Warmed Over Vietnam Era Draft Dodging Felon Chuck Turchick Used The First Minute Of His Two Minutes Complaining About The Fact He Only Had Two Minutes, And Other Nuggets From The Police Conduct Oversight Commission As JNS Blog Talks Back To Star Tribune Reporter Matt McKinney...

Contributed image, blog post by John Hoff

Click here for the STrib article I am about to disassemble and try to put back together CORRECTLY.

SOMETIMES Star Tribune Matt McKinney writes a halfway decent article, especially when the article has a co-author.

But McKinney has a noticeable tendency to be off-kilter, like the time when sex offender Peter "Spanky Pete" Rickmyer was trying to have a frivolous lawsuit served in city council chambers and all McKinney could concentrate upon was the fact Johnny Northside (moi!) had allegedly been aided in slipping out of city council chambers.

McKinney had little or nothing to write about the fact Pete The Pervert has managed, over the years, to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of legal resources by serving legal worthless paper and, gee, how come the Star Tribune hasn't managed to uncover the fact Peter Rickmyer is WANTED ON A WARRANT OUT OF OKLAHOMA AND HAS BEEN SINCE THE EARLY 1990s? (More to follow on JNS blog in coming days since you can't really expect that story from McKinney of the Star Tribune)

And this, I have recently figured out, is the problem with Matt McKinney. Somewhere deep inside McKinney is a very alienated person, and therefore he tends to give too much ink and too much credibility to social malcontents, worthless troublemakers, psychopathic outsiders and (in at least one notable instance) a sex offender pervert than to (for lack of a better way of putting it) normal people.

Productive people.

Good citizens.

People who are on the Police Conduct Oversight Commission instead of venting their hot green bile from somewhere off stage left, because they opposed the whole Commission in the first place and naturally have nothing good to say about the Commission's progress. People like Chuck Turchick and Dave Bicking who, respectively, 1.) has had a bone to pick with American society since being imprisoned for trying to destroy draft records and 2.) unsuccessfully sued the former head of a police review committee and lost more than $5,000 dollars in the process.

So what does Star Tribune reporter Matt "Off Kilter" McKinney do? Well, he...

...gives a voice to these individuals as though they have credibility and, in so doing, leads astray weak minds who may conclude these individuals, quoted in the Almighty Star Tribune, actually HAVE some credibility.

So it is I must pick apart McKinney's article, word for word.

Here we go.

New Minneapolis cop review panel under fire

• Article by: MATT MCKINNEY , Star Tribune 
• Updated: October 10, 2013 - 7:26 AM

Minneapolis civilian oversight board faces criticism for limiting public comments and not having full specifics on cases it will oversee.

JNS BLOG SAYS: Under fire, you say? UNDER FIRE!!!!??? Well, my goodness, they better take cover, if they're UNDER FIRE!!!

Oh, what's that you say? "Under fire" just means the usual harsh critics are making the usual harsh criticisms, i.e. Dave Bicking and Chuck Turchick have nothing nice to say? That's your definition of "under fire?"

I figure being "dead tree media" that McKinney didn't write his own headline though I see McKinney did act as his own photographer for the story. Sad. Just sad. Even JNS blog managed to get a photo from some OTHER source for this story. Every day another tree falls in the world of dead tree media. Nobody hears it and nobody mourns.

Here's more of the article:

The potential impact of a new civilian group formed to monitor police conduct was called into question after its first meeting because its members won’t have the full details — only summaries — of the cases of alleged police misconduct it is tasked with overseeing.

JNS blog says: So there's been ONE DAMN MEETING and already you are quoting the professional critics? And for what? The fact the Commission won't be reinventing the wheel each time but will have summaries?

The Commission is like an appellate court, it seems to me. But, of course, I wasn't being quoted and no SANE critic or potential critic was being quoted, only the usual crazies who won't be happy until there are revolutionary tribunals and executions of police officers after a kangaroo trial. So now these critics latch on to the fact the Commission will be looking at SUMMARIES? That's what you've got, after one meeting?

Here's more of the article:

The seven-member Police Conduct Oversight Commission is the latest piece of Minneapolis' new system for civilian oversight of the police department. It was formed after last year’s collapse of the city’s Civilian Police Review Authority, which fell apart amid complaints from its members that their rulings on police misconduct cases were routinely ignored by the police chief.

JNS blog says: Really? That's why it fell apart? And that's how ALL the members felt, or how SOME of the members felt? So EVERY ONE of its "rulings" was ignored? Seems like McKinney's sentence could use a little modulation or would that be...

Accuracy?

More of the article:

At their first meeting Tuesday night at City Hall, the commission members chose three cases from a list of 10 randomly chosen cases of alleged police misconduct. Michael Browne, director of the city’s Office of Police Conduct Review, said the commission will not “pick apart” the cases of alleged misconduct or “second-guess” whether discipline is warranted in each case. That heavy lifting will be done by the existing Police Conduct Review Panel, which is made up of two civilians and two police officers.

