Sean X paid me a high compliment and brought up this question in Adam2020's diary Meet Adrian Schoolcraft, Meet the Real NYPD.
Sean asked:
Holy shit!
Everyone reading this thread should read that page [Cops Behaving Badly: West Palm Beach] and we should burn into our minds, and act on, the message board idea in the last paragraph.
Maybe I missed it above, but what's the history of the message board--how did it get set up and gain the trust of honest first responders?
Has it done any good? (accomplished anything in terms of stopping corruption)?
The Palm Beach Sheriff's Office (PBSO) police message board started because a deputy refused to tolerate the behavior of co-worker Brent Raban, aka "The Belle Glade Batterer."
The deputy saw Raban coming to work with a skullcap that said "punishment," heard him saying his job wasn't law enforcement, it was "dishing out punishment," bragging about beating up (black) suspects, then posting pictures of them on his Facebook page. So he started documenting it.
He brought the matter to Internal Affairs numerous times. No action was taken against Raban, and the snitch/whistleblower became a target himself. However, seeing that Raban was a clear and present danger to any black man in Palm Beach County, my friend started doing "message in a bottle," sending emails of the Facebook documentation to news outlets. (Note: We do stuff like this all the time and they ignore us, unless there's a picture with blood.)
When the news media decided to care about it, suddenly it was a problem. That's how this works. That's why we keep trying to get y'all to listen. Anyway, once CNN picked it up, internal affairs suddenly became very interested. They investigated, and Raban went bye bye.
Meanwhile, the deputy who told on Raban was basically driven out of police work and is now an IT professional. Unfortunately that's also how this works. Try to stop a bully, find out what bullying is.
Because he's an IT professional and also understands the cultural dynamics that keep corruption and brutality in place, he set up the anonymous board at www.pbsotalk.com.
The technical points that make this work:
1. Anyone can post without registering, and IP addresses are not logged.
2. The servers are privately owned and housed.
These two elements are required because the agencies do their level best to shut them down, using criminal indictments (when no laws are being broken) and social engineering, and anything else they can think of.
When the City of Renton, WA falsified a warrant to come after "Mr. Fuddlesticks," they were initially able to get some traction by subpoenaing Google. So the PBSOtalk and Rentontalk servers are privately housed. That way if a warrant comes in, it comes to the activist, and it's for his premises and property, i.e., no "death from above" via Google. Then, since IP addresses are not logged, he can let them in and there's nothing to be found.
So the police became comfortable in posting because they knew him, and they knew he understood the situation well enough to protect them. The success of that board made the Renton board possible; though neither of us knows anyone in Renton, we knew of Fuddlesticks' fight, and when we showed them that people post freely on PBSO they could see it was true. There was really no leap of faith involved, which is what you need to pull this off. Civilians won't be able to take the lead on this, at least not as things stand now.
Here's a follow-up on Raban, which underscores why these boards are essential; you, the citizen, can't get this information any other way.
Mr. Fuddlesticks is an epic clusterfuck, and i would love to see a mass citizen movement to support him. If we win on Fuddlesticks, the dam breaks, the good police win, and the bullies' day in the sun comes to a close.
To answer Sean's last question, yes. PBSOtalk and its sister Cop Talk Radio have not only won a number of battles, including the sudden resignation of State's Attorney Mike McAuliffe, but have developed quite a civilian following and are poised to truly change the entire culture in Palm Beach County. However, they still need your support. New criminal indictments were handed down a week or two ago. No laws have been broken, but they stay busy throwing grenades.
Mr. Fuddlesticks is in a long, hard slog. If we can get some significant citizen/media momentum behind him, departments all over the country will follow suit.
Much more information on related topics, and as many culled/prepared stories as I have time to produce, are available on my personal blog at medic343.
Thanks for listening.