Posted on 09/09/2006 2:39:24 AM PDT by abb
DURHAM - If three Duke University lacrosse players face a jury this spring, defense attorneys likely will take aim at Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the Durham police officer who supervised the investigation into the March 13 party at which an escort service dancer says she was raped.
The 43-year-old detective could be the prosecution's most important witness aside from the dancer herself.
In recent weeks, an attorney for one of the lacrosse players questioned the plausibility of Gottlieb's case notes, provided to the defense as evidence. Attorneys also have criticized Gottlieb for not following the Durham Police Department's guidelines in a photo lineup that he showed the accuser.
Members of the defense team are now closely examining the arrests Gottlieb made before the rape case. Records show that the sergeant arrested a disproportionate number of Duke students, all on misdemeanor violations such as carrying an open beer on a public sidewalk or violating the city's noise ordinance.
Such charges usually earn an offender a pink ticket such as those issued for speeding. But court records show Gottlieb often arrested Duke students on such charges, taking them to jail in handcuffs.
Reached by telephone, Gottlieb declined to be interviewed for this story. A department spokesman said this week the sergeant is on leave, though what kind was not disclosed.
Some residents of neighborhoods where Gottlieb worked and victims' advocates say that the sergeant is a dedicated and fair officer.
A native of Ohio, Gottlieb is married and the father of young twins. The couple is expecting another child soon. Over the past 18 years, Gottlieb has worked as a paramedic in Wake and Durham counties, as well as a Durham police officer.
A barrel-chested man, Gottlieb tends to walk with his shoulders back and chin up. Among his colleagues, he is known as outspoken and sometimes headstrong. In a 2005 court affidavit that noted his qualifications, Gottlieb listed several community colleges he has attended and professional certifications. The affidavit did not mention an academic degree beyond high school.
Students go to jail
Gottlieb got the lacrosse case weeks after serving 10 months as a patrol shift supervisor in police District 2, which includes about a quarter of the city. The district has neighborhoods as disparate as the crime-ridden Oxford Manor public housing complex and Trinity Park -- the blocks of historic homes across from a low stone wall rimming Duke's East Campus.
From May 2005 to February 2006, the period during which Gottlieb was a patrol supervisor in the district, court and police records examined by The News & Observer show that Gottlieb arrested 28 people. Twenty were Duke students, including a quarterback of the football team and the sister of a men's lacrosse player. At least 15 of the Duke students were taken to jail.
In comparison, the three other squad supervisors working in District 2 during the same 10 months -- Sgts. Dale Gunter, John Shelton and Paul Daye -- tallied a combined 64 arrests. Two were Duke students. Both were taken to jail.
Gottlieb often treated Duke students and nonstudents differently. For example, Gottlieb in 2004 wrote a young man a citation for illegally carrying a concealed .45-caliber handgun and possessing less than a half-ounce of marijuana, but records indicate he wasn't taken to jail. He was not a Duke student.
Get-tough tactics
Trinity Park residents have long complained to university and city officials about the boisterous parties thrown by the students who live there. That spurred Duke in February to buy a dozen rental properties in the neighborhood, including the house where the lacrosse team threw its spring break bash two weeks later.
The Durham police officers who responded to 911 calls about the parties were sometimes on the receiving end of defiance and disrespectful taunts. Trinity Park resident Ellen Dagenhart praised Gottlieb's get-tough tactics as a direct response to community concerns about disruptive, drunken behavior.
"There were a lot of homeowners and taxpayers who were calling the cops saying, 'Please come and make yourself seen,' " said Dagenhart, who has known Gottlieb for years. "Anyone who's seen kids passed out in a puddle of vomit is certainly happy to see the police show up. You can't blame Mark Gottlieb for that."
Durham City Manager Patrick Baker said that cracking down on Trinity Park partying was a priority for police last year.
The police department's official policy gives officers discretion in whether to transport someone to the lockup downtown. Factors other than just the "elements of the crime" can be considered, such as whether the suspect is belligerent.
"Our general order, it basically gives the officer room to use his or her own judgment," said Cpl. David Addison, a police spokesman.
