Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not ashamed. Nor did they know how to blush.
— Jeremiah 8:12
City council has a reputation of being more an administrative body rather than a deliberative one.
In the latest cop outbreak against Chattanoogans, it will have fresh occasion to rise above its status as a mere rubber stamp for zoning petitions and purchasing contracts.
By David Tulis / 92.7 NoogaRadio
The beating of Fredrico Wolfe by a police officer of Mayor Andy Berke and his department chief, David Roddy, opens the avenue for a human activity not common at city council.
And that is a debate.
A debate first over the council’s role in overseeing — on behalf of the citizenry — Mayor Berke’s abusive cops.
The council holds the purse strings for a gigantic military organization of 500 “sworn officers” who prowl the streets ostensibly to enhance public safety and public peace. What should be the future of the funding of this gun-toting enterprise? If its self-righteous and self-sustaining policies of belligerence in the name of public good? Its budget is over F$70 million, paid by appreciative taxpayers.
The transportation stop March 10 under Tenn. Code Ann. § Title 55, Vehicles & Motor Vehicles, on Lee highway was fit for the best of mafiosi-style commerce.
The steaming piazza dish was loaded with cheese, meet, steel and knuckles. Officer Benjamin Piazza, aided by two fellow City of Chattanooga employees, pommeled Mr. Wolfe the traveler at the 3:30 a.m. arrest, striking him at least 10 times with his fist as he lay on the street next to his car.
The entree to this instance of Negro control was the cop’s hasty approach to the car with his pistol drawn, ready to take a human life and establish his authority in the vehicle-for-hire enforcement encounter.
Playing the one-minute YouTube clip of the initial encounter has so much vile language it would violate the council’s rules for public speech in its chamber. All the more reason today to have a heart-searching debate — nay, argument — on the future of gang activity in the city and the city’s contribution to it.
Employee’s explosive vocabulary
Here’s the cop Mr. Piazza in his peremptory, executive and arguably illegal and bad-faith transportation stop speech.
“Hold on, give me a second. I’m going to pull this person out of the car,” Mr. Piazza tells a colleague. Turning to the man the car:
Get out of the car. Put your hands up and get out of the car. Get the fuck out of the car and get your hands up.
The African-American’s hands are up and he’s facing the officer. He looks terrified.
Put your hands up. Put your hands on the fucking car. Put your fuckin’ hands on the top of the car or beat the shit out of you.
As they beat him, one hears,
“Put your hands up.” The cops, one citizen on the ground, in terror, one of their knees in his side.
Wolfe says, “Oh, God.”
Put your hands behind your back. Put your hands behind your back. I’ll tell you when you fucking stop.”
Wolfe: “What did I do?”
Apparently the cops were provoked when this Negro, out late at night and probably defiant, looked at them as he passed them on the road, according to comments recorded in the video.
Helping celebrate M.L. King birthday
The story broke three days before Chattanoogans celebrated M.L. King Jr.’s birthday Jan. 21 because three days before that, on Jan. 16, the case was sent to the Hamilton County grand jury. Robin Flores, an attorney engaged by Mr. Wolfe, suggests that district attorney Neal Pinkston delayed the prosecution repeatedly as a bully tactic to ward off a civil case in the assault, which has a year limit under the statute of limitations. In other words, the county and city’s fellowship of the finger — cop and prosecutor — look out for each other and keep under wraps a police crime.
Mr. Piazza is under transportation administrative notice, as is the city government as awhole, and acted in bad faith at the transportation stop, almost from its inception. Officer Piazza knew he didn’t have authority to stop Mr. Wolfe unless he had information from Mr. Wolfe that he was operating a motor vehicle in a for-hire capacity, which apparently he was not. The tag on the back allows ONLY a rebuttable supposition that Mr. Wolfe was in commerce. It was his duty, under the Feb. 20 notice to city government, to determine if that was the case.
Notice is intended to alter the legal landscape in Chattanooga so that with each traffic stop in Chattanooga, the victim of ultra vires police (outside authority) has an explicit cause of action for oppression, extortion and harassment.
The state of the law in Tennessee is confusing. An activist judiciary, violating the people’s rights in many venues, pretends there is no right to travel. But state law, a bedrock of solid lawmaking that regulates commercial use of the roads, is clear and unmistekeable. The subject of Title 55 is transportation, not private travel.
Messrs. Berke, Roddy and Piazza are operating outside the law, and Mr. Flores, if he has his eyes open, will see in this abusive stop a remedy he hadn’t thought of taking before.
City council meets Tuesday nights. It’s time that finally it consider its status as a notified party at law, and either submit to the law or find a way to rebut the claims of notice. In rebuttal, timeliness is of the essence, and the city has accepted and acquiesced to notice for 11 months and two days.
