Savannah: America's Most Beautiful City... With An Ugly Secret

I wrote this last year and sadly, it continues year after year......

It is with a heavy heart that I write this Op Ed. I write this regarding my favorite city in the world, a city that is idyllic and romanticized indelibly within my mind. It is a city in which I met many wonderful people, and had several life changing experiences. My city. My Savannah.
I proposed to my wife on River St and chose Savannah as our Honeymoon destination, as well.
I have been away, except for visits, for some twelve years now, and currently reside four hours away

Last year Savannah had 52 homicides last year. Last week in the  most recent killing, the City recorded its 42nd of the year. Tragically a 54 year old  Art Gallery owner was shot dead while walking with his wife down Waldburg Street.

I lived just off of the intersection of Barnard and Waldburg Streets, not far from where this senseless loss of life took place.
Savannah is, indeed, a city of  paradox - affluence and poverty, optimism and despair, beauty and ugliness.
I saw all of these first hand. I experienced the crime and knew many who were victims of crime in the Historical District of Savannah. The Taiwanese student from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) student who was executed (in front of Wright Square) while using a pay phone to call his family in Taiwan. This is one of the more memorable tragedies that I recall, while I lived in the Historical District.

This problem of crime has existed in its present form for decades. In 2003, I conducted statistical research for a free lance article that I wrote on the subject of crime in the Historical District . The article "Danger Zones - A Statistical Analysis of Down Town Crime" and was  presented as a cover story in the Connect Savannah Newspaper.
My research provided me with staggering and enlightening information regarding crime within this three square mile area.
The consistency and the frequency of  street robberies, burglaries, assaults, car break-ins, and homicides was astounding. Week after week, year after year. Like the ebb and flow of the great Savannah River itself, the same criminal acts, the same locations with the same victim typology year after year continued.
The victims were predominately either tourists, or SCAD students. The beautiful squares and picturesque streets would become proverbial feeding grounds, with the predators preying upon their easy prey.

It was as if the City has conditioned itself to co-exist with the crime, and to channel it in such a way as to not allow it to obstruct the tourism industry, the very life blood of the city.

The Historical District is both bordered and interspersed within with a lower socioeconomic presence. There are violent criminals (opportunists) who find it easy to blend into these communities and commit their acts of crime upon the innocent.
I was there when the Guardian Angels of New York City offered their services to help the City. That was over a decade ago. Street crime has grown increasingly worse without any clear plan on how to address it.
This cancer could be stopped, but it would require a Politically Incorrect solution. It would require a coordinated aggressive police action targeting the hamlets that the thugs are able to take refuge within.
It would be reminiscent of a Giuliani style of crime prevention and crime solution, for a time such as this, most definitely be a Politically Incorrect methodology.

Until the leadership of Savannah stops with the same old failed policies regarding this issue, those who visit the most beautiful city in the world, and those who call the Historic District home, will continue to be victimized by very bad people who are allowed to walk among us.

Gordon Smith

Delaware Attorney General's Office Mission: Protecting the Corrupt System

When I first heard (Former) Chief of Family Division - Deputy Attorney General Patricia Dailey Lewis state these words in a Family Law Commission meeting - "My job is to protect the system," I stared at her.  I stared at the others in attendance for a few seconds of a very awkward silence, awaiting a more noble reasoning for her professional existence.
There was essentially no elaboration--just her self proclaimed mission statement in seven words.

This system that the good lady spoke of, and that every member of the Delaware Attorney General's office seek to protect, is dirty and corrupt, with no accountability.
I have learned through personal experience that they have no problem withholding exculpatory evidence for the sake of "protecting" this system.
Here are just a few of the more notable examples:


1) Wilmington News Journal:
"Superior Court Judge William Witham Jr. granted a defense motion to dismiss the case against Loyer Braden, 20, of East Orange, NJ because (Delaware) prosecutors withheld key evidence in the 2007 shooting......"

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/del_attorney_general_will_not.html

This is a tragic story where a young Delaware State University student was gunned down and two sleazy State prosecutors blew the entire case.
Who were these prosecutors? Deputy Attorney Jason Cohee and Deputy Attorney General Dennis Kellegher.
Where are they now? Well, unlike the real world, where incompetence and misconduct is frowned upon and subject to punitive action, in the Delaware Department of Justice, misconduct is actually a promotoable act -  DAG Dennis Kellegher was (ironically) promoted to the Head of the Civil Rights Unit and DAG Jason Cohee continues his career trek, protecting that corrupt system that Patricia Dailey Lewis spoke of.

Delaware State University and former State Senate candidate had this to say about the moronic behavior of the Attorney General's office:

I don't often blog about DSU, given my position there, but this isn't really a post about the university, or even about the tragic events that took the life of Shalita Middleton in fall 2007.

It's about the absence of outrage.

The charges against Loyer Braden have been dismissed, not just because the Attorney General's office apparently failed to share exculpatory evidence with the defense, but also because a key witness recanted testimony tying Braden to the homicide.

What's missing in this picture? How about somebody in state government, state politics, or even the News Journal calling for a serious investigation of whether or not it is common practice in the AG office for prosecutors to just, ah, forget to hand over evidence in discovery as required by law?

But I'm waiting for somebody in the General Assembly to stand up and say, "Wait a damn minute! We need to investigate this case! We need to investigate this office! Somebody needs to get fired or disbarred, and oversight needs to be put into place to insure that this doesn't happen to anybody else."

2) The Delaware Attorney General's office cited for unethical conduct in a death penalty case:

Delaware State News: "Following yet another appeal on issues defense attorneys said were left unresolved in its earlier decision, the Supreme Court sent the case back to Parkins, ruling unanimously last year that Wright was entitled to a new trial because prosecutors repeatedly withheld potentially exculpatory evidence."

http://delawarestatenews.net/news/delaware-frees-inmate-spent-two-decades-death-row/

3) The Delaware Attorney General's office allows an admitted pedophile Judge (William Bradley) to escape prosecution, blocked any criminal investigation and allowed the pedophile judge to simply retire under full pension. Even more egregious, the Attorney General's office continues to fight tooth and nail to suppress one victim's quest for justice, a man who alleges the judge molested him when he was 14 years old. The alleged molestation would occur in the judges home and even in the judges chamber.
See Below:
//www.wboc.com/story/21242892/de-court-reverses-ruling-in-judge-abuse-lawsuit


In closing, I would like to share with you another example of the "protecting the system" utilized by these people. In a phone conversation I had with Deputy Attorney General Patricia Dailey - Lewis, she stated that she would "make sure that she (the perpetrator of false police reports against me) would never be arrested - screaming like a wild banshee (literally), I have this conversation recorded on what might very well be the most optimum recording device in existence and listen to it from time to time. However, contrary to DAG Dailey - Lewis protecting her criminal, two years and two months later, she would be arrested for filing multiple false police reports.

I have discovered through experience that some of the worst criminals are quite contrary to stereotype. They wear business suits, dress suits, loafers and pumps. They purport to stand for justice, but in actuality stand to protect a broken and corrupt system that we call justice.