Coda to a Killing: No Justice for Derek Hale

Derek with his wife, Elaine.

 
The practice of police "accountability" generally consists of using money stolen at gunpoint to buy off victims and survivors of officially sanctioned criminal violence.

Few better examples can be found than the $975,000 settlement paid by the City of Wilmington, Delaware, to Elaine Hale, whose husband Derek was murdered by Wilmington Police on November 6, 2006. 

The settlement brings to an end a federal lawsuit that was scheduled for trial next July -- more than four years after Derek, a Marine veteran who served two tours in Iraq, was shot three times at point-blank range after being tasered seven times within the space of about a minute. Unarmed and cooperative, Derek was not a criminal suspect and had done nothing to justify arrest, let alone summary execution.

Pay-offs of this kind are part of a ritual of self-exculpation in which the police and the local criminal clique they serve loudly proclaim their complete innocence, even as their cynical actions offer eloquent testimony of their guilt. William S. Montgomery, one of the palace eunuchs who serve Wilmington Mayor James M. Baker, performed his role perfectly.

Serving the Regime that would later kill him: Derek in Iraq.

"We were very confident in our case and know that our officers acted properly and professionally," lied Montgomery in announcing the settlement, which -- as he went on to say -- meant that the supposedly rock-solid case would be spared "the inherent risk of a jury trial." 

Fortunately, Montgomery pointed out, the risk of a trial was "eliminated for less than the cost of defense." 


Through the miracle of socialized municipal risk management, nobody will face accountability for the extra-judicial killing of a 25-year-old husband and father of two stepchildren who had celebrated his first wedding anniversary just days before he was murdered.

Shortly after receiving a medical discharge from the Marine Corps, Derek joined an "outlaw motorcycle club" called the Pagans. In November 2006, Derek and some friends from the club made a run from Virginia to Wilmington as part of a Toys for Tots promotion. Derek didn't know that for more than a year before he joined the club the Pagans were the subject of a Delaware State Police investigation. 

Derek was house-sitting for a friend on the day he was murdered. Sandra Lopez, the soon-to-be ex-wife of Derek's friend, arrived with an 11-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter early in the afternoon to remove some personal belongings. Derek -- wearing a hooded sweatshirt -- was sitting quietly on the front porch of the home when an unmarked police car and a blacked-out SUV arrived at around 4:00 PM and disgorged a thugscrum of 8-14 heavily armed police. According to eyewitnesses, the officers were dressed in black, and displayed no police insignia of any kind.  

 

Click to enlarge. Note: Derek was Tasered seven times.

At the time, Lopez and her children were standing behind Derek on the small porch, which was at the top of a short stairway. The armed strangers ordered the woman and her kids to move away from Derek, who by this time had risen to his feet. One of the cops ordered Derek to remove his hands from his sweatshirt. No more than a second or two later, according to eyewitnesses, he was hit with the first of what would be seven Taser strikes.

The Taser blast knocked Derek sideways and sent him into convulsions. His right hand involuntarily shot out of its pocket, clenching spasmodically. Ordered to put his hands up, Derek struggled to comply, but found himself paralyzed. So he was struck with a second Taser blast that drove him to the side and induced him to vomit in a nearby flower bed. 

“Not in front of the kids,” Derek pleaded. “Get the kids out of here.”

The officers continued to order Derek to put up his hands; he was physically unable to comply.

So they tased him again. 

And again. 

And again. 

And again. 

And again.

"That's not necessary!" exclaimed eyewitness Howard Mixon, a contractor who had been working nearby. "That's overkill! That's overkill!"

One of the bold and brave paladins of public order swaggered over to Mixon and threatened him: "I'll f*****g show you overkill!" snarled the barely literate tax-feeder. Meanwhile, Derek -- left to wallow in a puddle of his own vomit -- was trying to comply with the demands of his assailants. 

Mixon.

“I'm trying to get my hands out,” Derek  gasped, trying to make his tortured and traumatized body obey his will. Horrified, his friend Sandra screamed at the officers: “He is trying to get his hands out, he cannot get his hands out!”

Few things bring out the raw courage of a cop like the sight of an unarmed and defenseless "suspect." Acting with the serene confidence that his victim couldn't harm him, Lt. William Browne of the Wilmington Police Department -- who was close enough to seize and handcuff Derek, if this had been necessary -- shot him at point-blank range, sending three .40-caliber rounds into his chest. 

