Police deal with crime lab delays

Reality bites: Cops combat the 'CSI effect'

By GIL BRADY
Star-Tribune correspondent

Filed 9.30.07

JACKSON, Wyo. -- In the sun-drenched, aesthetically cool world of “CSI: Miami” and other popular cop shows, it all looks so easy.

Invariably, each episode begins with the mysterious disappearance of a solid citizen, or the accidental discovery of a nude body, violently murdered and unearthed by a county worker surveying a backwoods road in the leafy, forested swamp.

Clues such as hair, blood, gunshot wounds, a watch and a ring on the dead man’s stiff hand offer vague hints linking the victim to his murderer. After a search of the nearby woods, an eagle-eyed gumshoe plucks a strand of black electrical tape off a weed dangling over a muddy boot print.

By the next commercial break, a ready, waiting and well-coiffured lab technician lifts a latent print off the sticky tape to the riffs of techno-music. Upon running it through a database, he develops slam-dunk proof either identifying a suspect, or eliminating one already under suspicion, spinning the hot pursuit in a new direction.

Voila! The rest of the show follows the chase, inevitable arrest and successful prosecution of the bad guys.

Without failure in TV land, crime lab results are definitive and instantaneous. Villains are caught, and their prosecutions are unerring and swift, a mere formality.

By contrast, Wyoming’s top cops are still awaiting the results of clues submitted to the state’s crime lab six months ago.

(Click here & read on via the Casper Star-Tribune)

Photo captions & credits: "Publicity still for CBS' 'CSI: Miami'" courtsey of www.freewebs.com/csi-caine/

When Tasers Shock More than Lost Votes

A freely available OPINION

By REBECCA ANN
NewWest.net

Filed 9.23.07

(NewWest, Sept. 23) -- On balance, the nightly televised news once again failed the nation last week, leaving open the question of who’s the bigger loser.

Given the opportunity to knock a softball out of the park in the bottom of the 9th and bring the long-suffering home team a much-needed win, Big Media whiffed. What’s worse is they got caught looking like overpaid chumps, like Jake LaMotta taking a last nosedive for a fat payoff, instead of going down swinging.

Of course, I’m talking about the mainstream packs’ fraudulently disguised as objective reporting on the Andrew Meyer’s fiasco at Florida University on Sept. 17. Nearly to a news station and to an anchorman or woman it was about as bad and biased as it gets.

But let me say here that my complaint has nothing to do with whether Meyer’s behavior was legal or illegal.

Further, this jeremiad is not about arguing against whether Glenn “No Neck” Beck or others believe Meyer to be a jerky, self-promoting publicity hound.

Those wrapped up in the self-deceiving schadenfreude of seeing a loud-mouthed Florida J-school student get what was coming to him – and now insist he needs to take ‘responsibility’ for whatever they or Beck might think Meyer was irresponsible in doing – are too busy getting their rocks off getting ahead of the story to get the story.

(Click & Read on via NewWest.net)

Man Found Guilty in Mangy Moose Melee Trial

By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Times

Filed 9.20.07

JACKSON, Wyo. (CT) – Jurors apparently at odds with an anecdote by the presiding judge deliberated on Wednesday for nearly three hours before convicting a 26-year-old man of intentionally injuring a deputy at the Mangy Moose Saloon last winter.

Eyewitnesses and peace officers testified this week that police were called to the popular hot spot at Teton Village shortly before 2 a.m. on March 14.

Sheriff’s deputies Chad Sachse and Todd Stanyon said they arrived at the nightclub to find three to four men — including employees and Robert Hulsy’s friend – pinning a drunk and belligerent Hulsy to the saloon’s upstairs deck.

Standing during the trial, Stanyon demonstrated how, after arresting Hulsy, he and Sachse escorted the unruly man, who had just been bounced from the bar, down the stairs as Hulsy’s roommate, J.R. Jenkins, followed and Hulsy suddenly lunged into Sachse.

It was at that moment, near the top of the stairs, that Stanyon said Hulsy planted his right foot on a step then kicked his left leg back and struck Stanyon bellow his right knee, injuring him badly.

(Click & Read on via NewWest.net)

Injured Deputy Takes Stand in Mangy Moose Melee Trial

By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Times

Filed 9.18.07

JACKSON, Wyo. (CT) – The trial of the man accused of “donkey kicking” and badly injuring a local lawman, while being arrested last winter, took a dramatic turn Tuesday when Teton County Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Stanyon took the stand following opening arguments in District Court here.

His voice breaking, and at times on the verge of tears, Stanyon accepted a box of tissues from Prosecuting Attorney Steve Weichman while telling the jury about the painful injury he sustained following a tussle he and fellow Deputy Chad Sachse had with Robert Hulsy, during an arrest last March 14.

The two peace officers testified they arrived at the Mangy Moose shortly before 2 a.m. to find three to four men, including saloon employees and Hulsy’s roommate, pinning the reportedly belligerent defendant to the saloon’s upstairs deck.

Other eyewitnesses who took the stand Tuesday said that before police arrived Hulsy had lifted a metal barstool and confronted a saloon worker before a bouncer raced in, disarmed him, and pushed Hulsy, 25, outside.

While forcibly restraining the defendant, two saloon employees also testified that Hulsy threatened to “kill” them and even “buy the bar” and have the “bouncers fired.”

(Click & Read on via NewWest.net)

Trial of Man Who Allegedly Kicked Deputy Begins

By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Times

Filed 9.17.07

JACKSON, Wyo. (CT) -- The man charged with allegedly kicking and injuring Teton County Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Stanyon during a March melee at the Mangy Moose goes on trial Tuesday.