But a standing order encourages officers to use alternatives to arrests for misdemeanors, including the use of written citations because of "jail overcrowding, crowded court dockets, staffing problems and the intrusiveness involved in a physical arrest."
Party house
On Oct. 8, Gottlieb and officers he supervised responded to a call about a rowdy student at a duplex at 203 Watts St. -- a Trinity Park address familiar to the police as a party house.
In an affidavit, Gottlieb wrote that officers arrived about 6:30 p.m. and told partygoers to be quiet. After the police left, party-goers urinated on neighbor Lee Coggins' home and threw a beer bottle in her direction that shattered on the sidewalk, Gottlieb wrote.
Police obtained a search warrant, and Gottlieb's squad entered the duplex at 3:19 a.m. They seized three beer kegs -- one empty -- and "beer bong tubing." On the wall was what Gottlieb described as a "stolen Duke flag." A Duke flag had been reported stolen from an administrative building on campus the previous spring.
Five students there were arrested by Gottlieb for violating the city's noise ordinance and alcohol-related misdemeanors. Another housemate, Mike Kenney, was arrested the next day.
Kenney, then 21, was charged with a noise ordinance violation and possession of an open container of alcohol on public property and taken to jail. Two days later, records show, Kenney was arrested a second time and taken to jail on charges of possession of stolen property. The flag had been in his room.
When the case went to trial in January, Gottlieb testified that in the wake of rowdy parties in Trinity Park, the department's policy was to take alcohol-related violations seriously. But the judge threw out the charges against Kenney, citing a lack of evidence.
Glen Bachman, Kenney's attorney, successfully argued that Gottlieb couldn't prove the college senior was home during the party or that the flag in his room was the same flag that had been stolen.
Coggins, the woman who called police about the party at the duplex, said Gottlieb's actions seemed responsive and professional. He doesn't have a vendetta against Duke students, she said.
"It's not like he's hanging out at their house waiting for them to do something," Coggins said.
Kathy Summerlee, Kenney's mother and a lawyer in Minnesota, called the arrest and prosecution of her son "frivolous."
Though the charges were thrown out, Kenney could have faced suspension if convicted. He graduated from Duke in May and now is looking for a job, she said.
"It was clear to all of us that the police were feeling a lot of pressure to make a difference in the behavior in that neighborhood," Summerlee said this week. "I think there was a lot of damage done in this process. It cost us money. It cost us a lot of worry. It rearranged Mike's life."
Still, some in Trinity Park cite Gottlieb as a dedicated officer. He prides himself on being a victim's advocate, often recounting stories from his years as a domestic violence investigator.
Dagenhart said she remembers seeing him at a vigil for domestic violence victims.
"This was not something he had to do as a part of his job," she said. "It's something he did as someone who cared. I know he cares about Durham. It's not just a job for him."
(News researchers David Raynor and Denise Jones contributed to this report.) Staff writer Michael Biesecker can be reached at 956-2421 or mbieseck@newsobserver.com. News researchers David Raynor and Denise Jones contributed to this report.
Sounds rather convenient to me.
The three, though present, "were not actively involved" in the incident, Chalmers said. "Some were in a position to see what occurred, but took no part in it."
Bull! They were witnesses to a crime, they failed to report it, and they fled the scene. They ARE involved.
Baker apologizes for dump blunder
By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun, Sep 15, 2006 : 9:56 pm ET
DURHAM -- City Manager Patrick Baker has conceded his government dropped the ball when it came to getting a new license from the state for the north Durham yard-waste dump that's now the site of a smoky wood fire.
Smoke from the blaze has bothered residents throughout northern and central Durham all week.
Baker said he apologized Friday to regulators from the N.C. Division of Waste Management for the city's tardiness in responding to their demands, and pledged that his staff would produce a plan and timetable for getting the dump re-licensed within days.
After examining two years' worth of memos exchanged by the division and the city's Solid Waste Management Department, Baker said it was clear city officials had dragged their feet about responding to the expiration of the dump's permit two years ago. -cut-
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-770198.html
* This town can't even run a compost pile. Second major fire in two years. Sheer incompetence from the top down and all around. But we keep re-electing all these hacks. Completed sample ballots make the job real easy. Eight weeks to election time.