In May 2007, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden -- yes, the glorious outpouring of Vice Presidential loins -- issued a report vindicating Browne's actions. The report began by claiming that "the purpose of the Tasering was to overcome Derek Hale's resistance to the arrest so he could be taken into custody without injury to himself or to the officers." 

Leaving aside the fact that the Taser assault caused severe injury to Derek (as a coroner's report later confirmed), and also made it impossible for him to comply with police orders, every eyewitness to the murder who wasn't implicated in the crime insists that the victim never resisted arrest in any way. Furthermore, Thomas Neuberger, one of the attorneys who represented Derek's widow,  pointed out that the Wilmington PD's departmental policy on Taser use does not authorize the use of that reliably lethal weapon on non-resisting suspects. 

Biden's report also claimed that Derek's “menacing” behavior -- which consisted of vomiting into a flowerbed while begging the police to get the kids out of harm's way -- led the timid creature known as William Browne to believe that "he was in immediate danger" and that "the use of deadly force was immediately necessary to prevent serious injury or death" to him or to one of his partners in state-sanctioned crime. 

No charges were filed against the individual who murdered Derek Hale. Shortly after Biden issued his report, Browne was promoted. This infuriating detail was merely filigree on the tapestry of mendacity woven by Delaware's "law enforcement community" to cover up the murder of Derek Hale. 

Derek with step-children Taylor and Garrett.

In the years prior to the anti-Pagan crack-down by the Delaware State Police (DSP), the agency was besieged with lawsuits alleging civil rights violations, and subject to several ongoing corruption probes. 

Attorney Thomas Neuberger told me three years ago that DSP Commander Thomas MacLeish (or "Colonel Tom," to use Neuberger's not-at-all affectionate nickname), who was appointed to his post in 2005, made improving the agency's public image his highest priority. A high-profile campaign against a big, bad biker gang was just the thing to repristinate the department's image. 

The State Police operation eventually yielded a 160-count indictment, much of which was withheld from the public. After prosecutors had cluttered the air with lurid but vague allegations of "racketeering" and "gang activity," thirty-two Pagans were arrested on narcotics and weapons charges. The investigation came to a thoroughly anti-climatic end when a fewer than a half-dozen Pagans were charged with narcotics-related offenses. All of them were given deals that didn't involve prison time.

Like six-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was murdered by police last May in a Detroit SWAT raid staged for TV cameras, and 21-year-old Las Vegas resident Trevon Cole, who was murdered by police (while trying to dispose of a misdemeanor-sized amount of marijuana) in a hotel drug raid that was also the outgrowth of a "reality TV" program, Derek Hale was a casualty of a police PR campaign. He didn't become a "person of interest" until after he had been killed.

Derek's mother.

Immediately after the shooting, the DSP contacted the Virginia State Police and -- in a deliberate act of official perjury -- told them that the murdered Marine was a suspect in a narcotics investigation. Police from Delaware and Virginia barged into the Hale family's Manassas home, shoving aside a grieving wife and two devastated children in order to carry out a charade of a search in the service of an official fiction. 

The architects of this cover-up weren't content to terrorize Hale's devastated widow and step-children; they also traduced the character of the murder victim. 

On November 21, 2006, roughly three weeks after Derek's death, the DSP issued a breathtakingly dishonest press release alleging that the victim had "resisted arrest" and claiming that he "was at the center of a long term narcotics trafficking investigation which is still ongoing." Meanwhile, prosecutors frantically cobbled together the above-mentioned ominum gatherum indictment in the hope that somebody -- anybody -- connected to Derek would be charged with an actual crime. 

Now, three years later, the people responsible for the murder and cover-up have taken care of the final detail by paying off the victim's family at taxpayer expense.

Derek grew up in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Shortly after he was murdered, a man who had known Derek in his childhood contacted me to express his outrage that a "responsible, respectful" young man of exceptional character could survive two tours of duty in Iraq, only to be slaughtered by a Death Squad here at home.

"There is no way in hell he would have threatened a police posse," Derek's friend told me. "When I saw his obit in the local paper I thought he must have been killed in Iraq or something -- but alas our own home-grown terrorists took the life of an innocent man."

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Dum spiro, pugno!

Too Short a Season: Derek Hale, Victim of the Homeland Security State, as Remembered by a Friend

Sgt. Derek J. Hale, USMC, who was murdered by police in Wilmington, Delaware last November, was a "great kid -- responsible; well mannered," recalls a man who knew him as a child in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. "It's a damned shame what they did to him out there."

