Anti-BVBL

According to the County’s Agenda item 9-J-1, which mysteriously has disappeared from the latest version, the County will not be able to add the 4 new Officers nor the support staff that was to accompany them for ‘09 Budget. My question is why the description of the cuts removed? Was it a simple oversight, or was done intentionally by the person who determines the agenda?

After a 4 month hiatus, a Summer edition of the Help Save Manassas - Frontline newsletter is now available, entitled - Prince William: An Oasis in the Desert. Obviously, the HSM camp suffers from hallucinations where the mantra about the ‘Rule of Law’ Resolution aka the Immigration Resolution abound and where the resolution is both working well but yet not working at all.

Interestingly, some of the regular names including Steve Thomas no longer appear and there’s no mention of his whereabouts. We do learn that both Greg Letiecq and Dan Arnold of the nightmarish - Cultural Chaos fiasco of the March edition have both been ‘re-elected’.

We also learn that after exhausting local businesses, the ‘Do the Right Thing’ pledge has now ‘expanded’ their reach to areas such as Stafford & Spottslyvannia. One needs to ask whether or not local businesses are being deceived into pledging their allegiance to HSM?

The zeros and heroes section seems to be repeated from past editions.

And then there’s the ‘Crime Prevention’ Team which perhaps has replaced the Special Ops group? According to the newsletter the police department believes the Crime Prevention Team is a ‘valuable resource’. Surely if the police felt such a ‘team’ of local citizens was needed they would have requested volunteers. Instead, Letiecq and cohorts have most likely put the police in the undesirable position of having to mediate any incidents that could result by having this antagonist force thrust themselves into this situation.

An article in the Gainesville Times today provides an intelligent, in-depth review of the 9500Liberty special screening to explain the April 29th roll-back of the Immigration Resolution.

For those who were not there last Friday, there is another screening in the works for next week, probably Thursday. In the mean time, here is the more popular of two clips on the 9500Liberty channel, even though the other one is more interesting:

I feel like this was a much more inquisitive piece of writing. The MJM article focused on varying reactions while this article focused on the content of the film:

The film had its share of suspense and drama, even for those who were familiar with the outcomes of each board vote.

Nohe is presented at some points in a fashion similar to a reality television show star who sits in front of a camera and talks about what was going through his mind in between clips of a particular situation.

His most prominent role comes during the climax when the board was trying to decide on a tax rate. At the centerpiece of the funding issue was the $3.1 million price tag to put video cameras in police cars. Deane has asked for the cameras to allow officers to fight the inevitable lawsuits based on charges of racial profiling.

“The whole program’s getting unbelievably expensive,” said Nohe.

Part of the problem was that the resolution had changed several times since its inception.

Originally, it called for police to check the immigration status of every person stopped for a violation. It was later changed to allow police to check the immigration status if the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect is an illegal immigrant. That variation is the one that prompted the chief to ask for cameras in the police cars.

In order to pay for the cameras, the real estate tax rate would have had to be set at 98.7 cents per $100 of assessed value. After the 98.7 rate failed on a 4-4 vote, Principi asked for a 97-cent rate on a motion to eliminate the cameras and require all immigration checks to be done post-arrest.

That failed 7-1.

Viewers find out here that during a behind-the-scenes meeting between Stewart and Principi, the Republican chairman asked the Democrat to go back on his resolution.

“There’s not a hell’s worth of chance that I would oppose it,” the Woodbridge supervisor said he responded, later adding that since their break, he had the five votes needed to get a similar version of his motion passed with fewer cameras and all immigration checks moved to post-arrest.

It passed unanimously, leading Principi, who once said the illegal immigration resolution was “essentially failing,” to tell the filmmakers on camera, “I’m going to declare victory and go home.”

The post-arrest scenario, which is what was finally adopted, means that after a person has been charged with a crime, police will investigate their immigration status. Since every person charged will be checked, there is less concern about racial-profiling complaints.

A letter to the editor from a local teen appeared yesterday in the Manassas Journal Messenger.

