February 22, 2010 by admin.

Las Vegas attorney, Robert Sullivan, wrote the below (unsolicited) response to Ron Johnson’s investigative report posted at this link:

http://www.scaview.org/FalseReport.html

“Dear Mr. Johnson,

Just wanted to salute you:  Your “A False Report” is extremely well written – great analysis.   I think you could even have taken it one step further…

The charge against Bob Frank and Tim Stebbins was not simply that the police report they filed was false, in some existential sense.  The DA must be prepared to prove the mens rea element.  (mens rea means the intent or the guilty mind of the actor(s)). The DA has to show (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the purported falsity of the Frank-Stebbins report was deliberate.

As you made the point very well – we still don’t even know if their report was FALSE!
…and there is good reason to think their report is, in fact, TRUE.

But let’s assume – for the sake of argument – that Messrs Frank and Stebbins’ report was false (i.e., that it contained factually erroneous information).  Where is the Henderson police department’s evidence that it was false on purpose; that it was willfully false; that it was knowingly false; that it was malicious.

Where is the mens rea?

Because, legally speaking, if Mr. Stebbins and Mr. Frank filed the report in good faith, regardless of whether it turned out to be incorrect / false, they absolutely cannot be charged with filing a false report.  You cited the operative language in your “A False Report”:

NRS 207.280 False reporting of crimes unlawful. Every person who
deliberately reports to any police officer, sheriff, district attorney,
deputy sheriff, deputy district attorney or member of the
Department of Public Safety that a felony or misdemeanor has been
committed, which causes a law enforcement agency to conduct a
criminal or internal investigation, knowing such report to be false, is
guilty of a misdemeanor.

So, bottom line:  it’s not sufficient that the report is false – it must be intentionally false.

Have you EVER seen anyone arrested for filing a false police report?  I have NEVER seen it.  I am a former federal prosecutor (USAF JAG and Special Assistant US Attorney), and I have NEVER seen anyone arrested for filing a false report, even though there are many thousands of false charges filed every year in Henderson, Las Vegas, etc.

The charge of filing a false police report is a charge reserved for very few and very rare circumstances – like the high-profile Duke Lacrosse case, where the stripper falsely accused the players of raping her.

I had a case about 18 months ago where a woman cut herself and punched her own face and then dialed 9-1-1 and told the emergency operator that my client had assaulted (battered) her.  She then filed a police report and attempted to press charges.  My client was arrested, taken to jail for booking, and was charged with felony battery.  Fortunately, I tracked down several totally unbiased third-party witnesses who all corroborated my client’s version of the story 100%.  The accuser eventually admitted that she made the whole thing up.  That’s pretty serious stuff – my client was left with a *felony arrest record* that will never go away, even though she was totally exonerated and the other woman had falsified the whole thing, wasted police resources, etc.  So I asked DA David Roger’s office and Metro to charge the accuser under NRS §207.280.  They refused.  They did not dispute that it was an airtight case, but they said they just didn’t have the police or prosecutorial resources to go after the false-accuser.

My point is that what happened to Mr. Frank and Mr. Stebbins NEVER HAPPENS, even when there really is a false report.  So why did it happen to Frank & Stebbins?  (Particularly when, as you point out, it appears that their report was either TRUE or at the very least was reported in good faith).

The answer can only be that someone with political connections made it happen.  It smells really wrong.  And, frankly, I hope the city of Henderson is stupid enough to now press charges against Stebbins & Frank, because even a third-rate lawyer could rake them over the coals for this idiocy.  More than that, I’d like to see Frank and Stebbins file a §1983 action against the city in federal court and use the attending civil discovery process to smoke out who is really behind their arrest.

As a former prosecutor, I am very confident that this was not something that just happened in the ordinary course of a police investigation.  Someone well-connected obviously has it in for Frank/Stebbins and is sending a message to them to “back off.”

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)

Again, congratulations on a well-researched and interesting column.

Best regards,“

 (Robert Sullivan)

Posted in 2010 Campaign, Truth Squad, SCA Board, Laws & Rules | Print | No Comments »

February 16, 2010 by admin.

It is the annual SCA campaign season where some formerly disgraced attorneys like to play nasty political games of personal destruction against a variety of Anthem VOICE associates and some board candidates.  So, we are obligated to remind our good SCA members of the the nature of the law violators living amongst us and mention that they have no moral or ethical authority to be criticizing any of the candidates.

We suggest that no one should grant any credibility to the hateful words or opinions of such people.  For example:

1. David A Berman, spouse of director Roz Berman, is a “suspended” Boston attorney for self-admitting that he had forged a judge’s signature on tax documents.  He has been suspended for over two decades, but he pretended to be a “retired attorney” for many years until he was outed a couple of years ago.  See the following files:
berman_suspension_report.pdf
berman_full_report-5pgs-3.pdf

After reading the second file, one has to wonder how he was able to be employed for a decade by the Internal Revenue Service if this judgement was disclosed–as the IRS has normally required?

2. Al Tenner is a 3-time “disbarred” attorney from California.  The details on his disgraceful records are found in the following files:
tenner_1.pdf
tenner_2.pdf
tenner_3.pdf

Posted in 2010 Campaign, Truth Squad, SCA Board, Community Affairs, Operations | Print | No Comments »

February 12, 2010 by Mark Cook.

The following are provided as reminders that the HPD’s unjustified harsh treatment of our SCA senior members, Tim Stebbins and Bob Frank, may be once again reflecting a pattern of misconduct.  For some past history, see the below articles from the web:

“Excessive Force?  The Henderson Police Department faces public scrutiny”.

