Posted on 12/12/2012 2:57:48 PM PST by AmericanSamurai
OAKLAND -- On the night before disgraced Oakland police Officer Frank Vazquez disappeared in November 2000, he called attorney Michael Rains in a rage.
In a profanity-laced tirade, Vazquez said he feared his fate as one of the four Oakland cops caught up in the infamous police brutality case known as the Riders.
"They're not going to give us a fair trial," Rains remembers Vazquez screaming into the phone. "I'm not going to rot in prison."
Twelve years later, Vazquez is still on the run, an enduring symbol of Oakland's decadelong failure to fix a Police Department ripped apart by the Riders scandal.
But the city might be able to start moving on, now that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson on Wednesday approved a major reform plan for the Police Department with an unprecedented level of federal oversight.
While Vazquez is still a fugitive, the other officers at the center of the Riders case have been trying for years to move on. One is a police officer in Southern California. A second headed to the Middle East and became a private security contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan. A third is an investigator in the Bay Area with a security company.
"My life didn't turn out the way I planned it, but whose does?" said Matthew Hornung, the only defendant to be acquitted of all charges, who now works for Monument Security, a large national security firm.
(Excerpt) Read more at insidebayarea.com ...
Or maybe 'cause the FBI is embarrassed.
I wonder if Matthew Hornung was unable to get re-hired by another Police Department like Mabanag was.
Three of the "Riders", Matthew Hornung, Clarence Mabanag, Jude Siapno.
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