Indictment of Shane Harger Dismissed: Was It Politically Motivated?
September 29, 2015 in Columnists by RBNAuthor: Sam Bushman
Indictment Dismissed! On September 24th, 2015, District Court Judge Eichwald ruled that the indictment of former Police Chief Shane Harger was in violation of state law. The prosecution was found by the judge to have committed prosecutorial misconduct in that they violated the rules of the grand jury proceedings and that the state withheld exculpatory evidence that would have cleared the chief of any wrongdoing. The state’s witness provided false and misleading testimony to the grand jury in order to prejudice the jury; therefore the case was dismissed.
Mr. Harger is currently represented by Ray Towig and State Representative Lisa Torraco, as well as the Rutherford Institute!
Thursday, August 7th 2014, former Jemez Springs Police Chief, Shane Harger, was indicted and arrested on charges related to several allegations made by a 19-year-old female self-admitted heroin addict named Dusty Keane. On his way to jail he was intentionally paraded before a well prepped media with news cameras rolling. Will that same media have the integrity to trumpet the truth and have news cameras roll once again in Harger’s defense? Not a Chance!
The state prosecutor requested an increase in his bail from $150,000 to $500,000, claiming that he was a flight risk; Judge Eichwald raised his bail to $250,000 cash or surety. The fact that the alleged victim in this case did not testify before the grand jury panel or show up at the arraignment is quite telling about her own credibility.
“Harger is innocent of these charges, and that will become abundantly clear as this case moves forward,” his attorney, said in a statement.
The Police Chief was kind enough to release Dusty to her mother instead of taking her to jail, even though she was one of four subjects caught trafficking heroin. Drug scales were discovered along with heroin in the vehicle at the time of the arrest.
Are there other political motivations? We first broke the story about Shane Harger and the trouble that strangely occurred at the same time he went to the CSPOA event in Las Vegas; strange, because the Sandoval County Sheriff’s department, the Village Council, the TSA and the FBI all became intensely involved over a tiny town police chief, Shane Harger.
The $64K question is, Why?
Then came the following attack on our reporting:
Rio Rancho Observer
www.rrobserver.com/news/article_5fefa8ee-8adb-11e3-9541-0019bb2963f4.html
“An Internet story falsely reports that Sandoval County Sheriff Douglas Wood has fired the Jemez Springs police chief and dismantled the police department there, the sheriff’s office said Friday. ‘The article untruthfully states Wood has ordered the firing of Jemez Springs Police Chief Shane Harger and the dismantlement of the Jemez Springs Police Department, allegedly because Harger attended the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association Convention on Jan. 28. ‘The story is fictitious,’ a sheriff’s office news release said, noting the story ‘generated tremendous interest of citizens from across the United States.’”
The release said Wood has no authority to order the firing of anyone outside the employment of the sheriff’s office. Further, he has no authority to dismantle the police department of any municipality. Wood has asked Harger to surrender his special deputy commission for liability and public safety reasons.
The municipal office in Jemez Springs confirmed that Harger remains the police chief and the department is intact. It said a fact sheet concerning the situation would be posted on the village website, www.jemezsprings.org.
Well, it all depends on how we define the word “is”? Or shall we say, what does it actually mean to be fired? It is true that the Sheriff can’t legally fire the police chief. However, by the time they had the Sheriff push Shane to surrender his special deputy commission, the town council stripped him of all his Police Chief duties and restrict him to taking the rest of his comp time with no details of his current job description, they may as well had fired him.
But, after the above article was written, quoting a more than hard to find press release, we could find nothing on the jemezsprings.org website to provide much needed clarification. Never mind the fact that details to follow that as of this writing never materialized.
We understand the official firing took place in a closed door executive council meeting that Mr. Harger was not invited to! Now will they admit he has been fired? Will they provide the promised details?
We can play games with words all day long, but we have the following questions for all the above listed agencies:
- Why was Police Chief Shane Harger terminated without any explanation as to the reason?
- Who contacted whom regarding this simple misunderstanding about Shane’s use of two different names?
- Why can’t Shane obtain all the video from all agencies from the Albuquerque airport?
- Why haven’t we had a press conference or an official press release regarding the facts in this case?
- Why did the Sheriff and the Mayor have such public praise for Mr. Harger’s work, including a pay raise in the works from the village just days before this strange unfolding of events?
- Why are the above Government agencies unwilling to return phone calls from the Media?
- Why was Gilbert Guaderrama, as an employee of the Border Patrol and fired for sexual misconduct with an illegal alien, hired by the TSA and placed in a supervisory role? He should have been charged criminally for his gross misconduct.
Sam Bushman is the radio host of talk show Liberty Roundtable – www.libertyroundtable.com
Note: Permission to copy and distribute this article is granted as long as full attribution is given.
No comments:
Post a Comment