The e-mail continued:

"I managed a baseball card shop that Derek and his friends frequented as teenagers. He was a responsible young man who had his own lawn care business at age 13 [or]14. He took care of our lawn until he graduated from high school. I can remember the day that he decided to join the Marines---he came into the shop and was excited. I watched him grow from a awkward teen who was very nervous and shy around young ladies to a young man who finally found his niche. Unfortunately I didn't get to see him much after he left for the Marines though I kept track of him through this father who lived in Cape as well. "

Derek served two tours in Iraq before being honorably discharged for medical reasons. He was married shortly before leaving the Marine Corps, and celebrated his first anniversary shortly before he was gunned down by the police wolf-pack (8-10 heavily armed officers clad in black, according to eyewitnesses) on the front porch of a friend's home in Wilmington.


"To Protect and Serve"?


Derek was unarmed (police claim to have found a switchblade in his clothing, although his step-brother says Derek never carried one, preferring a Swiss Army Knife instead) and not the subject of an arrest warrant or criminal investigation. Yet he was hit with seven Taser blasts in the space of 73 seconds while several witnesses -- including his friend and her two young children -- looked on in horror and pleaded with the police.

Practically the last thing Derek said before being shot at point-blank range by Lt. William Browne was: "Not in front of the kids -- get the kids out of here."

Derek, who joined the Pagans Motorcycle Club shortly after leaving the Marines, had traveled from Virginia to Delaware as part of a "Toys for Tots" promotion. Some Pagans were suspected of involvement in narcotics-related crimes, but there was never any evidence implicating Derek.
"The `Toys for Tots' thing was something Derek would have done wholeheartedly," comments his friend. "Doing a favor for a friend was something he would have done without question.... There was no way in hell Derek was involved in drugs of any kind."

"I spent many an afternoon talking with Derek when he would visit my store; his character and reputation were beyond reproach," he continues. "I can remember him spending time with an autistic classmate and including the young man in things that he and his friends did together. I have a three-year-old son and I would be most happy if I knew he would turn out to have the character and respect for people (particularly his elders) that Derek had."

Official inquiries depict Derek as a violent criminal whose "defiant" and "menacing" behavior left the heavily armed police -- who outnumbered him at least 8-to-1 -- afraid for their lives. His friend finds that claim to be ridiculous.

"Derek always had a sense of justice and fairness," his friend observes. "There is no way in hell he would have threatened a police posse. When I saw his obit in the local paper I thought he must have been killed in Iraq or something -- but alas our own home-grown terrorists took the life of an innocent man."


"At some point," he concludes, "I would like to call [Derek's] widow and tell her what a fine man her husband was. I've had her number and just didn't feel right about calling her out of the blue, yet I am compelled to offer moral support. I hope that his widow and his parents hang it in the ass of the ... police department and AG's office.... I wish there would be a groundswell of support against the killing of this soldier that murder charges are brought against those terrorists. It is a sad day in a country's history when a soldier can return from two tours of duty in Iraq and can be slain in the streets of his own country by people who get a nut by torturing and killing the people they were hired to protect."

"Our country is going to hell and these patriotic Kool-Aid drinkers are too damned stupid to realize they are being duped by a group of people who count on the American people not thinking for themselves."

If you're interested in helping Derek's family, you can send help to:

The Derek Hale Defense Fund
c/o Dr. David Crowe
1736 Broadway
Cape Girardeau, MO 63701

Or --

Derek Hale Memorial
c/o Beverly at Alliance Bank
P.O. Box 1458
Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702.

Please be sure to visit The Right Source, and the Liberty Minute archive.

Derek Hale's Murderer Is Back On The Streets

Lt. William Browne of the Wilmington, Delaware Police "did not violate police department policy or procedures" when he gunned down Derek Hale (left, in Iraq with a Marine buddy) on the front porch of a friend's house last November 6. This was the long-anticipated and utterly predictable finding of the Wilmington Police Department's Office of Professional Standards.

The supposed exoneration of Lt. Browne came after Delaware state Attorney General Beau Biden cleared him of violating state law when he shot Derek twice, at point-blank range, after the decorated Marine combat veteran had been hit with seven taser blasts in a little more than a minute. Derek, a retired Marine sergeant, was not the subject of an arrest warrant at the time, although he did belong to the Pagans, an "outlaw motorcycle club" that included several people under investigation for suspected narcotics and firearms offenses.

So Lt. Brown is now free to kill again. He will not be stopped unless the civil suit filed against him and others implicated in the murder and cover-up succeeds. On previous experience, it's doubtful that such a lawsuit will produce that result, given that the murderous Lt. Brown has been "cleared" by the hierarchy of the gang that employs him.


