I’m pretty sure that, unless you’ve been living
under some rock for the past couple of months, you are by now quite familiar
with the name, Marilyn Mosby. But, just
in case your abode has been under said rock, let me enlighten you. Ms. Mosby is the Baltimore City State’s
Attorney who was essentially catapulted to national prominence when she decided
back in early May to prosecute six police officers for the death of scumbag
Freddie Gray. Gray, who possessed a
rather lengthy rap sheet and who also happened to be black, died while in
police custody. And it was during her
little speech at the time that Ms. Mosby proceeded to use her family of Boston
police officers to, I assume, shield herself against her many critics who said
she could not fairly prosecute the case.
It was then, during a bit of theatrics on the part
of Ms. Mosby, that she was heard to say, “To the rank-and-file officers of the
Baltimore City Police Department, please know that these accusations of these
six officers are not an indictment on the entire force.” And she went on to say, “I come from five
generations of law enforcement. My father was an officer. My mother was an
officer. Several of my aunts and uncles.”
But while what she said at the time may have been factually correct, I
suppose, her words paint only a very partial picture when it comes those
dedicated public servant family members whom she makes mention of. Because all were far from being what any of us
would consider as being worthy of public trust, much less as being upstanding
members of the local community.
So anyway, first out of the gate when looking over
Ms. Mosby’s rather questionable law enforcement lineage, we have none other
than her mother, Linda Thompson. Linda,
or so it would seem, was far from being what anyone could call a model police
officer. Over the course of her 20 years
on the force Linda had nine disciplinary actions against her. There are documents that show she violated
the “substance abuse policy” in 2006, when she tested positive for
cocaine. And in 2003, she was suspended
for “using profane language toward a superior” and for her “refusal to leave a
restricted area.” And then are still other
records that show she was suspended for two separate incidents in 1996 for not
“reporting for duty” and “neglect of duty” -- among other charges.
And it was in 1990 that Boston Police Internal
Affairs launched an investigation into various charges, which one police source
stated indicated that she had lost her police weapon. After it was after a hearing on that issue
that Linda was suspended in 1993 for it.
But dear old mom was far from being the only member of Ms. Mobley’s
immediate family that had trouble staying within the law while at the same time
being a member of law enforcement. Because
next we have Mosby’s father, Alan James, who also had his share of issues. Alan was fired from the Boston Police
Department in 1991 on the same day he was acquitted by a jury for assault and
robbery. According to an article in the
Boston Globe at the time, the police commissioner fired him for "conduct
unbecoming an officer.”
And then there’s Preston Thompson, who is Linda
Thompson’s brother and Mosby’s uncle, and he too has apparently had some
problems when it came to drugs. It seems
that Preston was fired in 2001 for using cocaine. His record says he was on disability when he
was charged with “substance abuse policy – two counts,” “conformance to laws -
two counts” and “conduct - two counts.”
According to Boston police policy, you get fired after the second time
you test positive for drugs. However,
Preston wasn’t going to go down without a fight, because it was shortly
thereafter that he filed a lawsuit against the Boston Police Department (BPD)
challenging the termination. I mean
after all, what could they have possibly been thinking in firing such a
sterling public servant.
And in sounding like he was more than just a little too
familiar with ways to get around this drug issue, it was in a court document
that he asserted that hair drug tests don't prove you ingested the cocaine only
that it could get on you in what were described as being any number of ways,
including "vapors." The
lawsuit also alleged that “BPD hair testing process had a disparate impact on
African Americans.” The plaintiffs added that “hair color, racial and/or
‘cultural’ factors, biased the results of a hair drug test, due to the
differences in the melanin content, structure and cosmetic treatment of black
and African hair versus brown and blonde hair.”
In other words, the fact that he was black was enough to accuse those
involved in his firing of viewing these drug results in what was a racist
manner.
But that’s not all, we have one more member of Ms.
Mosby’s family. And that would be none
other than Preston's brother, Harry Thompson.
It seems that Harry was also fired from the Boston Police Department.
That uncle of Marilyn Mosby was terminated back in 1991 after a hearing for
three charges from the same event – “conduct unbecoming an officer,”
“inaccurate reports” and “unreasonable judgment.” Sources familiar with the BPD
police say that violating these rules alone generally doesn’t get you fired. So what else was it that might have been
going on? Frankly, judging by the behavior
and less than sterling character of the other aforementioned members of Ms.
Mosby’s family, it could be just about anything. And yet Mosby continues to use her police
officer family as being some sort of a badge of honor.
It was in an an interview with the Communist News
Network, aka CNN, that she said, "I come from five generations of police
officers, so law enforcement is instilled." Look, there are a few crooked cops on every
police force. But I gotta tell ya, to
find so many and in a single family has got to be some kind of a record. And I thought it more than a little odd that
Ms. Mosby would actually make such a point of having come from generations of
police officers knowing that the fact that most of them were corrupt would
eventually come to light. Or maybe she
didn’t care if such information were to ever make its way into the public eye. But now that it has I find it strange that she
would keep repeating it as if it somehow provides her with some level of credibility. Because it does just the opposite.
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