Comments on Advance Indiana™: Carmel Mayor Creates His Own Gestapo?

I should add that Brainard did something that was ...

2011-08-07T08:08:26.342-05:00

I should add that Brainard did something that was without precedent in his re-election campaign four years ago as I've written about before. More than 90% of his 2007 campaign expenditures were made payable to one campaign consultant. Presumably, the money paid to the consultant went for legitimate campaign expenditures but we have no way of knowing how that money was spent without the normal itemization of expenses on campaign finance reports. No other campaign in Indiana history had so brazenly sought to circumvent Indiana's campaign finance law, except for Ft. Wayne mayoral candidate Matt Kelty, who hid money supporters had contributed to his campaign by reporting them as a loan from himself. There should have been an investigation of Brainard just like there was of Kelty, who was convicted of felony campaign finance violations. Hell, the media down here wouldn't even report on Brainard's campaign finance practices. He clearly was circumventing the reporting requirements of the law by laundering expenditures through his campaign consultant so people couldn't see where the money was going.

How can I know what laws they broke if everything ...

2011-08-07T07:48:59.471-05:00

How can I know what laws they broke if everything they did for the money they were paid is a big secret? A municipality has a police department to conduct lawful investigations. It has no lawful reason for hiring private investigators to investigate private individuals in my judgment except to do that which it could not do legally through the use of its police powers. The city won't reveal who they were investigating, why they were investigating that person or how they carried out their investigation. The only thing we know was that the private investigtors were hired and money was paid to them. The reporter had to learn from a confidential source that Libman was one of the persons being investigated. If Brainard won't make available the reports they prepared detailing their purposes and methods, the work they performed that led in this instance to a nonprofit administrator quitting his job, we'll never know. Police are constitutionally and statutorily limited in their power to investigate. Citizens should be alarmed to learn their government is employing secret police that operate outside the normal constraints to investigate them.

Can't blame Brainard for being corrupt and hav...

2011-08-07T07:18:26.939-05:00

Can't blame Brainard for being corrupt and having the opportunity to keep breaking laws and successfully covering his tracks. The people of Carmel keep re-electing him. Each time they do so, they give their consent for him to do whatever the hell he wants, consequences and laws be damned.

He reminds me of long time mayor of Lawrence, Tom Schneider. At first he did a lot of good things for the city, he revitalized the community by converting the old fort into a nice area for retail and offices. But like most politicians who are in power too long, they become corrupted. They will begin to feel entitled and empowered to do whatever they want, with little regard for the law or any reasnable sense of a code of ethics.

A political machine at any level is a dangerous thing.

Gary, your response did not directly address the t...

2011-08-07T06:41:55.297-05:00

Gary, your response did not directly address the two points I brought up.

First, please cite the law or laws that prohibit a municipality from hiring a licensed private investigator to carry on a lawful investigation. I will save you the trouble, as there are none, and the practice is not, in and of itself, illegal or unethical. As I am sure you are well aware, the issues are whether the purpose and procedures of the investigation were appropriate, not whether private investigators were used. Public employees can break laws just as easily as private parties, and municipal police departments in several cases have carried out unlawful investigations. Also, when a private party is hired by a municipality, then they stand in the shoes of the government, and they are subject to similar restrictions as the regular police department would be. Again, the issues are whether the purpose of the investigation was appropriate and whether the private investigators followed the law, not whether private investigators were used.

Second, the hiring of private investigators does not in and of itself demonstrate any evidence of an abusive "secret police force," especially in the sense that you are insinuating. No one was carried away from their home during the night. No one was tortured. No one was murdered. No one was thrown in prison without evidence of a crime. So, drop the use of the word "Gestapo." If the city administration inappropriately investigated individuals, whether it was done by the city police force or private parties, then the matter should be investigated and prosecuted, as appropriate. However, there is no need to use melodramatic and distasteful reference to Nazi Germany.

A municipality has a police department to investig...