Are there any Marine veterans in Wilmington who know Lt. Browne? If you're out there, could you take him aside and have a friendly chat with him, expressing your opinion of someone who would gun down an unarmed, unresisting combat veteran, leaving his wife a widow and orphaning his stepchildren?



(My thanks to Anthony Gregory for alerting me to this infuriating, if predictable, development.)

Biden Gives His Blessing to Derek Hale's Murderers

Sgt. Derek Hale, in Iraq serving the Regime that would later murder him.

Delaware's Attorney General is Beau Biden, who issued from the loins of Senator Joseph Biden -- serial plagiarist and democratic presidential aspirant. Beau Biden's office is presently defending the ten-man police squad that murdered 25-year-old Derek Hale, a retired Marine and Iraq combat veteran, last November 6. It is also presiding over an internal investigation of the incident, in which Derek -- an unarmed man, a stepfather to two young children who had just celebrated his first wedding anniversary, a veteran with no criminal record -- was repeatedly shot with a Taser and then gunned down at point-blank range as a young mother and her two children screamed in terror.

For those of us not born into the ruling elite, this arrangement is clearly a conflict of interest. For those in the tax-devouring class, however, this is standard operating procedure.

A week ago, Biden's office conferred its blessing on the execution-style slaying of Derek Hale, claiming that the writhing, incapacitated ex-Marine “`appeared defiant and menacing' while ripping Taser barbs from his chest, and jumped to his feet `in a hostile manner' seconds before he was shot and killed,” according to a nine-page report.

Two days before Hale was killed, the house where the crime occurred was raided by police, who allegedly seized cocaine, firearms, and dynamite before arresting the homeowner (who was in the middle of divorcing the mother who witnessed Derek's murder). It is possible that the police believed Derek and his friends were somehow involved in removing or concealing evidence, although why they would do so after the home had been searched and raided is difficult to understand.

At the time Derek was gunned down, there were no warrants out for his arrest. He was officially regarded as a "person of interest" in a narcotics investigation. This means he was an innocent bystander, rather than a suspect, as far as any criminal inquiry was concerned.

Scene of the slaughter: Fred Mixson, an eyewitness to the murder of Derek Hale, stands on the steps where the victim was killed.

For reasons yet to be explained, the unarmed ex-Marine on the porch of his friend's house in Wilmington was surrounded by at least ten (and as many as fourteen) heavily armed police, at least one of whom had threatened an eyewitness who protested after Hale had been hit with several Taser blasts. Eyewitnesses testify that Hale was left paralyzed and helpless, wallowing in a puddle of his own vomit. They report that Hale's first reaction was to urge the police to get the children -- who were sharing the small porch with him -- to safety. They also recall Derek repeatedly attempting to comply with police orders to remove his hands from his pockets, but being unable to do so.

It's not surprising that Derek was paralyzed: A post-mortem found that he had been hit with seven Taser blasts in the space of 73 seconds. Two officers were involved in the Taser barrage, which the AG report insists was actually an act of, you know, compassion: "[T]he purpose of the Tasering was to overcome Derek Hale's resistance to the arrest so he could be taken into custody without injury to himself or to the officers."


How thoughtful.


And how dishonest: Eyewitnesses on the scene testified under oath that Derek didn't resist arrest -- since he was Tasered within seconds after the cops arrived.


The coroner claimed that none of the three Taser barbs found in his shirt directly contacted his skin. Yet the same report claims that he was "quivering and convulsing during the shocks"; since he was sitting on a porch within easy reach of the officers on the sidewalk, it would have been relatively easy for ten of the tax-fortified heroes on the scene to swarm him and take him into custody.

Ah, but this would have involved risk, and for those who wear the State-issued costume of law enforcement, the prime directive is "officer safety."


(This is a largely generational thing, in my view: Many officers within a few years of my age -- 44 -- tend to be more intrepid and willing to run necessary risks to minimize the danger to civilians.)


According to the State AG's report, Hale “continued to keep his hand in his pocket as if holding a weapon and turning in a threatening manner toward a nearby officer armed with an empty Taser."

Leaving aside the report's melodramatic and self-serving language, this version actually confirms the eyewitness account that Derek, paralyzed by repeated Taser strikes, was unable to remove his hand, and was thrown helplessly to his side.

As the AG's office tells the story, Derek shrugged off seven electric charges, ripped the barbs from his clothes, and stood up in a threatening manner. This account is contradicted by the sworn testimony of eyewitnesses who, unlike the police, don't have an interest in justifying the needless killing of an unarmed man. (It's odd that the police account left out the part where Derek's eyes became yellow, his skin turned green, and his rage-distended musculature reduced his clothing -- except for his curiously adaptable pants -- into easily discarded rags.)