Durham police nab crime spree suspect [Target carjacking perp]
From Staff Reports : The Herald-Sun, Sep 15, 2006 : 6:53 pm ET
DURHAM -- Police have arrested and charged a Durham man allegedly involved in a two-week crime spree here.
James Daniel Bloodworth, 48, of Gladstone Drive, has been charged with numerous offenses including two carjackings, felony cruelty to animals, assault on a Wal-Mart employee and numerous beer larcenies during the two-week period of late August through early September.
Bloodworth has also been charged in connection with a vehicle chase in Carrboro.
The first incident was reported at 5:30 a.m., Aug. 24, in a parking lot on East Lakewood Avenue. According to Durham police, a 53-year-old woman was getting out of her car en route to work when a man armed with a knife approached her. The woman got back in her car, but the man dragged her out of the car by her ankles and fled in the her 1996 burgundy Infiniti.
The woman suffered minor injuries.
Two days later, the stolen Infiniti was spotted at the scene of a robbery on South Miami Boulevard. A 66-year-old Spring Lake woman told officers a man in a burgundy Infiniti pulled up next to her, approached her car and took her purse. The woman, who was holding her pet Chihuahua in her arms, tried to get her purse back, putting the dog down in the car as she unsuccessfully reached for her purse.
The alleged carjacker threw the dog out of the car, causing non-life threatening injuries to the dog's head. The suspect fled with the victim's purse.
The stolen Infiniti was reportedly seen at the sites of several beer thefts throughout Durham on Aug. 26 and 27.
The stolen Infiniti was recovered on South Roxboro Street at 6:39 p.m., Aug. 27.
Two hours later, a woman was robbed of her car in the parking lot of the Target retail store on Chapel Hill Boulevard.
In that case, the woman reported she was getting into her vehicle when a man armed with a knife approached her, knocked her to the ground and grabbed her car keys. The suspect had difficulty starting the car and several people approached the car to prevent him from taking it. The suspect finally managed to flee in the car, a 2003 Toyota Prius.
On Sept. 2, Carrboro police officers spotted the stolen Prius parked in a fire lane at a convenience store. A man came out of the store with stolen beer and sped away when officers attempted to stop the car. The chase ended when the Prius wrecked, but the driver, allegedly Bloodworth, escaped.
Four days later Durham police were dispatched to a disturbance and assault at a Wal-Mart retail store on North Roxboro Road.
When store employees attempted to stop a man suspected of shoplifting several ink cartridges, the man slashed the employee on the arm with a box cutter. Employees tackled the man and held him until officers arrived. Bloodworth was charged with robbery with a dangerous weapon, assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury and possession of drug paraphernalia.
He was placed in Durham County Jail in lieu of $40,000 bond.
Bloodworth was later identified as a suspect in the carjacking at Target after a video of the robbery was shown on a local television station. Investigators then linked him to the carjacking on Lakewood Avenue, the robbery on South Miami Boulevard, the chase in Carrboro and five larcenies at Durham convenience stores.
Bloodworth has been charged with two counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon (the Target and Lakewood Avenue incidents), one count of common-law robbery (the Miami Boulevard incident), felony cruelty to animals, two counts of possession of a stolen vehicle and five counts of misdemeanor larceny.
He is also facing traffic charges resulting from the chase in Carrboro.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-770158.html
* The police logs of the Herald-Sun make entertaining late night reading.
Number one reason anyone still reads the rag, besides the ads.
No shortage of stories in this town.
Beyond the DNA, those of us without medical knowledge must rely on the experts. Fortunately, a new and comprehensive site has recently appeared. Forensics Talk is the work of Kathleen Eckelt, a certified Forensic Nurse Examiner with over 30 years of clinical nursing experience. She's also president of Harford Medlegal Consulting, which specializes on issues relating to forensic nurses.
The site provides a wealth of material, but three items particularly jumped out at me.
1.) The accuser's injuries are inconsistent with the attack that she described.
[snip]
2.) Sgt. Mark Gottlieb's notes lack procedural credibility.
[snip]
3.) Duke Hospital appears to have violated protocol.
