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Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.

– Oscar Ameringer

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V ol. I, W k. 53 July 14, 2014 ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( V ancouver, B.C . 10 ¢, cheap

The CHP beating of Marlene PinnockA LogoPhere Online Investigative Report

Three things are really starting to bugger my goat on thisMarlene Pinnock case, and I’m going to let rip. But before I do,it might be a good idea to get you organized to see exactly whathappened, including the punch-by-punch.

Fire up your GoogleEarth and point it toward Interstate 10about 5 miles due south of Hollywood – 34°02'02.69" N118°20'54.38" W precisely. The other source of information1

you’ll need is a copy of David Diaz’s Jul01.2012 video of thebeating. Here is the YouTube, and here is an 2 mp4 version 3

that would be very helpful if you have a good video player that allows you to stop action, back up, etc.

The Players

Marlene PinnockWe now know that the lady at the receiving end of the brutalCHP beating is named Marlene Pinnock. She is 51 yo, black,and a great-grandmother. I’m not sure what the great-

grandmother part tells us, but it seems to be the fact abouther that is most often repeated. Personally, what I find moreamazing than a 51 yo great-grandmother, is that herdaughter, Maisha Allums, could be as smokin’ hot as she isand be a grandmother. At any rate, Ms. Pinnock’s age,gender, and race are the only pertinent facts I see. Oh yes,and her mental health at the time of the beating is also afactor. I’m sure her mental health has deteriorated since herbeating – mine certainly has and I was 1200 miles away sittingsafely in my office when it happened. I’m still havingnightmares about bull cops sitting on top of me pounding myface and then charging me with resisting arrest because I helda pink dress in front of my face to block the blows. More onthe pink dress later.

Joe FarrowAfter almost two weeks, the California Highway Patrol topdude, Joe Farrow, has resolutely refused to identify the officerwho committed brutal battery on Ms. Pinnock, and that is thefirst thing that’s putting a twist in my knickers. And the reasonit does is because I know exactly what the CHP and the DAare doing. They know that eventually they will have to tell thepublic who this ‘roid rooster is, but they are waiting for thestory to cool off before they do. It’s the exact opposite of whatthey do with a civilian perp. In those cases they get the guy’sname and picture in front of the public as soon as possiblewhile everybody is still seething red over whatever the crimewas. They know that there is a future jury out theresomewhere and they want to piss off as many of them as they

The present GE image for this area is dated Apr17.2013 and the1

StreetView is dated October.2012, and those are the versions thatall of the GE images below come from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7fY_uZ8bec2

http://logophere.com/LoPh%20Weekly%20Posted/Vid01%20-%23

0Pinnock%20case.mp4

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can. But when the perp is a cop, the tactic is to hold offnaming him until things cool down.

What these cops are too dull to work out for themselves is thatin high profile cop-brutality cases like this one, particularlywhite-on-black, refusing to name the perp just turns the heatup even more. Farrow claims he is prohibited by the “Peace4

Officers’ Bill of Rights” from telling us this cop’s name. But as Iexplained in my Jul11 post, that is bunk. Also, Farrow has5

told the Sacramento Bee that a “lack of training” is the6

problem here. Also bunk. In my opinioin what that videoshows is not a poorly trained cop; it’s a psychopath with abadge. An anonymous psychopath at this point.

But the larger question is not why Farrow hasn’t named theuniformed prix with the black gloves, but why Farrow hasn’tbusted him. If you or I had pounded a cop the way this guypounded Ms. Pinnock, they would have arrested us first,indicted us second, and then figured out what actuallyhappened weeks later. Farrow is a disgrace. Compare him toJimmy Jones, sheriff of Knox County, Tennessee. When avideo of one of Jones’ violent pigs, Deputy Sheriff FrankiePowell, went viral last April, Frankie was not only publicly7

identified within 24 hours, he was fired within 24 hours. Screwthe cops’ union, do the right thing.