2011-08-06T20:58:58.518-05:00

A municipality has a police department to investigate criminal wrongdoing. In this case, you have a municipality hiring a private investigator to investigate a person employed by a nonprofit organization, not the city of Carmel, for some undisclosed reason. The concern is that the city is using private investigators in order to circumvent substantive and procedural due processes that govern police investigations. This is what Nixon did with his so-called White House plumbers. The use of the word "Gestapo" is descriptive of a secret police force. If you read Dick Cady's book, you will see that is exactly how Three Eyes was being used by a corrupt police department to pursue activities that would never be deemed acceptable practices by a police department. The Clinton White House reportedly made use of an extremely corrupt LA private investigator, Anthony Pellicano, to subvert the investigations of the Clintons by intimidating witnesses with information Pellicano would dig up on them. Private individuals hire PIs to catch cheating spouses or help find missing relatives. It begs the question of what information Brainard was seeking to learn about Libman and other persons he has used PIs to investigate in the past.

I don't have any dog in the game, though I wil...

2011-08-06T13:54:48.803-05:00

I don't have any dog in the game, though I will admit that I don't care so much for Brainard.

Nonetheless, I will say that the headline used in this blog is very offensive. When Brainard rounds up several millions people, places them in concentration camps for hard labor, and then murders 12 million of them, THEN you can use terms like "Gestapo," "Nazi," etc. to refer to him and his administration. Outside such circumstances, all of us should agree to drop the creepy and inappropriate Nazi references, regardless of our political persuasions or point of views! Okay? Good.

Second, if you can cite a specific law or case that says that a municipality is prohibited from using private investigators to investigate suspected wrong-doing, then I would love to see the specific citation. The issue is not that private investigators were hired, that in and of itself, can be perfectly legal, as the City Attorney noted. Rather the issue is what was the PURPOSE of the investigation, and was it appropriate to investigate the individuals who were investigated, and was the investigation carried out lawfully. If there was a legitimate purpose, and the investigation was done according to the rules, then no crime was committed, whether private investigators were used or not.

I enjoy reading the Advance Indiana blog, as it presents a different, and I think important point of view. I do not always agree with everyone posted on this site, but I still appreciate being informed by it. However, I have to see this particular story was handled very poorly.

That's a great question, Indy4U2C. It has been...

2011-08-06T07:41:00.760-05:00

That's a great question, Indy4U2C. It has been raised before on this blog, but the local news media hasn't seemed interested in digging into it deeper.

...and what about The Gestraubo of Indianapolis? ...

2011-08-06T04:59:54.609-05:00

...and what about The Gestraubo of Indianapolis?

-Wasn't the Deputy Chief of Police's office bugged?

I've heard of a "Special Investigations Unit" that works for Frank Straub....and what duties, or, should I say, "activities" does Frank Straub's "Homeland Security" office perform??????

Why are real police officers being used to report directly to non-law enforcement officers such as Coons or Straub, instead of a police chain-of-command that goes to the Chief?

-Can it be so that they may access the law enforcement data bases to keep a likely "enemies list" stocked with info that private investigators are not allowed to have?

Well, I wouldn't hold Haney faultless. If it ...

2011-08-05T22:45:59.021-05:00

Well, I wouldn't hold Haney faultless. If it turns out laws were broken, he can't simply say he was doing what he was told to do. But you're exactly right, the fault would go straight to the Mayor's office. It is extremely unlikely the City's Attorney was acting without being specifically authorized to do so by Brainard.

Acceturo is wrong to call for Haney's resignat...

2011-08-05T22:32:13.223-05:00

Acceturo is wrong to call for Haney's resignation; it's Brainard who should be resigning. I know it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse, but if we had a real federal prosecutor in Indianapolis, he would have been history long ago. Brainard has co-opted all of Indy's big law firms as added protection. Brainard laundered virtually all of his campaign expenditures four years ago through a political consulting firm. Who knows where that money wound up.

Yes, it's a major scandal and my guess what wa...

2011-08-05T22:12:56.886-05:00

Yes, it's a major scandal and my guess what was reported today is the tip of the iceberg. Brainard appears to be laying the ground work to make Haney be the fall guy. Haney is a fool if he agrees to take the fall.