The official report claimed that because of Derek's “menacing” behavior, the officer who had tased him seven times “believed he was in immediate danger and, thus, began an evasive move. Lt. Brown believed that the use of deadly force was immediately necessary to prevent serious injury or death to that officer.” A second officer was preparing to gun down Derek when Lt. William Brown shot the victim.

It should be repeated that Derek was surrounded by heavily armed cops and within easy grabbing distance. “Deadly force” was never necessary if arresting Derek was the objective. And why were the police willing to let the lead fly when there were three civilians – a mother and two young children – within the potential line of fire?

The only suitable answer is cowardice. The reflexive, irrepressible cowardice of natural bullies.

The police had the advantage of numbers and firepower. Their subject had been under surveillance for days; he was clearly not a threat. He had been Tasered seven times when Lt. Brown pulled the trigger.


And still these valiant defenders of the public weal were frightened, their adrenal glands working furiously and their bladders slackening at the thought of actually having to lay hands on a solitary "defiant" subject.


"Oh dearie dear," one imagines Lt. Brown fretting, "he might be armed. If we try to take him into custody, one of us might be hurt! That's too risky; our only safe option is to let the lead fly. Sure, there's an innocent mother and two small children nearby, and they might get hurt, but they're mere mundanes, so I guess it sucks to be them."

Derek Hale's widow, Elaine, at the ex-Marine's funeral.

Attorney Thomas Neuberger, who represents Derek's widow Elaine in a lawsuit filed against her husband's murderers, suggests that voters should recall Beau Biden. That's a good start. I'd recommend following up with some form of public censure involving the use of stocks and a large supply of rotten fruit and dead cats.


"This is a shameless coverup because the use of deadly force was not justified," Neuberger contends. "Fourteen heavily armed and trained police officers should be able to arrest a citizen without killing him after they have Tasered him seven times and he is laying in a pool of his own vomit."

PROGRAM NOTE

I will be on the road tomorrow, headed for California to speak to the United Republicans of California. So it may be several days before I update this page.

Meanwhile -- The Right Source will continue to be updated regularly.

Fire At Will: Reader Feedback -- QUICK UPDATE, 4/19

I'm going to be on "The Jaime Johnson Show" on KFFF AM 1260 (99.3 FM) out of Boone, Iowa today from 2:00-3:00 PM Central Time. We'll be discussing the renewed campaign for civilian disarmament in the aftermath of the government-facilitated mass murder at Virginia Tech.






Resistance is futile: A Taser warning posted in an Idaho courtroom (courtesy of Pro Libertate reader SW).


Prompted by the essay "Highway Robbery" -- which described, among other things, a federally funded program deploying State Troopers on semi-trucks to prey on motorists -- reader D.S. passes along this troubling piece of intelligence:

"I recently obtained my CDL license in my home state (Georgia.) Before I could obtain [it], I had to participate in the "Highway Watch" program, which basically meant watching a video and answering three questions at the end. The program basically instructs drivers to spy on their fellow citizens and report any "suspicious activity" to, you guessed it, the government (via 911 or the local police.) Alas, the police state mentality might very well infect a profession known for its individualist, no-nonsense nature."

****

Pagans pay their respects: Pagan OMC members who knew Derek Hale (below) at the March 23 press conference in Wilmington, Delaware announcing the lawsuit on behalf of Derek's widow and family.

A pseudonymous reader offered the following critique of a brief anti-war commentary embedded in the essay "Death Squad in Delaware: The Case of the Murdered Marine":

"I would ask you to look at this line in your article: `In addition to his honorable military service (albeit in a consummately dishonorable war)'.... Now you are supposed to be a professional writer. The above sentence makes no sense at all. How can you say this brave young man was honorable, and then claim he participated in something dishonorable? I know you left wing nut jobs can’t just come out and say what you really mean. But when you write about a man you can’t hold a candle too how bout attempting to control your contempt for our Country. And spare us all with any answer that you support the troops but not the war. That’s another contradictory sentence that only makes sense to left wing kooks."

This gentleman's first mistake, of course, is to assume that I'm a left-wing nut job, when my nutjobbery is actually a proprietary blend of libertarianism and paleo-conservatism, and the chief Source of my opposition to war is the anti-war Radical whose teachings are presented in some detail in the New Testament.