[snip]
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/
Questions for Correll
This is in response to Debrah Correll's letter of September 7.
If no rape occurred at the Duke lacrosse party, as she claims, perhaps she can tell us why 40 lacrosse players refused to cooperate with the police investigation on this case and why not one of them has come forward to support the alibis of the defendants.
If these 40 players are granted immunity and called to testify at the trial they will have no other choice than to tell us what they know. I believe a declaration of innocence for the defendants is premature.
None of the defendants have proven they were not at the scene of the crime when it occurred. They have only proven they left in a hurry because they knew they needed an alibi.
I have known District Attorney Mike Nifong for over 15 years. I have found him to be a trustworthy, honest and reliable person. He is doing what a good district attorney is supposed to do. He will get the job done.
JIMMY D. HAYNES
Durham
September 16, 2006
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/gaynor/060915
Commiserating with Robert Novak, thanks to the Duke case
Nifong's concern over retirement money, raised by Gaynor, is an interesting story. Can anyone lay out where Nifong is likely to be wrt his COunty pension? Does he have enough years in? If not, can't he simply return to being an ADA? State workers spend an enormous amount of time looking to maximize their pensions.
I've been looking here.
http://www.treasurer.state.nc.us/DSTHome/RetirementSystems/Active+Employees
I would think Nifong is qualified to receive benefits, but I don't know how much...
It looks like another 10 years would raise his pension by nearly 50%!! But I only filled in rough estimates for his years of service, salary etc.
[snip]
Regarding Brodhead, The Chronicle said:
Brodhead released a statement Saturday urging individuals "to cooperate to the fullest with the police inquiry while we wait to learn the truth."
By Mar. 25, Brodhead knew the lacrosse captains who rented the house on N. Buchanan Blvd. had voluntarily answered police questions, given them statements, gone to Duke Hospital and submitted to "rape kit" testing, and offered to take polygraph tests. What's more, Brodhead knew all 46 players who could have contested the order to submit to DNA testing and mug photos, instead immediately complied with the order.
Yet The Chronicle said nothing about Brodhead mentioning the lacrosse team's extraordinary cooperation with police.
Why not?
Because Brodhead decided to say nothing in his Mar. 25 statement about the players' cooperation. He made that decision knowing that on Mar. 25 the public was unaware of the lacrosse team's extraordinary cooperation.
[end excerpt]
(Must reading on Brodhead duplicity)
If he loses the election, he might be fired by whoever the governor appoints. Which would be fitting since he fired Frieda Black.
"If not, can't he simply return to being an ADA?"
He might just begin his senate campaign, based on the notion that he was thrown out by white privilege; and that he has proven that he can be trusted to defend the AA community.
MORE prisoners freed by DNA testing (from the FOX news site) July , 2006
Johnny Briscoe, 52, walked out of a state prison in Charleston, a day after he was declared innocent by a judge...
St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who was not the prosecutor when the case was tried, called Briscoe's incarceration a "terrible mistake." He said it was exacerbated by the county crime lab's failure to locate evidence when the prosecutor first requested a review six years ago.
*******
NEW YORK — A judge signed an order Thursday freeing a man from prison where he had spent more than two decades after being wrongfully convicted of the brutal rape of a 25-year-old woman.
Judge John Byrne signed the order in Bronx Criminal Court while Alan Newton stood quietly with his attorney...
The nonprofit Innocence Project and prosecutors from the Bronx district attorney's office had asked for Newton's 1985 conviction to be vacated based on recent testing on a rape kit used for the woman after the incident.
Newton, now 44, was convicted of raping the woman in an abandoned Bronx building in June 1984. He was sentenced in 1985 to up to 40 years in prison.
http://friendsofdukeuniversity.blogspot.com/2006/03/expired-documents.html#c115845320725225306
Here is Orin Starn's article which was published and then removed from Herald Sun.
A university that prides itself on innovation would become a bold leader in much needed college athletics reform.
By Orin Starn
Published on Friday September 15, The Herald Sun
It wasn’t a sellout at Cameroon Indoor Stadium Monday night.
Instead the legendary basketball arena hosted a more intimate, private event for Duke’s 850 varsity athletics, coaches, and athletics department staff.