JNS blog says: Yes, that's the system that was voted in. And the problem is what? Other than the fact Chuck Turchick wants blue blood in the streets?

The article continues:

The commission will instead review summaries of each case and look for “broad-stroke” policy issues to address in the civilian oversight process, Browne said.

City resident Dave Bicking, one of a handful of people who attended the meeting, said afterward that he’s concerned the group won’t have the information it needs to properly audit the civilian review process.

“The structure is the problem,” he said. “I think there’s some good people on it with some good intentions, but they’re going to have very limited information to do their oversight.”

Browne defended the process, saying the commission members will have all the information they need.

JNS blog says: "City resident" Dave Bicking? No mention of the fact Bicking filed a pointless lawsuit against former CRA Chair Donald Bellfield? No? Bicking is just good old "city resident" Dave Bicking in this article.

This is where the rubber of my criticism meets the dirty gravel road of McKinney's article. This is where McKinney tries to make Dave Bicking sound like Joe Blow Citizen instead of loony malcontent Green Party "Papa Smurf" who (exactly like Pete the Pervert) tried to use the court system as his weapon by filing pointless paper, only to lose and be the recipient of a fat reverse judgment.

Does McKinney mention any of this?

No!!!! Because he's Matt "Off Kilter" McKinney, and his heart is aligned with these left-bag losers. At least when JNS blog writes, you KNOW where I stand because I make it clear with my pithy commentary but, in the manner of "dead tree media," McKinney tries to feign some form of objectivity while actually skewing the facts toward his own not-anywhere-near-mainstream point of view.

Here's more of the article:

Chuck Turchick, a frequent presence at meetings of the Civilian Police Review Authority, tried to ask the commission how it will do its work if it sees only summaries of each case and not the full details. Turchick was cut off before he finished that sentence by commission chair Andrea Brown, who said he had used up his two minutes. Brown had originally suggested that the commission not hear from the public at all, but she relented after her fellow commission members urged that the public be allowed to address the commission.

“This is very symbolic,” Turchick said as he walked back to his seat. “You have about two or three people appear at the meeting to make comments and you limit it to two minutes.

JNS blog says: "A frequent presence" you say? Once again, McKinney phrases things to give the person being quoted far more mainstream credibility than is deserved. Turchick is a convicted felon draft dodger who represents a radical viewpoint in society, and for years has latched onto Minneapolis police misconduct issues as a substitute for badly needed psychotherapy. If allowed to speak without limits, Turchick would filibuster for hours until forced to read the make-your-own-yogurt recipe from Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book." 

Turchick can (and does) put his meandering thoughts about society on the internet for all to read, and can get an audience somewhere if he likes, but these meetings are not "open forums" for malcontents like Turchick to deliberately waste everybody's time and vent their spleen. Turchick is not a witness to the incidents being reviewed and is simply a professional complainer. Nothing the Commission does will ever, ever, ever satisfy Turchick and his previous comments have made that clear.

But does McKinney make that clear? Does McKinney make it clear there is no way to satisfy Turchick? No, McKinney makes it sound like Turchick is some kind of grassroots expert with the potential to be objective.

Addressing Chuck Turchick directly, this blogger retorts: Symbolic? Symbolic, you say? Symbolic is the fact you're such a nut you can't find anything to say in two minutes worth saying, other than to complain about the fact you don't have longer to say it. Why, I addressed the city council as the LONE VIEWPOINT in favor of the new Commission and spoke for LESS than two minutes, and the vote went my way. (Click here and also here for my two part article, "Crazies on Parade."

You, Chuck, just need to be more succinct.

The Star Tribune article concludes:

The question of how Minneapolis disciplines police has been under renewed scrutiny after several incidents involving Minneapolis police officers. Two of the incidents involved off-duty officers accused of fighting with black men and using racial slurs in Green Bay, Wis., and Apple Valley. In addition, the city of Minneapolis made $14 million in payouts for alleged police misconduct between 2006 and 2012, but the Police Department rarely concluded that the officers involved in those cases did anything wrong, according to a Star Tribune analysis.

JNS blog says: Are you actually having Dave Bicking and Chuck Turchick write your articles, now? Because there are so many OTHER things you could mention to promote some actual balance, like the fact police have been repeatedly cleared in incidents where hardened criminals met their fate, and all the friends of the hardened criminal were like, oh, he didn't do ANYTHING. It was an EXECUTION. (Click here for a recent example of the trend, though it be from out of town)

This is what our brave Minneapolis police faced, over and over, prior to the reform of the conduct review system. Police faced a system seeded with genuine crazies like Dave Bicking and Chuck Turchick instead of the new system, which shows every indication it will work as long as Dave Bicking, Chuck Turchick and (need I mention?) Michelle Gross never manage to gain seats on the committee.

LET US PRAY.

Star Tribune? You need to send a reporter to cover these issues who can pull off true objectivity, not the kind of off-kilter "McKinney-tivity" painfully evident in this botched cyst-pop of a story about important issues facing our city.