CHP Officer Dum BassBut as I was saying, we still don’t know this CHP loser’s name,so, according to the universally accepted rules of theblogosphere, we are permitted to pick any temporary name wewant. “John Doe” seems so DoJ, and “Officer X” seems tooalgebraic. I think “Officer Dum Bass” is about as appropriateto this situation as we can get, so I’ll go with that.

What we can guess with reasonable certainty about OfficerBass is that 1) he leads with his right hand; 2) he has figuredout, probably with help, which end of a steroid syringe to putthe needle on; 3) he has no qualms about beating the piss outof women half his size and twice his age – all of which suggeststo me that his brain is smaller than a midget lemur’s. Nowgiven that we don’t even know who the prix is, we can’tconsider these to be facts. They are merely deductions that,IMO, are not unreasonable given what we see in the video. Once we know Officer Bass’s real identity we will be able torevisit those deductions and make adjustments, if necessary. Maybe it’s not lemur; maybe it’s dormouse.

The SceneThe scene of this crime is easy enough to find on GE. I’vegiven you the coordinates above. Let me walk you throughhow I know that’s the place. The exact location becomesimportant to this analysis.

The cloverleafThe intersection of S. La Brea Ave. and I-10 in LA has beenidentified repeatedly as where this beating went down. The I-8

10 is known locally as the Santa Monica Freeway because LAhas a cruel practice of giving their interstates city names inorder to utterly confuse anyone who is not a local.

That type of intersection at La Brea and I-10 is relatively rarein the US – it’s called a “cloverleaf.” Cloverleaf interchangesare ones in which all of the “left turns” are 270 degree loops –the four leafs. These interchanges are rare and getting rarerbecause they take up a lot of space, they are relativelyexpensive to build, and they cause problems with big-rigs,which tend to roll-over as they navigate the left turn loops. Many of the cloverleaf interchanges built in the 1950's and1960's have been converted to diamond interchanges or otherless hazardous types. You can tell you are on a bona fide 4-leafer if you can make a complete circuit without leaving theintersection – you can take as many laps as you have gas andyou will keep coming back to the same starting point. WhatI’m trying to say is that they are perfect for late night racing, forinstance if you went to high school somewhere in the corn-beltand you had one near by, say I-270 x Rt 161 in Ohio.

In addition to the conspicuous leafs, cloverleaf interchangeshave stems, which are the parts of the intersection you don’tdive on if you’re chasing your buddies around the leafs. Thestems are the way the “right hand” turns are made; theyconnect the intersecting roads directly and run adjacent to theloops. And the reason I say it is because David Diaz was on astem of the La Brea interchange when he filmed this crime. Hewas on the ramp connecting northbound La Brea to eastboundI-10. Here:

Fig 1. The bulls-eye marks the spot where Ms. Pinnickgot pounded. 34°02'02.69" N 118°20'54.38" W North isup.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/activists-full-investigatio4

n-chp-incident-24460744

http://logophere.com/Topics/14-07/DD-Jul11-14.htm5

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/14/6555881/chp-boss-calls-fo6

r-more-training.html

http://logophere.com/Topics/14-04/14-04-27.htm7

http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-0708-chp-tape-2018

40708-story.html

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Living feral in LA While we’re looking at this image, the second thing I wouldpoint out to you, particularly those of you not familiar withSouthern California, is the vegetation in the interchange. Thisis very characteristic of intersections around LA and SanDiego. That vegetation is a low, very dense tree, manzanita,my sister tells me. And the reason I’m telling you this is that Iknow from hitchhiking through this area that the vegetation inthe freeway interchanges provides very good cover for sleepingat night for those of us too cheap and/or too poor to get aroom. I have slept in these intersections at least a dozen times,and I had a pretty good night’s sleep each time. The treesproduce a soft detritus carpet that is very comfortable.

