<-Talk about closing the barn door after the horses ran away; former Metro Homicide Lt Lew Roberts decided to do a big interview series with the Review-Journal and stated that the USDOJ’s Civil Rights Division should be heading up the investigation and everyone except the LVMPD brass and the USDOJ agrees with Lew!

He’s been troubled for six very long years and only now after he’s retired does he choose to speak up and out?

Lew, you were Lt Royalty—the Lts are truly royalty at the LVMPD and they run things and are either very good or very bad; very few in the middle range. I like Roberts though I teased him often over  his weight and appetite issues, but he’s exactly the kind of officer who should have spoken up and out publicly especially after his meeting with Gillespie and Jett over Detective Bryan Yant.

…and he didn’t.

You’re a man of faith and community involvement mentoring kids and participating in your neighborhood and your silence those six years was deafening Lew.

…you failed in your duties and obligations to your community, to your profession, to your colleagues, and to your God, by your silence Lew and though your reflexive post-retirement guilt is understandable, you sir owe our entire community a very public apology for sitting there and doing absolutely nothing when you had absolutely nothing to lose.

‘Chain-of-Command’ is a very flimsy and false excuse Lew!

What would they have done to you had you gone public with your concerns or gone directly to USDOJ in Washington yourself?

Insubordination?  Jett chewing your ass?  Dougie’s ass-kissers messin’ with you?  Demotion?

<-Seen here sporting some toilet paper stuck to a dingleberry, former Metro Lt Lew Roberts leaves the Men’s Room at the RJ headed for an interview in their ‘fish bowl’ conference room

…or was the media adulation and the attention you enjoyed so immensely and the TV cameras more important to you than doing what was right Lew?

What would a man of honor and integrity have done Lew; what was the correct course to have taken then when you had the power and the position at the LVMPD that perhaps could have saved lives that didn’t need to be extinguished by your colleagues?

…and it does boil down to a fundamental lack of basic respect for human life present in so many officers at the LVMPD and you Lew, as a faith person, sat in silence just for a couple of more bucks in your pension?

…and was your LVRJ interview just another craving for those cameras you grew to love so much that you just couldn’t bear being away from them post-retirement?

Barely two months and you’ve been in the papers twice already!  Are you Jonesing that bad for attention Lew?

To single Lew Roberts out may seem unfair, but the fact that Roberts doesn’t understand how revolting his post-retirement comments are to so many of us longing for reform at the LVMPD, is as disturbing to us as was his years long silence.

<-This giant sandwich didn’t stand a chance when Lt Roberts spotted it after leaving the Men’s Room at the RJ!

It reeks of an exaggerated sense of self-importance and ego pumping Roberts’ running to the media now all these years later and RJ reporter Lawrence Mower—normally a good journalist—gave Roberts a total pass and failed to ask Lew a single question that would have held his feet to the fire or probe how he could have remained silent for so many years without doing a damn thing.

I just about lost my lunch reading this quote from Lew Roberts:

‘…Roberts was in many ways the face of the Metropolitan Police Department, speaking regularly through the media to the public about murders. He said he told colleagues and superiors of his concerns about police shootings, but could not speak publicly before his retirement.

I’ve seen circumstances where I felt like we should have done more,” he said. “And for me personally, I can’t sit by and say everything’s OK, when it’s not OK. I don’t want to be the guy that buries the head in the sand and two, three years down the road something happens to somebody I know, or my family…’

What Lew is saying here is that he respected—maybe ‘worshipped’ is the better word—the Chain-of-Command at the LVMPD much, much more than human life…or the safety of his fellow officers.

<-Lew, for six very long years, your head was indeed buried deep in the sand and far up your own ass!

How could you have bowed to the Chain instead of doing what was the right thing Lew?

How Lew?

I’ve been around cops since I was a ‘lil one and I know these guys and how they think and process stuff.  But here in Vegas, I have never seen such a lock-step adherence to the Chain-of-Command either in Chicago, New York, or Florida where I have many cop friends; here, it resembles the Third Reich in its blind adherence by everyone.

I have counseled many LVMPDers to ‘speak up and to speak out’ and to damn ‘the chain’ because if you are on the side of right, the community will protect you for doing the right thing.

