"Greensboro's shame"
Posted in Greensboro City Council
Jan. 31, 2008 at 15:57
by BrendaBee
My husband and I traveled all over the continent of North America for eleven years. We agreed before beginning our quest to travel no more than 250 miles and then to stop for at least one week so we would have time to sample and savor and know this glorious land that we Americans are so privileged to call ours. In all of our travels there was only one city of the size we wanted to retired to that stood out as the most beautiful, and that city was Greensboro, North Carolina.We still feel this way. Greensboro is a jewel that formed over two and a half centuries into a metropolitan area that reminds one of a series of smaller towns all linked together by long stretches of glorious trees. We are blessed with a variety of parks within the city, but because of it’s green canopy Greensboro itself seems to be a very special large parkland full of everything one would want to sustain a healthy and happy and fulfilling life.
This is why it is so heartbreaking to know the depth to which our city officials and those who have been charged with protecting us have fallen. How they have allowed by their ugly racial politics the criminals not only to flourish here, but to actually penetrate and establish themselves in our institutions. And once they have gotten in the criminals are protected and granted immunity from bearing any blame or punishment for their crimes. This is not because their identity is unknown; no, because they are quite brazen and flaunt their criminal activity fore they know we haven’t the leadership in our elected officials to do anything about them. Yes, so heartbreaking and shameful to see and know and understand and be able to do nothing but type my puny little words and send them out on a blog that probably only a few faithful friends will read.
I have over the past two years learned what many have long suspected: Greensboro has a shady underbelly. It was exposed fully only after The Rhinoceros Times began printing the scandalous account of how a petty little vastly under qualified man became City Manager, who under the city charter is granted almost unlimited power, and a vindictive and hateful City Attorney set out to destroy a man, and in so doing destroyed a fine police department. A police department that is now on it’s knees governed by criminals within and without, and having at the upper level of command people who are at best qualified to be given no higher authority than perhaps low mid-level responsibility.
Many of us have blogged on this topic and these people. Just last Fall we had an city wide election for a mayor and city council members where these issues were discussed and those running for office promised to ask the hard questions that should have been asked from the very beginning of this current crisis and to bring back the trust of the public. Well, a lot of words have been spoken and special meetings held, but nothing of substance has been done. The same people who brought about this calamity are still very much in charge and making the decisions.
The elected City Council decided that the police department needed to be thoroughly investigated and the problems pinpointed so corrections could be made. But then they charged the corrupted City Manger Mitch Johnson and the tremendously unqualified Police Chief Tim Bellamy with appointing an outside agency to do this investigation! It boggles the mind. The two most responsible for the degradation to which the Greensboro Police Department has fallen are to be the very one’s to lead the investigation. An investigation expected to cost the dumbfounded tax payers over $200,000.
The title of this post are the last words written by Jerry Bledsoe in an article this week where he relates the details of the threat to his life by the drug lords who control a large and thriving drug operation centered in this paradise of a city. I won’t go into repeating his words or offering my own analysis as the story stands alone stark and real and damning. If you haven’t yet then you really must read the account of this man’s ordeal and the players in it now that he has been allowed by the FBI to speak of the details. Some of the criminals involved have been arrested. The evidence against them was gathered and they were arrested finally because the Greensboro Police Department was kept totally out of the operation. “The investigation was conducted by the DEA, FBI, ATF, and the Guilford County Sheriffs Department.” Before this any investigation made of these people was always foiled by the criminals within the GPD itself.
I will however end with Jerry Bledsoe’s own indictment of really all of us; the elected officials as well as the people who have tolerated for so long this filth and corruption. Bledsoe said, “That anybody other than criminals have to fear the city’s police should be Greensboro’s shame.” Brenda Bowers
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Feb. 1, 2008 - The Shamefull Mess
Thanks Brenda, you're right on. If this doesn't wake every one up, God help us.A possible tempory solution would try to have Sheriff step.in
Posted by Anonymous
