of it. Just from those facts alone, it is safe to say that no real investigation was conducted.

Apparently the Fort Wayne Board of Public Safety is simply a rubber stamp, and in my book, that makes all of them as out to be the same kind of useless bastards as Officer Marshall and Chief York themselves are. Oh well, I guess I should just consider myself lucky. If I was black, and made this kind of noise, I expect that I’d be dead by now.

Here is my letter to the Board of Public Safety.

Here is the cover letter I sent to Sheriff Jim Herman.

Here are a couple of newspaper articles from December of 2002 that I referenced in my letter to the Board of Public Safety. If you look at the last page, you will see a listing of several violent events which recently occurred in the city. Notice that several of them (circled in red) are within a block or two of my home. I have also marked the location of my home with a red X on the map in the upper right hand corner of that page.

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Considering that this article dealt with several murders, attempted murders, and other shootings, and given the fact that one of these reported events was a gang of people shooting at a passing police car, it would be rather difficult for either FWPD or the media to claim they didn't know this problem existed here.

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To this day, I still find it unfathomable how both these groups seem to have tried so hard and for so long to ignore what I have been saying to them. This city has a deadly serious problem, and it still has not been properly addressed. Any member of local government or the media who does not see that is a damned fool. Anyone who sees it but simply chooses to do nothing about it is just a worthless sack of shit!