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2008/apr/15/excessive-force/

Joshua Longobardy

Tue, Apr 15, 2008 (12:11 a.m.)    “A suburb of the Las Vegas metropolitan area with a fraction of the annual violent crimes endured by its neighbors in the Valley, the city of Henderson maintains a widespread reputation as a leisurely place to live. “That’s why it surprises people,” says Cal Potter, a longtime local attorney, “that there seems to be, in the last four or five years, a lot of excessive force cases brought against the Henderson Police Department.” Potter himself filed such a complaint against HPD in federal court last month, on behalf of his client, a covert federal officer who claims three Henderson policemen beat him up without just reason.”

“Dating back to 2002, when a string of excessive force complaints filed against Henderson police officers drew unenviable attention to the department, complaints of police misconduct have abounded in the city of Henderson. In fact, so many have been submitted to the ACLU of Nevada that its executive director, Gary Peck, says “there are a lot of red flags, a cause for concern.” And local attorneys like Potter, E. Brent Bryson and Leo Flangas have fielded such a disproportionate numbers of complaints about HPD, compared to the other two main law enforcement agencies in the Valley, that Flangas fires off this statement with conviction:

‘There is a fundamental problem with the Henderson Police Department.’”

For the rest of this story, go to this link:

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2008/apr/15/excessive-force/

And, for a follow-up story on Henderson Police Department conduct, see this link:

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2008/apr/09/follow-up-image-is-or-isnt-everything/

Posted in Truth Squad, SCA Board, Community Affairs, Laws & Rules, Operations | Print | No Comments »

February 11, 2010 by bobfrank.

In case readers have missed it, or have already forgotten it, Director, Attorney Ann Small has refused to publicly comment on why she has been voting in favor of sole source extending the RMI contract instead of putting the requirements up for public bidding as required by statute, and just common sense.

If you missed it, here are links to more details of the matter:
http://blog.anthemvoice.org/2010/01/15/directorjudge-ann-small-appears-to-violate-statutes/
http://blog.anthemvoice.org/__oneclick_uploads/2010/01/small_ignores_laws.pdf

So, why not let this one drop as Director Small wishes?  If we can not depend on a prior judge and active NV attorney (sponsored by the so-called “unity party”) to advise our members on why the board’s policies are legally proper or improper, who CAN we trust?

How hard would it be for her to publicly state WHY she is going along with what appears to be a really bad board policy?

If it is the right thing to do, why does she continue to remain silent? Perhaps sole sourcing on this agreement is truly indefensible?

Posted in 2010 Campaign, Ann_Small, Truth Squad, SCA Board, Laws & Rules, Community Affairs, Operations | Print | No Comments »

February 11, 2010 by bobfrank.

This is in response to what David Berman has initially reported on his blog article this morning about Tim Stebbins and I being arrested by the Henderson Police Department yesterday.

The SCA board and its attorney apparently have deceived Henderson Police Department Sgt Jeffery Farley and Chief Chambers into not only failing to find the truth in our well-documented request for an investigation, there appears to us there may have been political influence used to cause a complaint of suspected false police report against us honorable citizens. HPD is likely to learn all of the truth in the future and find it impossible to support its allegations against Tim and I. If HPD discovers it has been lied to and used by certain individuals, there might be severe, reverse consequences.

Tim and I were required by statute to report our concerns about apparent board criminal law violations, and HPD was required to investigate. We had been previously advised by other law enforcement officials that we were doing our civic duty to ask HPD to look into what appeared to us to be an important law violation. If HPD could not confirm our reported concerns, all it was obligated to do was dismiss the report as having insufficient evidence. But, by charging Tim and I of willfully filing a false police report, there appears to have been some retaliation instigated by certain board members with high-level influence in Henderson politics.

For example, after the HPD failed to substantiate our reported concerns, they had us arrested and processed through the jail for what is supposedly a “minor misdemeanor” allegation. But, instead of a traffic-ticket-like process, the HPD forced us to go through their “perp-walk” used for hardened criminals involved with murder, rape, drug-dealing and other very serious of crimes.

We were stripped down, forced to post a cash bond, fingerprinted, tightly handcuffed our hands behind our backs to benches in the jail, and forced to wait in such humiliating and degrading circumstances with hardened criminals for many hours.  Meanwhile, HPD processed many serious criminal violations ahead of us–while we were forced to watch and wait. We suspect our basic citizen rights were violated with this obvious over-reaction to our simple request for an investigation.

Unfortunately for those who have strongly opposed public exposure of internal SCA disputes, your SCA board has initiated the worst possible course of action. Now, instead of internally resolving the matter of promptly returning the many millions of accumulated surplus assessments back to the community (as required by laws/rules), Tim and I are being forced to publicly defend our actions of daring to question the board’s apparent law violations.

And, once again, the board’s law firm stands to reap windfall profits while defending the board against the consequences of following the law firm’s poor advice.

You can be certain we will defend our honor and ethics to the best of our abilities, and for as long as it takes.

Posted in Truth Squad, 2010 Campaign, SCA Board, Community Affairs, Operations, News! | Print | No Comments »

February 6, 2010 by kayfrank.

The following PDF file contains my 2010 Board Campaign Flyer.

kay_frank_flyer_5feb10.pdf

Please send questions or comments to kayfrank@cox.net

Posted in kay_frank, 2010 Campaign, SCA Board | Print | No Comments »