Men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski was a featured speaker at this combination pep rally and revival meeting. He urged Duke athletes to feel good about themselves in the wake of the bad lacrosse controversy publicity. “What this situation this spring did was that people wanted put a cloud over all athletics and specifically lacrosse.” Coach K explained later to Herald Sun reporter. “I don’t think that’s fair, quite frankly because we have so many great kids. If somebody did something wrong, then hold them accountable, but don’t indict everyone.”
I’ve taught many Duke athletes over the years, and very much agree that most are great kids. Although most Durhamites want to hear all the evidence before passing judgment, there’s also plenty of reason to doubt District Attorney Mike Nifong’s fairness with the lacrosse charges. I was one of thousands of city residents to sign the petition putting Lewis Cheek on the November ballot out of concern that Nifong may no longer be trusted with his job.
This said, the private Monday rally suggests that coach K, Athletics Director Joe Alleva, and their powerful supporters have stubbornly refused to learn the lessons of these last months. An arrogant sense of victimization and entitlement seems to have replaced any semblance of clear-thinking or self-reflection in Duke sports circles.
Consider what we know now. Quite apart from the alleged sexual attack, it was revealed this spring that almost one-third of the lacrosse team had been arrested on public drunkenness and on other charges. Good evidence suggests that a team captain gave a false name to hire strippers; that at least one player made a racial slur at a spring-break party; that another wrote a subsequent e-mail joking, parody or not, about killing and skinning stripper “b-es.” Another player was convicted in Washington D.C., of assault charges and reportedly yelled homophobic epithets. Still another was charged in June driving drunk and running a red light just days before Duke President Richard Brodhead announced the reinstatement of the lacrosse program.
Nor has Alleva inspired confidence with his leadership through it all. Many Duke insiders felt that Alleva as much or more than lacrosse coach Mike Pressler bore responsibility for failure to monitor the lacrosse team’s mounting trail of loutish behavior and arrest record. Then this summer, Alleva with his son Joe “JD” Alleva – a former Duke baseball player – when JD crashes their speed boat against a bank at a local reservoir. Alleva escaped with stitches, but JD was booked for operating the boat while impaired after refusing law enforcement requests to take a sobriety test. If not the most awful thing ever, the incident did not encourage trust in Alleva’s judgment, especially given the timing. The news reports of the alleged drunken crash were the last thing Duke needed in the tidal wave of bad lacrosse publicity.
None of this, of course, means that the three indicted lacrosse players are guilty. We must be vigilant in ensuring that both they and their accuser receive fair treatment from the justice system. But it does show an astonishing lack of perspective for coach K and others to suggest that Duke sports has somehow been innocent victim of groundless smears by “very narrow-minded” and “ridiculously wrong” critics, as he labeled them in a summer press conference. This should be a time for openness, reflection and dialog instead of circling the sports wagon with the veiled implication that any negative words about Duke sports are the fault of pointy-headed professors, scandal-mongering journalists, and weak-kneed administrators who fail to understand the noble role of athletics at Duke.
An exclusive rally for athletes sends completely the wrong message. It suggests they have interests separate and apart from other Duke students at a time when President Brodhead and other top administrators have, very rightly, sought to bridge the gap between the athletics department and the rest of the university. Holding this event on September 11th also seems oddly inappropriate as if the woes of Duke sports had anything to do with the deaths of thousands of people at Ground Zero.
Here is my proposal: Duke should honor existing athletics scholarships, then withdraw from Division I competition with their horrifyingly large time, training and travel demands on student-athletes and their crass, television-driven over-commercialization. The university ought to maintain lower-key club teams where students will learn the virtues of leadership, teamwork and competition just as well as they do on varsity squads now. New money should be invested in academic merit scholars for deserving African-American and other applicants from underrepresented groups to strengthen Duke diversity and excellence. Coach K and other coaches would have the option of remaining on Duke payroll coaching the new club teams (even if Coach K might perhaps be asked to take a small pay cut from his current salary of well over a million dollars a year).
A university that prides itself on innovation would become a bold leader in much needed college athletics reform.
Likely to happen?
Of course not
The right thing to do?