This is of interest here because these LA intersections are fullof homeless people and we know that Ms. Pinnock is homeless. When I lived in Southern California, I habitually scannedthose freeway vegetation areas closely when passing them,looking for signs of feral people – and the signs, or the people,were almost always there.

But here’s the thing, if you’re going to use an intersection likethis for your motel room, you don’t want to check in after dark. The problem is that snakes could ruin your night’s sleep, boththe two-legged types and the ones with rattles. Ideally, youfind a place just before dusk so you can check under the treesto be sure you’ve got the place to yourself. If you’re a woman,this is doubly important. OTOH, if you check in too early, youcan be spotted by cops who might cause you problems. So youhave a window of an hour or so before dusk when you head for

your Motel Sticks. We can see from Mr. Diaz’s video that Ms.Pinnock was accosted by Officer Bass just about dusk. Thattells us something.

I am trying to build a case here that will answer the persistentquestion we keep hearing: What on Earth was Ms. Pinnockdoing walking along the interstate at rush hour? I knowexactly what she was doing: she was headed to bed in thebushes. We can see that she wasn’t carrying a sleeping bag, butshe likely had one stuffed in a green garbage bag and pushedinto one of those trees that served as her bedroom.

Judging from where she was tackled by Officer Bass and thefact that she was heading westbound when he grabbed her, Ithink she was likely not sleeping in the vegetation inside theloop, but in that thicket to the east of the loop. She wouldhave entered the freeway area from the south instead ofwalking along the entrance ramp because the objective is tostay off the roadway and out of sight to the greatest extentpossible to avoid some bull-cop coming along and throwing youto the ground and beating your face.

If you check out GE, you’ll see that a street named West ViewSt. dead ends at the freeway close to where the beating tookplace. Going to StreetView you can see that the freeway fenceat the end of West View St. would not have been difficult toget over. (Image below.) Even if the gate was locked, usingthe gate to hop the fence is easy. Also, there is a sturdy blackfence to the left that would make it easy to jump the freewayfence.

Fig 2. This is where West View St. dead ends at the south sideof I-10.

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But all of this chatter begs the question of how I know this isthe precise point the CHP beating took place. Let me runthrough that.

To do this analysis yourself, you’ll want to activate StreetViewright where I have the bulls-eye on that eastbound on-ramp.

There are two eastbound on-ramps running parallel to eachother; you can plant the StreetView icon on either one. Rotating the view from the east to the north, you will see thateverything on StreetView lines up perfectly with Mr. Diaz’svideo. Here are a couple of side-by-sides.

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Fig. 3. The image on the left is from the Diaz vid, at 0:44. The image on the right is theStreetView of the same area taken about 20 months earlier.

In the left panel of Fig. 3., for instance, that tree just left of themerge sign matches perfectly the distant tree in the middle ofthe right panel, and the clusters of palm trees match uponclose inspection. As Mr. Diaz’s camera turned to the north itpicked up numerous landmarks that are easily identified inStreetView in spite of the fact that both the vertical andhorizontal angles differ in the two views. I’ve noted a numberof these landmarks with the black arrows in Fig. 4. Thevegetation on the far left behind the “News” logo is identical.

The contour of the background mountains is identical. Thedark vegetation or building right of center matches, and thelone palm tree on the far right stands out in both images like abrass-plated pole in a 2-bit strip joint. But the white high-riseis the most conspicuous landmark because tall buildings reallystick out in LA. By following a bearing north on GE from theplace Mr. Diaz was, you can find that building – it’s about twomiles away, the address is 5932 Wilshire Blvd.

Fig. 4. Identifying the crime scene. Left image from Diaz video at 0:28 . Right image StreetView.

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The point here is that there is absolutely no doubt that wehave the precise spot where the beating took place. The onlypossibly confounding point is that when the GE images weretaken in 2012 and 2013, there was no guard rail between thetwo, parallel eastbound on ramps, but a guard rail is seen in theDiaz video. It must have been installed between April.2013and July.2014.