Suzie Eskelund
Published: July 20, 2008

I am a 17-year-old caucasian girl who has lived in Manassas my whole life. I just want to say thank you for allowing the white, self-righteous and supremacist legal citizens of this fine, upstanding county
to once again have the important jobs back, like fast food and construction. I know it has always been my dream to work the drive through at my neighborhood McDonald’s and now you have made that
dream more possible. I am so proud to be a part of a city that is taking a stand against those pesky brown people. I was riding in the car with my Hawaiian friend when we got pulled over so the nice
policeman could make sure she wasn’t an illegal Latina. I know that in my heart I couldn’t be more thankful for those new laws that you helped pass to racially profile everyone with dark skin. Gee, I don’t even know why I’m friends with her.

I know that no one who eats tacos and burritos can be a good person. I mean hey, I don’t want that new Chipotle on Liberia Avenue! These people just need to go back to Mexico and take their children.
They deserve to starve, be in constant danger, and have a poor education.

After all, they were born in an inferior country! I don’t want any new customs in my life.

I want to be closed-minded and be surrounded by my pasty friends forever. Please get that diversity away from me!

Now people say that all Americans immigrated here. Well that may be true, but at least all of mine spoke English when they came here! Oh wait… except for my Danish, French, and German relatives.
But no matter, at least it wasn’t Spanish. When I was in high school and I was trying to learn another language, I had the hardest time and struggled through all three years. I hardly remember any of that
language, but who cares? Learning a second language may be really hard for anyone, but it doesn’t matter if your first language was English.

Now I look around my upper middle-class neighborhood and see that there are far fewer children for my neighbors to play with. But I rest assured knowing that when they play tag, they won’t get tagged by Latino cooties anymore.

Next, we should give them disease-infested blankets; it worked when we wanted to get rid of Native Americans.

Thank you once again for your efforts to cleanse our community,

SUZIE ESKELUND
Manassas

Part I

Part II

Check out this precise and elucidating story filed by Dan Genz in The DC Examiner outlining the changes to the Immigration Resolution as they apply to real life. Dan also reports that we are now engaged in a new round of fighting, this time a “spin” war over who gets to declare victory.

Also, Channel 7 aired a story last night that communicates a lot despite its brevity.

Note from 9500Liberty: the video is temporarily down while we revise to include a couple of more details.

This incident with the day laborers dates back to January 7th, 2008, Mr. Letiecq goes to the 7-11 on Coverstone Drive dressed in army fatigues with a camera and begins to take pictures. According to the day laborers, Mr. Letiecq calls them the trash of Manassas, after re-reading Mr. Letiecq’s account he doesn’t directly provide any additional details about a verbal exchange except to attribute the following statement to Officer Sanchez -

had screamed racial epithets at the day laborers, [and] was counting them to see how many buses it would take to ship them all back to Mexico

What’s most disturbing, and it caught my eye at the time, was the following statements by Mr. Letiecq -

If the risk to my person is as great as Officer Sanchez alleges, perhaps I should take his perspective into consideration and make sure that the next time I will lawfully be carrying an appropriate defensive firearm, just in case the day laborers are just as dangerous as he suggests.

Sounds like Mr. Letiecq’s weapon of choice next time might not be his camera but a firearm.

The combination of the war rhetoric, the talk of forming an army, the army fatigues, the membership to Virginia’s Citizens Defense League, the suggestion of carrying a firearm, the inability to recognize racist statements and on and on are a dangerous combination that should be taken very seriously.

Chairman Stewart repeatedly claims that the resolution is intended to capture criminals who have committed crimes on top of violating federal immigration law.  No problem with that right?  Deport the criminals.  But what about police inquiring into the status of someone playing music too loud?  Surely that couldn’t happen, but yet according to the DC Examiner it has.  Claims that there would be no Gestapo knocking on your door asking for your papers are now suspect.

Chief Dean is in a no-win situation.  If there’s any hint of impropriety by any of the departments 500+ personnel then it’s going to be ‘his fault’.  At the same time he needs to convince everyone that the police force should be a trusted source for reporting crimes.  Otherwise, criminal activity and vigilantism will abound.  It will not be an easy task on any front.  We are already seeing instances where witnesses and surely eventually victims will not be willing to come forward to report crime.  As this trend becomes better known, the immigrant community(regardless of status) will  appear an ‘easier target’ for criminals wanting to commit a crime without incurring any repercussions.  In my opinion, he is acting prudently in attempting to prevent a lawsuit by requesting installation of cameras in patrol cars.  A successful lawsuit against the county could cost the county millions to defend so it’s probably not a bad investment.