One of the symptoms of Hannitization (an auto-lobotomy that results from prolonged exposure to White House-aligned media whores) is the inability to recognize that there are many critics of Bush's war who aren't liberals or leftists of any sort. (Another is the tendency to keep reciting White House-disseminated talking points long after they've been worn down to blunt stubs.) This isn't the most subtle of distinctions, but it is lost on talk radio bulimics like my kind and most learned correspondent.

Likewise, the moral distinction between the soldier and the cause he's ordered to serve isn't difficult for functioning adults to grasp; it may even be intelligible to Hannitoids. History is tragically replete with decent, honorable men whose sacrifices have been wasted by craven, immoral rulers. Winston Churchill (albeit for self-serving reasons) paid tribute to Erwin Rommel, whom the British leader considered to be an honorable soldier, despite the fact that he fought on behalf of a despicable cause.

Like most of those who serve in our military, Derek Hale didn't enlist in the United States Marine Corps because he was eager to take part in a war that is an armed robbery writ large.

****

Writing from Iraq, a good friend and PL reader whose name and initials I won't disclose describes how the war is being used to field-test police state techniques that will be deployed in the USSA ere long:

"`Someone' wants us to look at putting drop down gates in every Iraqi market in Baghdad, then add to that walk-through body scanners. Did I mention the push to seal off the Muhallas (neigborhoods) and have people enter by entering their biometric data? I'm talking fingerprinting and possible iris scans. The Good Idea Fairy needs a 3" 12 gauge load shot at it." These are just some of the "crazy security projects that would make the DHS pee in its pants with glee."

My friend is also disgusted by the profligacy and corrupt careerism that characterize the occupation:

"Man, it's simply amazing the money being spent. Don't get me wrong, I've spoken with several Majors and even some senior NCOs and loper ranking officers and most of us agree what we're doing is going in the wrong direction." He and some friends are going to try "to reduce the number of projects and decrease the waste," but he's not optimistic. "Over here, there is like this contest no one dares speak of (but we lower folks see it) where commanders try to outspend each other," he comments. "It's as if spending money on projects is a sign of good civil military operations. I mean, $225,000 to pick up the trash in a neighborhood? i know the trash is bad, as well as the security situation, but man!"

He's also worried about the possibility that the strategic savants in the executive branch are going to wind up losing an entire army in Iraq.

"If we go into Iran, it may happen," he writes. "It would not take much to starve us out. Whenever the crap hits a fan, people will always choose the side that will save their neck. In this case, it will not be to side with the U.S. forces. We will be prevent[ed] from using nukes due to the proximity to our own troops. And having to take care of contractors and service members? Ouch..... Shoot, we wouldn't be able to feed or fuel ourselves since it's contracted out. Heck, in Kuwait and here in Baghdad, [Halliburton spin-off] KBRschedules flights. Man, what have we become?"

"Maybe i need to start making some Christian contacts or here in case we get cut off and overrun?" he concludes. "I call it: `the purge' (aka plan B). :-) Now I learn I'm here for 15 months. I think it will be longer...maybe 18. The truth is always the first victim of war."

****

Don, a dear friend for several years, sent me a kind note containing troubling confirmation of the fact that police departments in even the tiniest towns are being transformed into armies of occupation:

"We moved from Florida back to Oklahoma last July and are very happy to be home where we belong. Our new 1978 ranch style is on an acre-and-a-half and we are remodeling it to our taste. The little town of Harrah, OK, is like the TV `Mayberry' in a lot of ways. There is one way, however, that is definitely not like Mayberry. Harrah has about a 4500 population and a small police force, the Harrah Police Department (HPD), that transfers phone calls after 1800hrs to the county sheriff's station. Would you believe that they (HPD) have recently purchased fifteen sniper rifles with a $10,000 grant through the fed's program?! They cannot justify in my mind a need for one, let alone fifteen. The ammo they are burning up having `fun' is coming out of our tax dollars for the `boys' to play`"SWAT.' The fire station also enjoys federal `assistance' from similar sources. Knowing what I know, it's a very scary prospect...."

****

Playing off the line in my Resurrection Sunday essay referring to the ancient Tower of Babel and its modern analogue (UN Headquarters), reader Robert Corzine sent along this very revealing graphic:

****

And for those of you who are interested, I'm presenting a photograph taken a few days ago by my son, William Wallace, of our German Shepherd, Chief -- who may prove to be my undoing if he doesn't fatten up to the satisfaction of the local branch of Leviathan.


Poor, abused little thing: Chief, our 6-month-old German Shepherd pup, an alleged victim of felonious animal mistreatment.










