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.
That's because of diligent people like you!! :>
Some say...
Does anyone know if the Trinity Park resident Lee Coggins quoted in the Gottleib article is the same Lee Coggins mentioned in the below article. That Lee Coggins mentioned that she wants to get more politically active.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/27/MNGOF5SE2A1.DTL
How about that woman in the article that lives right there by the LAX players - she claims she had seen Mark Gottlieb at Vigils for domestic violence.
1) Maybe her attendance at Domestic Violence vigils exposes a motive for her to support the AV and the prosecution's witnesses?
2) Was this the DUKE Midnight Vigils held where the Posters of the LAX players were handed out to the angry crowd?
If so, where's the genuineness in Gottlieb attending that?
Her attendance would also be explained if it was the Vigils to protest and call for the lynching of the Duke players, due to her living right there in the proxity of the alleged sexual assault.
The N&O bent over backwards at the end of that article to rehab Gottlieb. I think the N&O threw that piece together when they got word the Gottlieb had been placed on disciplinary leave (just my theory) - it was like 5 people involved - 3 authors and 2 research specialists. Highly irregular, you know.
Still dragging in Durham.
http://www.kinston.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=39044&Section=Local
Odd that they got a government teacher to comment on a legal issue? I think some in Durham and NC may be surprised how the courts deal with the speedy trial issue in this case.
One way to get the courts to slap you down is to abuse defendants like Nifong is doing. NC may find they have the strictest speedy trial rules in the nation forced upon them by the federal courts because they could not find a way to reign in Nifong. Many times the courts have pushed the law along because they were offended by the actions of the state. I would guess that Miranda was one such situation.
Warrant backlog drops by nearly 26,000
BY BRIANNE DOPART, The Herald-Sun
September 9, 2006 8:32 pm
DURHAM -- A Durham Police Department backlog of unserved warrants has dropped from an estimated 35,000 to 9,300 in a less than four months.
But officials acknowledge it's not because the paperwork has been dealt with.
City Manager Patrick Baker says the numbers differ because the city never had 35,000 unserved warrants to begin with -- he thinks.
"I've never understood the numbers [of warrants] and how they're calculated. I think some of those warrant [counts] have been a little bit of hyperbole," Baker said.
The 35,000 figure, mentioned at a City Council meeting in late May, must have been an exaggeration, he said. The council also was told that the Police Department didn't have enough people to handle the warrant backlog.
If officials did exaggerate, Baker said, it was only to communicate that there were "several thousand" warrants that had gone unserved.
At the May meeting, Police Chief Steve Chalmers told the council that the warrant-serving system is "certainly not working."
At the same meeting, Chalmers briefly entertained the notion of handing the city's unserved warrants over to the Sheriff's Office, which was easing its own, smaller backlog at a rate of 450 warrants a month, sheriff's Lt. Adam Clayton said.
When questioned in mid-July about the city's backlog, police spokeswoman Kammie Michael told the Herald-Sun the city had counted its warrants and found 10,200 unserved ones.
Michael did not offer an explanation for the difference between 35,000 in late May and 10,200 in mid-July. She also did not respond to questions about how the Police Department's records division tallies such numbers.
Chalmers, meanwhile, said he had never seen a number "in print" about the unserved warrant total.
"If someone had seen it and told me, I would've taken issue with it," he said.
The chief said he delivered a report about unserved warrants to the city's Crime Cabinet years ago and recalled a backlog then of about 7,000. A number as high as 35,000 would have sent up red flags for him because it would have been implausible, he said.
Baker said he didn't know "the methodology" behind the 35,000 figure.
"I would expect that we've taken hundreds if not thousands of warrants off that number by now, though," he added.
The newly served warrants he referred to were handled by the Police Department's Gang Unit, whose members were pulled off their regular duties July 24 to deal with the warrant problem.
Michael said that, in a period of 24 days, the 30-officer unit served 203 warrants in 533 attempts.
Final numbers have not been released. But Chalmers said he hoped to receive a full report by early October.
Baker said he was pleased with the unit's work. But he said he didn't want his "Gang Unit serving warrants all day" when other work needed to be done.
Eventually, the Police Department will have to form a squad dedicated to serving warrants, possibly modeled after the sheriff's squad, Chalmers said.
He emphasized that the city's backlog did not include warrants for serious crimes. Most unserved warrants are for failure to appear in court and summonses for worthless checks.
Baker agreed.
"We're not sitting on murder warrants," he said. "But there is a type of people that build up on their criminal activity. ... They move on to something bigger and bigger."
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-768311.html
mark
This and the arrests of the Latino prostitutes are just CYA actions stemming from all the criticism the DPD has been getting.
Maybe the 25,700 warrants that went away went the same place Nifong's timeline and Gottleib's contemporaneous notes on the Duke hoax case went?
Small world ...
Lee Coggins is the Senior Account Executive for Independent Weekly. She set up one of the listservs for Trinity Park.
Another active listserv subscriber is resident Christina Headrick, who just happens to be a former reporter for the N & O.
http://www.newsobserver.com/978/story/426413.html
Here's an article she wrote with Joseph Neff.
http://www.newsobserver.com/208/story/254152.html
Here's a sampling from the listserv:
(no direct link)
leeannecoggins
Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:22 am
Thanks Christina,
Do you think that since you used to be a reporter, that the N&O or the H-Sun would let you write an editorial about this? It's really frustrating. It seems like everything you & BlueSparc worked on was a waste of time. You'd especially think that you would have gotten a response from the city manager after all this. I would think that it's a good time for the rest of the community to stand behind you and say that we do need these ordinances.
Lee
-----Original Message-----
From: TrinityPark@yahoogroups.com on behalf of Christina Headrick
Sent: Thu 4/13/2006 7:38 AM
To: gronberg@...; trinitypark@yahoogroups.com; tstith@...
Subject: [TrinityPark] Disorderly House ordinances
Attached is the information that we provided the city manager (twice) last year, although he did not follow-up on it with us to tell us why nothing was done. We were promised a follow-up, but got no response.
(Trinity Heights, a Duke representative, the city attorney's office, and the police department were all at the meetings we had, too.)
I still haven't gotten a response to my recent e-mail either, inquiring what happened.
-- Christina Headrick
Trinity Park
(snip)
I can understand frustrations of residents over some of the behavior of Duke students, though it's becoming clear how some residents may have fueled the Duke LAX case fire to further their agenda.
Another Lee Coggins entry from the listserv:
Fri Nov 4, 2005 5:51 am
RE: [TrinityPark] Zero Tolerance
I live across from (redacted), where all the boys moved out last week after being arrested when one of the partyers threw a bottle at me. Initially, we were really excited that they moved out, but Monday, Trinity Properties was back at the house showing it to a new kid who clearly wanted to live in a party house. Luckily, we were in the yard so we approached them to talk about it. I informed the student fo the Zero Tolerance policy and he was really freaked out. The TP representative was really angry that we scared him off and accused us of being unreasonable and that we needed to be more tolerant, since we did live ON a college campus. (This is how Guy Solie and Trinity Properties views us)
(snip)
We've posted this story before, perhaps because one of the defense attorneys was Joseph Cheshire V.
Ironic.
Anybody ever hear if the dna results came back for the Fresno football rape case?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/13/national/main1798840.shtml
(July 13)
"Lawyer Jack Revvill said Davis was providing DNA samples that would show he did not have sex with the girl, who investigators say may have wandered into the apartment complex where the two men lived."
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