Friday, May 23, 2008

Randall Kallinen, The Man of Smoke and Mirrors

The Chronicle's story



KPRC's story



I was surprised that this investigation is still ongoing yet the suit is already filed. Usually, the civil suits are served once the investigation is complete. Yet, for some reason, Roland Carnaby's widow and her ACLU lawyer Randall Kallinen can't wait to get to court. For anyone who may forget, Randall Kallinen was (or he may still be, I don't know) the director of the ACLU for this area. Contrary to perception, the ACLU is no friend to the taxpayer or the law abiding citizen and certainly hate the police. Kallinen is shouting that Houston Police violated their own policies during this chase. Well, taken in with the whole situation, my answer is "so what?" Mr. Kallenin does what all lawyers do, only tell you part of the story that suits them. The last thing lawyers like Kallenin want is for the public to know the whole story and make up their own minds. Let me address his grievances and point out the flaws in his logic;

Mr. Kallenin says that a couple of weeks prior, "HPD revised its chase policy. It states, in part, that officers should weigh a variety of factors before initiating a chase."One (of the factors) is what was the original crime that was committed? Here it was speeding."

Does that mean the officer cannot chase or is it saying the officer has to take that into consideration? Remember, this guy claimed he was a CIA agent. In this day and age of "war on terror" police need to investigate this. He was stopped for speeding, but it became another issue entirely when Carnaby made the claim of being a federal agent. Also, Mr. Kallenin is hoping the smoke and mirror act will shield the fact that Carnaby started the whole thing by taking off from police. Now, ACLU believes that people have a right to run from the police, and lie to them. The ACLU have argued that citizens making false misconduct complaints against officers is free speech and should not face consequences. So, with this in mind I hope you have an idea where Mr. Kallenin is coming from. So, with this logic, guy wants to run from the police, hey, no problemo!


He also cites HPD policy about establishing verbal communications with subjects on 'high risk' stops. How do we know that wasn't already happening. Were the officers shouting commands? To lawyers like Kallenin it doesn't matter. From their perspective, the inmates are running the asylum. If police were to adopt procedures written by them, nothing would get done. The bottom line here is that one man is responsible for this whole scenario. His name was Roland Carnaby. He made the decision to speed. He then said he was a CIA agent. He then made the decision to lead police on a high speed chase across the city of Houston. He made the decision not to comply and surrender, but to instead make a furtive movement (that if he really was the police as one of his friends later claimed) known to illicit a response from a police officer. This is just another self-proclaimed "crusade" of Randall Kallinen against the police. I would also like my dear readers to remember, just because a policy is violated, doesn't mean the law was violated. Polices cannot dictate actions in every single situation. They are guidelines to follow that account for most routine scenarios. However, when the scenario goes from routine to uncharted territory, officers have to make split second decisions that will be reviewed by police-hating lawyers like Kallenin who needs to read up on Graham v. Conner.

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