Robert Hulsy, 25, faces one count of interference with a peace officer, a felony.
Prosecutors dropped two of three felonies against Hulsy earlier this year.

But Circuit Court Judge Timothy C. Day allowed the third charge – felony interference with a peace officer – to be bound over to District Court.

(Click & Read on via NewWest.net)

Man Arraigned in Rafter J Shooting

Alleged Gunman Held on $50,000 Bail

By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Times

Filed 9.13.07

JACKSON, Wyo. (CT) – A man arrested and booked Monday on attempted first-degree murder, for allegedly shooting his girlfriend’s son in the shoulder before dawn that day, now faces two lesser felony counts arising from a reported domestic violence incident.

Also on Wednesday, bail for Randall Craig Cosgrove of Jackson was set at $50,000 in 9th Circuit Court here.

Looking grizzled but alert, Cosgrove, 47, sat shackled about the waist in a yellow jumper. Rocking back in his seat, between two other defendants arraigned on unrelated charges, Cosgrove flashed a smile at an older, gray-haired woman dressed in a black embroidered jacket.

(Click & Read on via NewWest.net)

Photo caption & credit: "Shooting suspect Randall Cosgrove" via The Teton County Jail

Police Warrants Outline Alleged County Con Job

Public Corruption Probe Advances...Ouch!

By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Picayune-Sunny Times

Filed 9.11.07

TETON COUNTY, Wyo. (CT) – Police continue to investigate an elaborate larceny and embezzling scheme involving the alleged over-charging of local vehicle buyers for their transfers of title and a “slush fund” kept in the desk drawer of a suspected employee of the Teton County clerk’s office.

“I was shocked to learn that a trusted employee was suspected of embezzling funds,” County Clerk Sherry Daigle said in an official press release Friday.

Her face flushed behind her desk, Daigle said late Friday that she had fired a county worker earlier that day. Due to the ongoing corruption probe, however, Daigle declined to identify the terminated public servant.

Among items seized and inventoried in a search warrant returned Monday to 9th Circuit Court: 11 checks payable to the county clerk’s office and four $20 bills “located in an open plain white envelope with stickers on the exterior, known as the 'overflow slush fund'."

(Click Here & Read on via NewWest.net)

JPD Reported to be Probing County

Allegations of $$$Graft$$$ Sparks Investigation

By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Picayune-Sunny Times

Filed 9.07. 07

JACKSON, Wyo. (CT) – Police confirmed Friday they're investigating an alleged embezzling scam involving the county office of “lien and title”.

“I was shocked to learn that a trusted employee was suspected of embezzling funds,” Teton County Clerk Sherry Daigle said in an official press release Friday.

Jackson detectives reported targeting a local government employee who “was (allegedly) over charging customers and converting the fraudulently gained funds into her personal use.”

Her face flushed behind her desk, Daigle said late Friday that a county employee had been fired earlier today. Due to the ongoing corruption probe, however, she declined to identify that person. But an official close to the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they believed the scandal involved only one county worker.

(Click & Read on via NewWest.net)

"XTRA, XTRA!!!" This is not the first time in recent history that scandal and well-founded allegations of graft, patronage and corruption have rocked the halls of Teton County. (-Ed)

Click here, here, & here to read 3 original Cowboy Times investigative reports going back to last summer.

Fostering More Bullshit?

A freely available OPINION: Foster Friess Defends the Indefensible

By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Picayune-Sunny Times

Filed 9.4. 07

JACKSON, Wyo. (CT) – Last week, a local philanthropist, Republican moneyman and apologist for Vice-President Dick Cheney went on a full-blown marketing campaign questioning the integrity of a local anti-war group, calling on critics of the Bush administration to raise the tone of the bitter debate over Iraq to something he deems “civil.”

With clever derring-do, in his full-page color advertisement run in the uncritical and slack local press, Foster Friess turned the tables on Jackson’s rising and vocal minority of anti-war protesters. Some of those present at the march and rally on Aug.11, and afterward, charged the vice-president and other Bush administration officials with publicly “sexing up” the case about WMD and Saddam’s hand in 9/11, accompanying White House drumbeats leading to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In his ads, Mr. Friess opines that it’s the protesters who are lying, patronizing them, as if he alone held a monopoly on the truth, as: “(I)ll-informed or deceitfully willing to destroy another’s reputation to advance their own selfish political agenda.”

You’d think someone as sure of his own moral superiority and pedagogic denunciations of others would have thoroughly vetted his sloppy essay before allowing it to be published and so nakedly available for all the world to do for him.

(Click & Read on via NewWest.net)

Photo captions & credits: "Foster Friess and his trusty Iraq war advisor ride off into his own mist-shroud, la-la-land"/courtesy of gatheraroundthecampfire.blogspot.com

Peacenik Critiques Anti-War Protestors

Demonstrators Should Practice Peace, Not Violence

Filed 9.1.07

Dear Editor:

I took part in the Aug. 11 protest-peace rally and march in Wilson.

As a child of the ‘60s, I believe a well-conceived and executed presence is a powerful form of exercising our rights. My co-marchers and I have mixed feelings about the day.

Upon hearing of the march, we knew we wanted to participate. Subsequent to deciding to take part, we learned of the existence of a Dick Cheney effigy that might or might not be:

A) Dragged in the dirt
B) Toppled
C) Beheaded
D) Detonated
E) Boiled in oil
F) Hung
G) All of the above

(Click & Read on courtesy of NewWest.net)

Photo caption & credit: "Critic of Vice-President Dick Cheney listens to a speech at peace rally in Wilson, Wyo., on Aug. 11"/by Gil Brady