News and notes --

This Saturday (April 21) I will be speaking at the Spring National Committee Meeting of the Constitution Party in Boise. My topic will be "Paying the Price of Principle."

Next Thursday (April 26) at 3:00 PM EST I will be a guest on Jerri Lynn Ward's Right Talk Radio program "I Object! Justice Examined." We will discuss the government-aided mass murder at Virginia Tech.

For those who have expressed concern about my wife Korrin (scroll down to the end) and offered prayers on her behalf: She is doing better, and -- thank God -- hasn't had to be hospitalized again, at least not yet.

It was one year ago this week that her health took a dramatic and life-altering turn for the worse, and she's been in the hospital four times during that period; on one occasion she was very close to death. Thank you so much for thinking of, and praying for, her and the rest of us, and for your other acts of kindness and generosity.

This week, Kevin Shannon's "The Right Source" radio program has been interviewing Second Amendment activists in anticipation of a renewed push for civilian disarmament. Make sure to stop by The Right Source!

The Killing of Derek Hale: Death by Police PR Stunt?

Too short a season: Derek with step-children Taylor and Garrett, and wife Elaine (below), shortly before he was killed. (Hale family photos courtesy of Stephen Neuberger.)

Derek J. Hale, Marine veteran of two combat tours in Iraq and (much more importantly) a young husband and father, died in a completely unnecessary police raid that grew out of a cynical public relations campaign.

At least that's the view of Stephen Neuberger, one of several attorneys representing Hale's widow and parents in a lawsuit against the Delaware police officials responsible for the November 6 execution-style killing of Derek in Wilmington.

“Over the past several years, we've represented a lot of police officers, including some from SWAT teams, so it's not as if we're anti-police, even though we consider the State Police [DSP] hierarchy to be corrupt," Neuberger told me.

"We've gone to court on behalf of whistleblowers and officers who have filed civil rights complaints of various kinds. Of the ten lawsuits we've filed, we've either won or successfully settled nine of them. Most of the cases have involved the Delaware State Police, and the DSP's hierarchy has received a lot of negative publicity. I suspect that might be what's behind the raid in which Derek was killed.”

When veteran officer Thomas MacLeish became head of the DSP about two years ago, an early priority was to improve the public perception of the department.

“My view is that Colonel Tom wanted to conduct some big, high-profile investigation that would dispel the negative publicity and generate public support for the DSP,” says Neuberger, who is, admittedly, not a completely unbiased observer. “So they decided to go after the big, bad biker gang” -- the Pagan Motorcycle Club, which Derek joined shortly after getting out of the Marine Corps.

The DSP had been investigating the state chapter of the Pagans for about 18 months before the raid in which Derek was shot to death. Within a few days of the shooting, the DSP arrested 32 Pagans on drug and weapons charges. The 160-count indictment -- the details of which remain secret -- alleged a vast criminal conspiracy that includes drug trafficking, racketeering, and "gang activity."

In late March, two Pagans named in the indictment were offered plea bargains; one of them was offered a year's probation for "maintaining a dwelling for drugs," the other given six months' probation for a misdemeanor charge of third-degree conspiracy. Three others named in the indictment have been placed in "diversion programs" for first-time narcotics offenders.

"What this tells me is that the prosecution's conspiracy case is falling apart," Neuberger told me. "They threw the indictment together after Derek was killed, hoping to justify the raid -- to show the public that there was this huge criminal conspiracy the police were trying to crack. But so far all we see are a few small first-time offenders and a couple of commonplace drug charges."

Michael W. Modica, an attorney representing several of the indicted Pagans, offers a similar assessment.

"I don't think there's any dispute that they rushed the indictment," he told the Wilmington News-Journal. "My sense is, and this is shared by a lot of people, that they rushed the indictment to divert attention from the death of Mr. Hale, and to show that there was legitimate criminal activity going on."

That there was at least some criminal activity going on at the periphery of the Pagan OMC is demonstrated by the plea bargains. But the decision to join a group of that sort can be prompted by motivations other than criminal intent.

The lawsuit (.pdf) filed by the Rutherford Institute on behalf of Hale's survivors emphasizes that Derek joined the Pagans in search of the same kind of "camaraderie" he had experienced as a Marine. I think there are better ways to find it than joining an Outlaw Motorcycle Club -- but then I'm not a 25-year-old recently discharged combat veteran, so I'm not really qualified to second-guess Derek's decisions. Derek's record was clean and he had been given a concealed carry permit by the State of Virginia, where he lived with his wife Elaine and stepchildren Taylor and Garrett.

