Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Friend of teen killed by CHP retaliated against with trumped up charges of making threats against CHP officer

The CHP falsely arrests a friend of the late Pedro Villanueva over the meaning of the word 'dump'
A friend of an unarmed 19-year-old teen, who was shot and killed by two undercover CHP officers during an automobile chase on July 3 in Fullerton, California, has been arrested for allegedly using social media to "physically threaten" one of the two undercover CHP officers involved in the controversial fatal shooting of Pedro Villanueva by the CHP.

A criminal threat arrest against a friend of Pedro Villanueva by an overzealous
CHP hinges on one very ambiguous word: 'dump'
The 17-year-old El Monte teenager, who has not been identified because he is a minor, was arraigned Friday at East Lake Juvenile Court on questionable charges of making criminal threats and resisting arrest, both felonies, said his attorney, John Blanchard of Bellflower.

The teen surrendered to Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies on Tuesday afternoon and was being held at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey.

According to the search warrant, the teen allegedly posted a picture to Instagram of one of the two undercover CHP officers involved in the July 3rd fatal shooting of Pedro Villanueva.

The caption on the image asked others to find out where the officer lived, referring to him as a "pig" and used other profane and derogatory terms to describe the officer. So far, nothing that the teen has done can be construed as a bona fide criminal threat.


"Person Who Finds his patrol vehicle #, Or Home Location, gets a BIG tip," the post said. "To All Officers Of The Law, nothing here is illegal, this officer has become famous, And reasons for info, due to wanting to interview the officer."

'CHumPs' once again
On another Instagram post, the teen again used the same photo and posted a comment saying he wanted to "dump" the officers, which CHP investigators claimed was some form of gangland street slang, generalized as the street vernacular used by all Latino teens, as meaning he wanted to shoot or kill the officers in question, according to the warrant.

Apparently, standard English had no relevance in the case as the CHP only interpreted the message and the word in question, "dump," to solely mean inciting some form of "gangland" act of violence and revenge against the CHP that applied to the teenager because, by virtue of his race of being a Latino alone, he had to be some kind of gang banger. The racist undertones of the CHP's allegations against the teen are truly offensive.


While other users on the same thread did call for payback against the officers, and one commenter did make reference to shooting the officer in question, it seems to be a bit of a stretch to interpret the teenager's words as a bona fide physical threat made against a law enforcement officer.

After all, the 17-year-old teenager in question is not responsible for—nor does he moderate the words used by—others on his social media threads, but it appears the real reasoning behind the CHP's concerns over the teenager's comment stem from the outing of the identity of one of the CHP undercover officers involved in the shooting a few weeks ago of an unarmed Latino male, Pedro Villanueva.


The photo of the undercover CHP officer under investigation has apparently been circulating among many of Villanueva's friends. The teen in question, who posted the picture, went to school with Villanueva several years ago but said he had no intention of hurting the police.

The crime scene of the narrow dead-end street in which the CHP claim Pedro
Villanueva was trying to ram them. Was Pedro using his pick up truck as a deadly
weapon as the CHP officers claim, or was he merely trying to escape from two
unidentified shady whom he thought was trying to harm him after a car chase?
So the CHP had exaggerated what he said in the so-called "Dump a CHumP" hit conspiracy made up by the CHP, so that he and others would be intimidated enough to stop circulating the identity of the undercover CHP officer in question.

To date, the CHP and Fullerton Police have refused to reveal the identities of the undercover CHP officers involved in the police shooting death of Pedro Villanueva last July or any other details related to the case, suggesting the CHP has something incriminating about their own actions to hide in the matter.

Public, tax-supported governmental state agencies, such as the CHP, are generally required to maintain a high-level of transparency in all levels of their business dealings and operations; however, lawyers for the CHP have made a concerted effort to hinder any press requests for public disclosure on the case in order to maintain a shroud of secrecy into details why two unarmed teens were shot by undercover CHP officers who failed to ever identify themselves as police officers while confronting the teens with guns drawn in a dark residential dead-end street on Pritchard Avenue near the Fullerton Municipal Airport.


The teenager's attorney John Blanchard rightfully called the arrest of Villanueva's friend an overreaction by the CHP. Blanchard reasons that his client issued no actual threat, was not advocating any form of violence against the officer in question as the teen's message clearly stated, and was merely frustrated over the heavy-handed tactics used by police in violating suspects' civil rights.
 
A friend of Pedro Villanueva was accused of threatening one of the undercover
CHP officers involved in the recent shooting death of Pedro Villanueva in what
is being called a 'Dump a CHumP' assassination plot
If we are to take the rights of someone accused of a crime on the merits of that person being innocent until proven guilty, the teen will likely get the benefit of the doubt in a court of law on whether he meant any harm to the officer in question by merely using the term "dump" to have any criminal intent behind it.

After all, the word "dump," even in standard and colloquial English definitions, is itself subject to a wide variety of meanings and interpretations. Who knows what the teenager meant by the word?

For example, we on this blog have been taking a "big dump" on the CHP for their ineptitude and corruption in trying to cover-up the needless killing of a Latino teen for weeks now, but no one from the CHP has come to our doors to make an arrest with crazy allegations of making criminal threats.

There is clearly a double-standard at work here regarding who can speak out about civil right abuses and what can be said about law enforcement authorities in power (i.e., the CHP) in trying to hold them accountable for their actions to the public.


Clearly, the so-called "street vernacular" used by the teen is itself up to numerous ambiguous interpretations, depending on the eye of the beholder.

There appears to be a full press police cover-up in the shooting of an unarmed teen
from last July by the CHP and Fullerton Police Department
The real issue here appears to be the CHP's concerns of keeping the identities of the undercover CHP officers involved in the shooting incident a secret, and covering-up the details leading up to the controversial killing of an unarmed teen, which to date, they have not been transparent about to any degree or been held accountable for.

If the identities of those officers were ever disclosed to public, it could lead to an avalanche of more information being released, regarding their disciplinary backgrounds within the force and other significant details that happened during the shooting, which clearly the CHP does not want.

Such information clearly could lead to severe criticism and condemnation of the CHP, leading to wholesale changes in the CHP and its leadership, which they do not want to implement.

Of course, the CHP does not want that in the worst way because it appears they have something to hide in this case, which is why they are now using heavy-handed tactics to silence anyone coming forward with information about the case to the public.


The solution to that problem will not be found by trying to intimidate people discussing the case on social media with the threat of criminal arrest. After all, the truth seems to come out one way or another, no matter how hard you try to suppress the truth from the public.

That, in and of itself, is wrong because it suggests that the CHP is racially profiling a whole class of people, again, and jumping to all kinds of conclusions based on their ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds which in this country should not be tolerated.

Also at issue is the right to free speech which is essential to our way of freedom and the most important tool for redress of grievances to address injustices caused by the government, but apparently those inalienable rights don't apply if you're a Latino.

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