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25 February 2009
Clarence Bradford just wants to serve YOU
Failed Harris County DA candidate and former HPD police chief Clarence Bradford apparently came out of hiding long enough today to announce that he's running for City Council. Here is an excerpt from Alan Bernstein's reporting for the Chronicle:
Less than four months after losing a close race for Harris County district attorney, former Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford announced today that he is running for an at-large seat on the city council.
Bradford is aiming for the at-large #4 seat being vacated by Ronald Green, who is running for controller.[snip]
Bradford, a lawyer and security consultant, indicated in a written statement to news media that he is launching his second candidacy in two years because he wants to serve the public again.
[snip]
Bradford served as police chief from 1997 to 2003, when he retired amid a series of controversies such as errors and faked results by police crime lab personnel.
Oops, never mind. Apparently, Clarence Bradford remains in hiding. And honestly, if I were his campaign advisor, that's probably exactly where I would keep him. Otherwise, he might have to answer questions about his mismanagement of the HPD Crime Lab during those halcyon days known as the Lee Brown era (or more appropriately, error) in Houston politics.
BLOGVERSATION: Lose an Eye, It's a Sport.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ Clarence Bradford just wants to serve YOU"> 02/25/09 09:21 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (19)
17 February 2008
Should we issue a missing persons alert for Clarence Bradford?
Chuck Rosenthal isn't the only local pol facing some legal difficulties.
As the Chronicle's Cindy George reported this weekend, Harris County District Attorney candidate Clarence Bradford remains a part of several lawsuits stemming from HPD's 2002 K-Mart parking lot raid:
A federal judge has declined another city request to end the 10 lawsuits filed by people arrested in a 2002 Kmart street racing raid.
It's the second time U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas has ruled that the lawsuits can go forward.
In a decision this week, Atlas wrote that the more than 100 plaintiffs could sue about whether the Houston Police Department had a "custom of mass detention without individualized reasonable suspicion."
[snip]
In 2005, the judge ruled that the police plan that led to the mass arrests was unconstitutional. In a scathing opinion, she called HPD tactics to detain and arrest people who were not observed violating the law "an unjustified, almost totalitarian, regime of suspicionless stops."
Civil rights lawsuits were filed after almost 300 people were arrested in August 2002 during a surprise raid on the Kmart parking lot in the 8400 block of Westheimer. The HPD operation was an attempt to combat street racing.
All of the cases name former HPD Chief Clarence C.O. Bradford, who is running as a Democrat for Harris County district attorney, and allege he knew about the plan. The lawsuits also accused police of brandishing firearms and being verbally abusive during the incident.[snip]
The judge also wrote that there is a genuine dispute about then-Chief Bradford's knowledge about that summer's plan.
Bradford lost his appeal of Atlas' decision to keep him as a defendant in the lawsuits.
The story contained no quote from Bradford.
The DA candidate's political team did issue a statement to the Chronicle in reaction to the Rosenthal resignation:
Former Houston Police Chief C.O. "Brad" Bradford, the lone Democrat running for district attorney:
"I said when I began my campaign last year that we need change in the District Attorney's office," Bradford's statement read. "I find the personal use of government property by government officials, including computers and e-mail, to be totally inappropriate. And there is no place in the District Attorney's office for racism or belittling of women."
A call to Bradford for further comment, was not immediately returned to the Houston Chronicle.
Not immediately returned, or not ever returned?
It seems that Clarence Bradford has nearly gone into hiding, which is odd behavior from a political candidate. He must really not want to answer any tough questions!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ Clarence Bradford?"> 02/17/08 11:04 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (6)
13 July 2008
Bradford comes out of hiding, spreads the blame for the crime lab mess
Alan Bernstein's profile of Democratic Harris County District Attorney candidate Clarence Bradford (which has already generated discussion here and elsewhere) heads into almost virgin territory for this campaign, as Bernstein actually managed to entice Bradford out of hiding to talk about various scandals during his time as HPD Chief.
Given the (low) quality of the answers, one can certainly understand why Bradford's handlers prefer him hiding from the press.
Here are some sidebar comments on Bradford's notion of responsibility:
- "Anytime something goes wrong in the police department the chief is responsible. If the toilet doesn't flush in the police building, the chief has to take responsibility for that. That's part of the job"
- "9/11 happened when President Bush was president. I don't blame the president for 9/11 happening because he was president at the time, OK? Things happen"
Things happen, yes. But as the Bromwich reports made clear, life-and-death things happened with the HPD crime lab during Bradford's watch, and Bradford was part of the problem.
Bradford, though, admits that he hasn't read those reports -- reports for which area government spent millions so we could try finally to fix the problems of the crime lab -- and that he doesn't plan to:
The former chief, however, said he had no intention of reading all of the reports on the two-year, $5.3 million investigation of the crime lab by a team led by Michael Bromwich, a former U.S. Justice Department inspector.
Asked why, Bradford replied: "Because I was part of the process (of the investigation). I am familiar with the reports; I have read the summary of all of them."
The reports repeatedly fault HPD's "chain of command" for lax oversight. Bradford said he disagrees with some of the conclusions.
Any candidate for Harris County District Attorney who has pledged NOT to read more than a summary of the Bromwich reports on the crime lab should be disqualified from pursuing the office. That's just an astounding, damning, admission.