I think so
Orin Starn is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University.
Quite apart from the alleged sexual attack, it was revealed this spring that almost one-third of the lacrosse team had been arrested on public drunkenness and on other charges.
Right. Like "noise violations", maybe? Really hard stuff, there. No drugs. No guns. No meth lab. No cocaine. No beating up of women. IOW, nothing different from what any generation of college kids have done for the past 100 years. Not entirely laudable, but let's drop the hypocrisy here, shall we?
Good evidence suggests that a team captain gave a false name to hire strippers; that at least one player made a racial slur at a spring-break party; that another wrote a subsequent e-mail joking, parody or not, about killing and skinning stripper “b-es.”
What planet has this guy been on that he repeats things that have already been disected and dismissed or outrighlty disproven?
Another player was convicted in Washington D.C., of assault charges and reportedly yelled homophobic epithets.
See above. Is he living at the bottom of a well? Is he like one of those brainwashed N. Koreans, who, once you politely point out the truth to them, merely repeat the propaganda line all over again, as if you hadn't heard it in the first place?
The university ought to maintain lower-key club teams where students will learn the virtues of leadership, teamwork and competition just as well as they do on varsity squads now.
I see how much he loves athletics. . .
New money should be invested in academic merit scholars for deserving African-American and other applicants from underrepresented groups to strengthen Duke diversity and excellence.
The usual racism of low expectations.
Coach K and other coaches would have the option of remaining on Duke payroll coaching the new club teams (even if Coach K might perhaps be asked to take a small pay cut from his current salary of well over a million dollars a year).
How about getting the administrators to take a cut? (Do you think Brodhead is worth $800,000 a year, or whatever it is that he gets? How much does the Sec. of Education in Washington get? $500,000? How much does POTUS get? Half a mil? Is running Duke harder than running the USA? Is there anyone else willing to run Duke, and maybe even do it for less, and do it better?
Well, it's obvious that Starn has a major grudge against athletes and athletics in general. What's the story on why the H-S ran this and then took it down?
Excerpt from Orin Starn book- "Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last "Wild" Indian (2004)"
A “compromise between science and sentiment”
It’s hard to write about even now, but my story begins with a death, a difficult death: Saturday, March 25, 1916, sometime in the afternoon. The body of Ishi, the last known surviving “wild” California Indian, lay on the autopsy table at a San Francisco hospital. He had died, with blood gushing from his nose and mouth, just a few hours before. “Considerably emaciated Indian 168 cm. in length,” the doctor noted. In his final months the tuberculosis had wasted Ishi to skin and bone, and his long black hair was streaked with gray. The doctor, Jean V. Cooke, a well-regarded young pathologist, made a straight cut down the torso, peeling back the thin yellow layer of fat to remove and examine the liver, lungs, and heart. He sawed around the skullcap and lifted out the brain—oyster-white, furrowed, and glistening under the lights. Cooke weighed the organ and completed the rest of his measurements and note taking. Then he stitched up the cadaver for transport to a local undertaker for embalming.
http://www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch/author_az/2004/orin_starn.html
http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/CA/faculty/ostarn
* Eliminating a few non-essential academic
departments at Duke may be a better idea.
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2006/09/arrogance-of-starn.html
You're sure to be disappointed if you believe that individual Duke professors will cease exploiting Mike Nifong's procedurally dubious targeting of three Duke lacrosse players. In recent weeks, Peter Wood went out of his way to seem to slander Reade Seligmann, while adding unsubstantiated allegations against the team as a whole. Then Wahneema Lubiano conceded that she and other members of the Group of 88 were fully aware that "some would see the [Group of 88] ad as a stake through the collective heart of the lacrosse team." Friday's Herald-Sun features the latest in this pattern, an op-ed from Orin Starn.
Starn denounces the alleged arrogance of Duke athletics as part of his campaign to transform Duke into a watered-down version of Haverford. In the process, he imitates the Times' Duff Wilson in superficially presenting both sides of the legal case while actually offering a one-sided interpretation hostile to the players. No wonder Herald-Sun editor Bob ("Eyes Wide Shut") Ashley rushed the piece into print.
[end excerpt]
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