The Events

The barefoot black lady in the pink dressBefore I speculate on what went down that evening onJul01.2014 alongside I-10 at the La Brea-Santa Monicainterchange, let me tell you one thing that didn’t go down, andthis is the second thing that is really cranking my nanny goat.

Over and over and over I have read that Ms. Pinnock waswalking around on the freeway barefoot, which, of course,would suggest that she was loony-toones, which, of course,would work, in some people’s opinion, as at least a partialexcuse for Officer Bass’s brutality. But one need not look atany more than about 20 seconds of the Diaz video to see thatshe was not barefoot – she was wearing very conspicuous black

boots or shoes. What is the problem with these reporters?? This is a classical no-shit-Sherlock situation. You don’t haveto have a big pipe or a PhD in forensics to deduce this – youjust have to look at the Diaz video.

Fig. 5. Barefoot, my tush.

And so by reporting that Ms. Pinnock was barefoot, what

these reporters are admitting is that they didn’t even take 20seconds to look at the video. If you Google “Marlene Pinnockbarefoot,” you’ll get over 900 hits representing over 900incompetent journalists and bloggers – and I’m talkin’ about: Scott Gold, Joe Serna & Kate Mather of the LAT (Jul07) ~ “atana” of the Daily KOS (Jul06) ~ Will Payne of the DailyMail (Jul08) ~ Jason Kandel & Beverly White of NBC

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(Jul11) ~ Scott Neuman of npr ~ Jon Ortiz of theSacramento Bee. Most police-spin is difficult to disprovebecause the cops control the evidence, but not this example. These reporters were simply lazy, or gullible, or both.

So where did this barefoot BS come from? It might have comefrom the 911 recordings that Kandel & White claim the copsreleased on Wednesday, Jul09 – more than a week after thevideo smacked the CHP between the eyes. And yet, as notedabove, the barefoot BS was being spread as early as Jul06. Consequently, the 911-release by the cops on Jul09 was not thesource of the original misinformation. The cops had to haveplanted this lie before they released the 911 recordings.

However, those recordings may give us a clue as to what isgoing on here and how devious the CHP is being. You canaccess these 911 calls via a Jul11 LAT article by Mather &Serna. If you listen to all the of these calls, they are all about ablack woman on eastbound I-10. Some of them say she isbarefoot. Some of them say she is wearing a pink dress andcarrying a black bag. Some say it’s a white bag. One womansays repeatedly that the woman is “on the east side of the SantaMonica Freeway on ramp at South Fairfax Avenue” – and shemakes that point at least twice. There is no doubt in her mindwhere the freeway lady is, and it ain’t La Brea. The Farifaxinterchange is more than a mile west of the La Breainterchange where Ms. Pinnock got pounded. And then a mansays the black woman in the pink dress is at the Crenshaw Ave.interchange. That is a mile in the other direction – east – ofwhere Ms. Pinnock got beat. Some of the callers say she is atthe La Brea interchange.

And so we have 911 calls placing a woman in a pink dress atthree different I-10 interchanges spread out over two miles, butwe don’t have time-stamps for these calls. They could havebeen made on different days, or different months, or differentyears. The operators are clearly not the same person, and,clearly, Ms. Pinnock could not be at the Fairfax interchange,the La Brea interchange, and the Crenshaw interchangesimultaneously.

On Jul01 she was at the La Brea interchange; I have alreadyproven beyond doubt that that was where she was beaten. And she certainly was not barefoot in the Diaz video. But shealso was not wearing a pink dress – she was wearing a creamtank-top, black pants, and black boots or shoes.

Fig. 6. Ms. Pinnock’s cream tank-topcircled. Diaz video at 0:44.

Fig. 7. Pink dress??? Diaz video at 0:12 and 0:14. See also Fig. 5.

~ ~ ~But here’s the thing: when Officer Bass tackled her, it lookslike she pulls a bright pink dress out of her white bag and usesit to try and muffle the blows. She holds onto that pink clothfor the remainder of the beating.