There’s not a single public person who wouldn’t have taken Lt Lew Roberts’ now belatedly offered concerns as Gospel and though the corrupted brass would have had the daggers out for him, what could they have done to him with so little time left before his retirement?

There are so many at the LVMPD who will never get out of the Sgt, Lt, or Cptn ranks that it is legitimate to ask these people ‘what are you afraid of?’

You LVMPD people must flush the chain in favor of doing what is ‘righteous and justified’ to use Roberts’ own words to the RJ.

One of the things the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice would probe is why there are never any ‘shoot to wound or maim’ incidents rather than mowing suspects down with sometimes dozens of rounds fired by multiple officers.

So many of these OISs have been so extraordinarily dangerous to officers and citizens alike, that it is nothing short of miraculous that bystanders haven’t died too.

Many major Departments encourage this type of non-lethal firearm use though not ‘officially’ both to assuage public concern and lessen liability and as an instrument to help officers dealing with the emotional/functional issues after having killed a suspect.

Few officers get their jollies killing people and most LVMPD officers—even in the toughest areas—have never discharged their firearms over the course of their entire careers! Many who must kill in the line of duty do have emotional reactions that can take a long time to heal.

But to deny that some officers do get their jollies and a sick thrill killing suspects is to continue to deny the painfully obvious at the LVMPD.

Former 23 year old Officer Thomas Mendiola continued to shoot Erik Scott after he was dead and splayed on the ground!!!  …and this punk-assed little bitch was a recent product of Metro’s self-proclaimed ‘Best Police Academy’ that went very bad under then Captain and now Assistant Sheriff Joe Lombardo!!!

The SOB failed upward and was promoted!

<-Mendiola left the force on his own knowing he’d be fired for his Firearms for Felons program, but Post Traumatic military veteran and complete psycho William Mosher (left) is still on the force when he should have been fired for the Scott incident too!

William Mosher shouldn’t even be allowed to own a squirt gun anymore!

USDOJ’s Civil Rights Division would certainly probe that kind institutional corruption at the LVMPD too!

After Sergeant Henry Prendes was gunned down, I overheard a Deputy Chief lament at an event to another senior officer ‘for (Captain Mark) Taverez to stop acting like a pussy’ regarding perhaps the most extraordinary and exemplary conduct of any Metro officer I’m aware of; Captain Taverez was Prendes’ superior officer and he took personal ownership and literally pastored all of his subordinate officers suffering great emotional turmoil after losing Henry and I’m not sure anyone was there for the fine Captain to lean on in his hour of need.

Yet the LVMPD brass thought him a ‘pussy’.

It’s this revolting machismo coupled with underlying currents and components of sexism and racism that is endemic across the entirety of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and it’s something that USDOJ would certainly note as an issue of substantial concern to them as it contributes to some officers doing as they please as if this is the Wild Wild West and not a metropolitan area of over 2 million people.

Former Lt Lew Roberts stated to the RJ that he doesn’t believe that ‘corruption’ is an issue at the LVMPD saying, that it’s (the LVMPD) not a corrupt organization’ but Lieutenant, look up the definition of the word ‘corruption’ and you will see the very definition of Metro under Sheriff Douglas Gillespie—the very worst sheriff in America today.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corruption

<-This local woman was so angry at Lt Lew Roberts for not doing anything about Officer Involved Shootings over his six years at the helm that she dropped her drawers and showed me her coochie this morning to protest his inaction!

Corruption isn’t just envelopes full of cash Luigi, It can be systemic and in the LVMPD’s case, also institutional and you sir, sat in silence for six long years and were part of the problem and by your own post-retirement media hogging and grandstanding admission, you were not at all part of the solution during your entire career at the LVMPD.

You inadvertently stated to all of us in a front page Sunday story exactly how it is that we got to the place we’re at with the LVMPD which I am confident wasn’t your intention or the RJs.

Perhaps we should all thank you and get you a couple of free buffet tickets for your efforts Lt Roberts; it’s best that you retired out given your post-retirement revelation about your own failures to act at the LVMPD when you had the chance…

…and you chose to do absolutely nothing instead Lew and you’ll have to live with that Lt.

Michael Zahara

2/27/2012

www.WathdogWag.com