Derek had gone to Wilmington as part of a charity ride on behalf of Toys for Tots. While there he agreed to house-sit at the home occupied by Sandra Lopez, whose ex-husband (the owner of the house) is a member of the Pagans and was arrested following Derek's death. At some point prior to the shooting, according to the News-Journal, the house -- which Neuberger, who grew up in Wilmington, describes as being in a "bad part of town" -- was searched by the police. Although it was under surveillance, the house hadn't been designated a crime scene when the police showed up on November 6.

Shortly before the police arrived, Sandra and her children, who were moving out of the house, had removed several boxes of possessions. It is possible that the police suspected that they were removing evidence of some sort, and that Derek was acting as a lookout -- rather than simply keeping an eye on a friend's house in a rough neighborhood. Even if such suspicions were accurate, eyewitness accounts demonstrate that the raid was carried out in a criminally irresponsible fashion.

“These guys were not in a standard police uniform,” Neuberger says, citing witness statements. “They were dressed in black and didn't have badges. They didn't identify themselves as police.”

A pack of 8-12 officers surrounded Hale, who had been sitting on the front porch. Sandra and her children -- an 11-year-old and a 6-year-old -- were standing behind him. As the police approached, Derek stood up. He was ordered to remove his hands from the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, but before he could do so he was hit by a Taser shock – the first of three he received in quick succession.

Repeatedly ordered to remove his hands, Derek protested that he couldn't – which is to be expected, since a Taser hit induces temporary paralysis. He also begged the police to get the kids out of the line of fire, which they didn't. After the second Taser blast, Derek slumped to his side and vomited into a flower bed.

"According to the witnesses, there was a police officer standing in that flower bed when Derek threw up," Neuberger told me. "He was close enough to reach over and handcuff Derek, as were several others. None of them made any effort to do so."

The use of the Taser in such circumstances was unnecessary and forbidden by the Wilmington Police Department's official guidelines, Neuberger observes.

"The manual makes it clear that the Taser is not to be used on a non-resisting suspect," he points out. "Derek wasn't resisting arrest, or resisting in any way. In fact, at this point there had been no attempt to arrest him -- the police hadn't even identified themselves."

After Derek was hit by the Taser for the third time, one of the officers within arm's reach of Derek -- identified in the suit as Wilmington Police Lt. William Browne -- shot Derek three times in the chest with .40-caliber rounds, killing him.


No parent should ever have to bury a child: Derek Hale's mother Connie at the scene of his murder in Wilmington, Delaware.

Following the March 23 press conference announcing the lawsuit (among those in attendance were some of Derek's Pagan buddies), Neuberger, along with Derek's widow Elaine and mother Connie, visited the crime scene. All of them were amazed at the tiny, cramped space in which the shooting took place.

"I'm fairly tall -- I used to play basketball back in the day -- and I could reach from the sidewalk to where Derek was sitting," Neuberger declares. "I can't see how it would have been difficult for 8-12 police officers to seize and arrest Derek without shots being fired, if they had cause to arrest him."

As for Elaine and Derek's stepchildren (he also had a young daughter named Dakota, who lives in North Carolina), "They're just wrecked," Neuberger reports. The same is true of Sandra and her kids, "who saw the whole thing take place right in front of them -- her daughter was right behind Derek."

For Derek's loved ones it didn't help matters at all that the Delaware State Police, in the interests of post-killing spin control, lied to the public about Derek's purported role in the alleged criminal conspiracy, and induced Virginia State Police to conduct a search of the Hale home. This was done as yet another exercise in spin-control growing out of an investigation that may have been little more than a glorified publicity stunt.

Just days before he was killed, Derek and Elaine celebrated their first wedding anniversary in their home in Manassas. Derek's lifeless body now rests in the Quantico National Cemetery, where it was interred with military honors last November.


Sgt. Hale in Iraq with a Marine buddy. (Hale family photo courtesy of Stephen Neuberger.)

And this brings up yet another question: What, if anything, has the Marine Corps done to promote an objective investigation of the unnecessary death of Sergeant Derek J. Hale?




If you want to help ... I've previously mentioned that a legal defense fund has been set up to help pay the incidental costs of the Derek Hale lawsuit (the attorneys have waived their fees):

The Derek Hale Defense Fund
c/o Dr. David Crowe
1736 Broadway
Cape Girardeau, MO 63701

According to Derek's obituary, a separate memorial fund has been established to help Derek's family:

Derek Hale Memorial
c/o Beverly at Alliance Bank
P.O. Box 1458
Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702.

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