So, it looks to me like all of the 911 calls released were actuallyabout Ms. Pinnock, but from different times and differentplaces. The Jul07 LAT article says Ms. Pinnock had beenarrested at least a dozen times since 2008 and that she wasknown to live at a nearby “encampment.” So it is almostcertain that over the years there were many 911 calls about hermade from that area of the I-10 between Fairfax and Crenshaw– and probably many calls about a lot of other people living inthose bushes. This might make you wonder whether theremight have been some history between Officer Bass and Ms.Pinnock. Maybe he reached his breaking point with chasingher around on the I-10, and just snapped.

But as for all those 911 calls the CHP released without time-stamps, my guess is that the CHP aggregated calls about Ms.Pinnock that were made over a number of years, and thenreleased them to the press on Jul10 to make it appear that: 1)all of the calls came in the day Ms. Pinnock was beaten, 2) thatshe was barefoot (thereby implying she was “off her meds,” asthey say), and 3) she was causing a big ruckus, when, in fact, itmight be that none of those calls were made on Jul01.

Alternatively, the calls might have been about two or threedifferent black women in two or three different places, one ofwhom was barefoot and wearing a pink dress and one of whomwas recorded by Mr. Diaz being beaten by a white cop like shewas a incorrigible mule in the middle of a tobacco row.

So let me summarize my point. This is not an impressive pieceof reporting by any of these reporters. A rational person wouldnot consider it indicative of competent journalism the waythese people, and hundreds of others like them, blindly boughtinto a police allegation that Ms. Pinnock was barefoot andthen reported that “fact” in spite of a video of her that clearlyshows that she was not barefoot. It is hardly competent forthem to report 911 calls provided to them by the cops withoutlistening to the calls, in which case they would haveimmediately seen serious discrepancies. That is not competentjournalism; that is brain-ded journalism.

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And then there is Joe Farrow and the question of his honesty. If these calls were collected over months and years andaggregated to make it look like they all came in just before Ms.Pinnock was beaten, then it might appear to a reasonableperson that this was likely a subterfuge coordinated betweenthe top people at the CHP and whatever lawyers are advisingthe CHP, like the DA’s office. One would hope that a federalinvestigation will sort this out, although that is about as likelyas a Brazilian soccer goal.

What did go down?First, let me take a paragraph or two to tell you about the thirdthing that grabs my goat. There are reporters who think theyare doing the public a service and being objective by saying,sometimes repeatedly, that the video doesn’t tell the wholestory and we have to wait to get the cop’s version beforeforming any conclusions. And in the absence of any commentfrom Officer Bass, these reporters or their editors feel that theyhave to interview ex-cops – who have almost certainly beatenthe piss out of many people themselves – as some sort ofexperts on not jumping to conclusions based on police brutalityvideos.

Horse manure, in spades. Some videos – and this is one ofthem – are so clear and so damning that you don’t have to waitfor weeks or months for the cops to release the name of theperp with a badge in order to come to the conclusion that aviolent and brutal event took place and that the cop wasresponsible. For instance, you don’t need that Knoxville copFrankie Powell, or his lawyers, or the cop-union’s lawyers towalk you through, step-by-step, the video of Powell choking aUT student into unconsciousness in order to conclude thatPowell is one of those violent prix that have no businesswearing a badge. Psychopathology in action is something thatis unmistakable to most normal people. You don’t have toknow the whole history. These sorts of videos provide visualtruths that, in the words of Jefferson, are self-evident.

I don’t care if Ms. Pinnock spit in the guy’s face or pissed on hispant leg, in my opinion someone who is capable of that level ofbrutality – especially against a woman – should not be on thepublic payroll. Period. Unfortunately, strong police unionsfavor bad cops, and so good cops are getting as rare ascloverleaf interchanges. Even the ones that don’t do thebrutality themselves protect the thugs with a wall of silence,and Joe Farrow is making that point for us. But my point isthat the way the cards are stacked against the victims of policebrutality, we don’t need the press taking sides with the brutalcops who are doing more to threaten the justice system andcivil society than anyone else is.

