O R D E R AND NOW, this 9th day of December, 2016, the decisions of May 23, 2016 of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas in the above-captioned matters are AFFIRMED.
Saving everyone from eleven pages of legalese, here it is - short and sweet:
What these means is that residents and visitors are not permitted to know where weapons are being fired in Mt. Lebanon, commissioners can wash their hands of any responsibility because it involves private individuals and not "government actors," and police officers like Officer James Hughes, who had an arsenal of 120 weapons too large to store in the Washington County Sheriff's Office and has a temporary PFA against him, can remain anonymous because he, if he was an archer, was donating his time to kill deer. We do not have the right to know where killing is taking place. We don't have the right to know who the killers are.
Mt. Lebanon police officers are exempt from any media reports, it appears. Had Officer Hughes been on some other police force, it would have been all over the news.
To appeal this decision, I would need to go to the State Supreme Court, IF the Supreme Court would hear the case. Small detail here - I don't have the funds. Mt. Lebanon commissioners won. They used our tax dollars to contract out the dirty work. Think about that when the commissioners vote to increase our taxes on Tuesday.
I tried my best to force the Municipality of Mt. Lebanon to be more transparent and make our neighborhoods safer, but their loyalty remains with the ten archers and twelve private property owners who "donated" to this deer killing program. The hell with the rest of us.
Update December 9, 2016 4:00 PM The Post-Gazette wasted no time publishing this.
Appellate court says Mt. Lebanon deer cull participants can remain private Still waiting for them to spill the beans about the Mt. Lebanon police officer, a member of the Dormont-Mt. Lebanon Sportsmen's Club and had his arsenal of 120 weapons confiscated by Washington County Sheriff's Office. We will never know if he was/is one of the archers.
The real tragedy is that MTL has so many people who are eager to donate to a hateful, wasteful, and ineffective program.
ReplyDeleteWe may not know who they are. But in the end, we all lie down in the Great Hall of Justice.
A search of the Internet for "Cpl. James Hughes, Mt. Lebanon Police Officer," returned several hits; but so far only two concerning his troubles with the law. One was the Barbara Miller story in the Washington Observer-Reporter from 6 December 2016, and the other - which just popped up about an hour ago - is on KDKA. I realize that this is a Washington County story, but that should not have any bearing on how the local media cover it. We've all seen stories in the newspaper and on TV about "local" events that happened outside of Allegheny County.
ReplyDeleteCpl. Hughes deserves due process, but the right of due process does not eliminate his current situation as being newsworthy.
Thanks goes to those of you who sent personal emails to me. Also, thanks again to those who donated to my gofundme account.
ReplyDeleteI started my seventh year running this blog on November 30. I am really at the end of my rope. Today's affirmation is devastating to me. I have lost all faith in government and the judicial system. Read my letter to Dan Miller under the Unity rally post.
And to those haters who write to the media about my case, Commonwealth and Common Pleas judges recognized that there was no intent to harass any "donors." The Office of Open Records ruled in my favor TWICE that this information should be public. I thought it should be public for our safety, but the courts thought otherwise. I'm extremely disappointed because I thought that transparency would prevail.
Elaine
I'm so disappointed by this. I see this as a safety issue. I want to be able to tell my children about the locations to avoid. I worry about all the teens who may take a shortcut when it's dark. I worry about pets. Is there someone in my neighborhood killing deer? I don't know…
ReplyDeleteThank you, Elaine, for trying to help us all. I admire your strength and williness to stand up for what's right.
I am sorry that you lost, Elaine, but so did Mt Lebanon - big time. By silencing you, they sent a larger message to the community about their desire to stifle dissent, fight back and dismiss. They have failed to care and in their callousness, they have created great strain in the community. It is a sad state of affairs.
ReplyDeleteWhats up with that Rand guy ? A suspended Lebo cop is not trivial. It should be in the headlines !
ReplyDeleteYea for your Blog ! You tell us whats really going on in Lebo !
6:53 PM, I have not been able to read the comments under the PG article since I responded to Rand Tobias last night. Either it times out or when the article pops up, there are never any comments showing. Did Rand come back with more? Oh jeeze.
ReplyDeleteElaine
I just tried again to see the PG comments and they aren't showing up. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteElaine
Of course they won,,, I didn't expect anything else.. the rich and powerful always get they way....ie look at how they get their properties exempt from being on the Allegheny county realestate website.. and I always remember the Marge Sable fiasco..
ReplyDeletethey always manage to seal their bad deeds...no matter how much money we raise...
and what about Margaret Hooton.. the music teacher at one of the nursery schools, she has been a very very strong vocal advocate for the killing.. but of course she lives in one of those huge houses on the 400 block of Jefferson.. and a fence just wont fit in with the neighborhood. Ms. Hooton is quite the contract to various members of the Pittsburgh Symphony who live in Lebo also and spoke passionately against the killing of the animals at the Commission meetings last year...so when Ms. Hooton is singing to your young kids you now what is really in her heart....
2:39 PM, the nursery school music teacher also spoke in favor of using her property at the August recruitment meeting held in the commission chambers by Keith McGill and Jody Maddock.
ReplyDeleteBut according to a PG commentor who hides behind a pseudoname and is most likely one of the paid Lebo Life bloggers, the universe is telling me to stop encouraging transparency. As center of her own universe, she feels that I am contributing to the problem because I report minutiae like our MLPD who was suspended until his PFA hearing is over. It is perfectly normal to have an arsenol of guns so large that the Washington County Sheriff's office couldn't store them. I don't deserve to know anything about the killing of deer. She also forgets all the horrible things that Linfante made up about me, the verbal assalts by Vuono and Morgans, not to mention Morgans' passive agressive behavior to residents.
But you see, I need to spend my energy on positive things like letting the world how lucky I am living in a Norman Rockwell painting. I was once reminded of that at a school board meeting in 2010.
I am feeling defeated and really don't have the strength to fight for what's right anymore. Even the Steelers are dealing with a game delay over something that I fought against. But money talks in this community and I live in the wrong part of Mt. Lebanon. I hate the politics here.
Elaine
*arsenal
ReplyDelete...letting the world [know] how lucky I am, living in a Norman Rockwell painting.
Elaine
Since this tread concerns the local press and how they operate, here is another story concerning the P-G:
ReplyDeletePost-Gazette refuses to print 'not a murderer' in veteran's obituary
I was in the USAF from 1966 to 1970, and had this "How many babies did you kill today?" question asked of me, so I understand the Ryan family's angst.
The Commonwealth Court, it would seem, either did not have all the facts before them or ignored to consider material facts.
ReplyDeleteOne of those pertinent facts, and maybe the most pressing, is that the folks who are allowing the killing of deer--are doing it on the municipality's dime. I don't care what the court decides to call the private land where the killing is going on. Call it a donation. Call it a special hunting haven. The point is that the taxpayers are paying for this municipal deer killing program. Thus, the taxpayers deserve to know where their money is being spent. This is a no brainer.
Lena