It's Time to Get Involved!

      When I  ran for mayor four years ago, I campaigned on different subjects.  One of the subjects was election reform.  There are a handful of things that I think are wrong with our municipal elections for the leadership of Delphi, and I hope they change.  I knew that I was going to work with the officials involved with elections to try and get some things done that were fairer for the citizens for the future.  Let's start with the basics.      It's never made sense to me to have council districts but yet have every citizen vote for every council person.  Don't get me wrong, it makes sense to have council districts, it's the voting part that I call a foul on.  As you may or may not know, Delphi has four districts and one at-large seat.  Each of the districts is marked off on a map, and the person elected represents that area.  But why does everyone get to vote on this person?  Why should someone who lives...

  The line, if memory serves me correctly, was spoken by Ronald Reagan during his campaign against Jimmy Carter for President. But what does it really mean? Can it mean many things to many people? What was the first thing that came to your mind when you read that line? I always took it in its simplest form. And what I mean by that is this. When you, as a voter, look back and think about where you were four years ago and compare that time economically to the time right now, are times better for you or worse? Of course, when a President or a Governor asks that question, they are probably talking about finances. Are you, as a voter, spending more on groceries, car insurance, gasoline, and the like? Back when Reagan asked that question, it was in the latter part of Carter's failed policies, and inflation was double-digit range. Why, it was so bad that they even had a thing called the Misery Index. Granted, this was all before my time, but I read it somewhere. But what happens when a lo...

  The Pre-Story of the Radcliffe Murder   *****This is a true story based on my memory, documents that I possess, and court documents from Carroll County. If there are errors they are slight and unintended. It is probably the longest story I've ever typed out, so be prepared. I hope you find it entertaining.*****      Gerald Wayne Bivins was pronounced dead on March 14, 2001 at 12:26 a.m. Another murder? Another unsolved? Hardly. Jerry was pronounced dead in the Michigan City Prison due to lethal injection. The cause of death on the death certificate was cardiac arrest due to that injection. So what were the events that led to this action being taken?      Arrest-wise, it all began in Carroll County. Specifically with the Delphi City Police. While the death penalty sentence did not come out of Carroll County, the beginning of this story certainly did. I graduated from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy at the end of 1989 and was off and running. ...

            We are all familiar with the Nate Lamar situation over the last month.  To recap, Nate Lamar was brought in as Chief of Police by Anita Werling at Kamron Yates' request to lead his department. Lamar was allowed to work three or four days in his position prior to resigning.  The mayor did nothing.  Lamar should have been fired five minutes after this became public.  After all, he lied in court. The chief works at the pleasure of the mayor.  That person can be hired and fired by the sitting mayor, in other words.  Don't let anyone tell you any different.  If a mayor tells you that they cannot fire or hire a chief of police they are either massively incompetent and don't know their job or they are a flat out liar.  Either one shows a lack of integrity.        After Yates appointed Lamar to continue as the chief of police some openings occurred in the department with officers leaving f...

     F.O.I.A. stands for 'Freedom of Information Act' and you should be very interested in what this is and what is means for you.  Over the years, especially with corrupt governments, it was always difficult to obtain records or get information in general about internal workings and activities of your government.  It's very easy for the government to hide what they are doing from the public.  Some of the information that was being hidden was on the up-and-up and some wasn't.  But it was always easy to keep the information under the covers as apposed to explaining it or having to justify it to citizens with opposing view points or with simple or even hard questions that they didn't want to answer.      To fight this problem, a law was introduced in 1965 and enacted in 1967 to make it easier to obtain government records.  By virtue of this first law it gave citizens the right to access and view government records.  Their ac...

      With recent events happening in our city and around the area a new term to most of us has been Brady-Giglio.  What is it and why is it important?        Both terms stem from court cases.  Brady v. Maryland  and Giglio v. United States.         In the Brady case the Supreme Court ruled that any information or evidence that the prosecuting attorney knows when he is dealing with a case MUST be turned over to the defense attorney(s).  It zeroed in, but does not limit that information to, exculpating the accused or possibly reducing a penalty.  (Remember the movie, My Cousin Vinny?)       Giglio, on the other had, deals with the credibility of a witness, namely a law enforcement officer.  The list includes law enforcement officers who have credibility problems.  They might include misuse of force, criminal convictions, dishonesty, or mishandling of evidence, etc.  Off...