Moving on from the responsibility theme, Bradford does have in mind who's really to blame for mismanagement of the crime lab:
"What I should have done — which I didn't see until this all blew up — I should have at least annually gotten independent audits of the crime lab, as opposed to relying on, like the two previous chiefs had done, this particular supervisor ... stating the crime lab met all the federal standards," he said. "So, yes, that's when I dropped the ball. I relied too heavily on the people with the science and biology degrees."
The experts let Clarence the Delegator down! Oh, and so did the other member of Houston's Dynamic Duo at the time:
Bradford, 52, said he was unable to increase lab staffing because of tight budgets dictated by Lanier's successor, Lee Brown — whose law enforcement consulting company, Brown Group International, has employed him since his retirement.
So, this man who won't be capable of trying major cases in court because of lack of experience and has said -- in this profile even -- that as District Attorney, he will be a major public voice and manager rather than a prosecutor -- wasn't able to persuade Lee Brown, Council, or the public that perhaps funding to deal with some known issues at the crime lab would be a good idea? That seems like a guy who isn't likely to be a persuasive public-facing District Attorney either.
But he wants voters to know he's learned from the ordeal:
Bradford, with degrees in criminal justice, public administration and law as well as training by the FBI National Academy and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, considers the lab failures a plus for him now: "I am able to learn from those and move forward. ... That makes me more prepared to go in and deal with organizational issues such as these."
Defendants whose evidence was mangled as the leaders ultimately responsible for the Crime Lab fiddled, so to speak, will surely be pleased to know there's a silver lining to the mess.
Good for Bernstein for finally getting Bradford to answer some of these important questions. We suspect, given some of these disastrous answers, that we may not see Bradford answering many more press inquiries in the near future.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ Bradford comes out of hiding, spreads the blame for the crime lab mess"> 07/13/08 10:48 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (1)
22 June 2008
City settles ERACER-related lawsuits
KHOU-11's Lee McGuire reports that Houston taxpayers will wind up spending nearly $750,000 to settle lawsuits stemming from the infamous 2002 K-Mart parking lot raid:
Settling a lawsuit concerning two 2002 crackdowns on illegal street racing will cost taxpayers $731,617.
The Houston City Council Wednesday approved a settlement agreement between the Houston Police Department and two groups of teenagers. In a lawsuit, the teens claim they were detained and arrested in violation of their civil rights.
[snip]
Under the settlement, each of the 101 teenagers will get between $2,500 and $5,000, and it awards several hundred thousand dollars in attorneys’ fees.
The KHOU story does not mention that HPD was led by Clarence Bradford at the time, nor does it offer any quote from the current candidate for Harris County District Attorney. He may have been hiding from reporters under a table somewhere, though.
The Chronicle coverage does mention Bradford:
The city is close to settling the last two lawsuits stemming from the botched police raid and mass arrests in a Kmart parking lot in 2002.
If council approves the proposed settlements on Wednesday, the city will be finished with the legal fallout from the raid, which became a scandal for the Houston Police Department and then-Police Chief C.O. Bradford.
Bradford now is the Democratic candidate for Harris County district attorney.
Houston police arrested 273 people during an Aug. 17, 2002, sweep through a Kmart parking lot on Westheimer.
The sweep was part of a crackdown on illegal street racing, but Capt. Mark Aguirre ordered the arrest of everyone in the parking lot. Many of those arrested said they were store customers or passers-by.
The action was roundly condemned and led to the indictment of Aguirre on five misdemeanor charges of official oppression. He later was acquitted. Aguirre was fired in 2003. He unsuccessfully appealed his firing, saying he was being made a scapegoat for the botched raid.
There is no quote from Bradford in this story either. That table he's hiding under must be impenetrable!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/22/08 11:07 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Comments (0)
22 February 2008
Harris County DA debate posted on KHOU website
Earlier in the week, the GOP candidates for Harris County District Attorney squared off in a debate (Democrat Clarence Bradford was invited, but apparently is still hiding somewhere hoping never to answer a tough question).
KHOU-11 could not be bothered actually to televise this important debate over the public airwaves, but they did have a live webcast, and the video is also available (Part One and Part Two).
In my view, the debate further illustrated that there are two highly qualified DA candidates on the GOP side, and two others -- but maybe you'll have other thoughts after watching the debate. Feel free to discuss in the forum.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/22/08 10:24 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Comments (0)
12 April 2009
METRO: Mary Sit fluffs the numbers; Frank Wilson is MIA
In the never-ending quest to pad ridership numbers, METRO's expensive blogger posted this statistic the other day:
METRO carries some 108 million riders every year.
That caused a reader to whip out his calculator:
108 million divided by 52 week averages out to about umm 2.07 million riders per week...
That's called METRO Math. Hopefully it will not soon be coming to a school district near us.
Meanwhile, KHOU-11's Jeremy Desel notes that Frank Wilson is doing his best impersonation of Clarence Bradford, minus the press release (via Barry Klein)
11 News has been trying to get clarification about the cost differences for the last two days. The explanation apparently needs to come from Metro President Frank Wilson, who has been unavailable for comment.
Has anyone checked with METRO's vendors to see if Frank's out looking for a new job? Or maybe METRO continues to be easily befuddled by the day-to-day intricacies of the transit business:
So maybe that's why the deal fell apart: Somebody says something that the people at Metro don't understand, so they just let it slide. If Parsons starts throwing around ideas Metro doesn't understand, we hope it asks for some clarification, considering all that money involved.
Our tax dollars at work. (Except Pasadena and Baytown, of course.)
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 04/12/09 06:27 AM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Comments (3)
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