Having said that, let me close with my best guess of whathappened on I-10 that evening two weeks ago.

It was getting dark and Ms. Pinnock was anxious to get to hersleeping spot. It would have been easiest for her to sleep in thewooded area within the loop forming the southeast part of thecloverleaf. She could have gotten in there from the sidewalkwithout climbing fences or walking along the roadway. But

being easier for her to access means it would be easier foranybody to access, and therefore was not as safe as the copsefarther to the east.

So she likely hopped the freeway fence somewhere at the footof West View St. or further east. She climbed up to the on-ramp roadway and was walking back to the west along thesouth edge of the on-ramp when Officer Dum Bass spotted her. From where he parked his car along the on-ramp that wasadjacent to the one Ms. Pinnock was on, we can guess that helikely had been heading eastbound on I-10 and moved into thefar right access lane, or he had just come out of the loop thatconnects southbound La Brea to eastbound 1-10, and washeading eastbound on that parallel on-ramp.

He stopped his black and white and activated the lights – youcan just barely see the car at 0:07 of the Diaz vid. He musthave gotten out and crossed the on-ramp to have a word withMs. Pinnock and decided to take her in or at least get her off ofthe freeway in his car. As noted above, this was likely not theirfirst rendevous on the round-about, so to speak. When thevideo starts, it looks like Officer Bass had stopped the on-ramptraffic so Ms. Pinnock could cross the on-ramp to where his carwas parked. She did that and just kept walking. She does notrun in the video although there is a point at which you can’twhat she’s doing because she is behind a dark SUV that wasstopped by Officer Bass. For the rest of the video, it is veryclear who was where and who got their face pummeled.

As Ms Pinnock walked west into the setting sun, Officer Basscame up behind her, grabbed her by the shoulders with bothhands, and spun her around. She had just reached the easternend of the new guard rail on the median that separates the twoon ramps, and when she hit the ground she was a good 10 feetto the east of the end of the guard rail. I think this maneuver iscalled the ole’ “Santa Monica misogynist’s take-down” in thelingo of pay-per-view UFC, where Officer Bass may well belooking for employment soon.

Using all of his CHP advanced self-defense training, OfficerBass was able to get into what is known in the CHP as “theplay-ground-bully, butt-to-bellybutton position” straddling Ms.Pinnock, who was still, at this point, 51 years old and a great-grandmother, and now looking up at 250 pounds of pure ‘roidrage in black gloves. Pitifully, Ms. Pinnock holds the pink clothin front of her face as if that would protect her. Some peoplecounted a dozen, some counted nine, I counted 10 punches –all right handed, all solid, full punches from the shoulder. Imean, this really was UFC-quality work.

Were it not for Mr. Diaz and his video, Ms. Pinnock would stillbe in lock up awaiting trial for resisting arrest, or battery on acop, or one of the multitude of other fake charges the cops usein these situations every day in this country. As it is, she’ll begetting a million dollar payout. Let’s hope she can get somehelp, too.

This story has been compared to the Rodney King story. Let’shope not because as I recall the Rodney King story didn’t end

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all that well even though the jury gave him $3.8m. He tried tostiff his lawyers out of their fee, which was awarded separatelyfrom his judgment. He was busted multiple times after hebecame a millionaire, including for hitting his wife with the carand running his car into a house while trying to escape thecops. He was a junkie and a prix right to the end, which cameat the bottom of a swimming pool with cocaine and alcohol in

his system – but at least he wasn’t sleeping on a freeway.

BTW, if you are that guy in the white tee-shirt in the KalaProfessional Restoration Services truck eastbound on the I-10at about 5:00pm on Jul01.2014 who stopped to watch the lastfew punches of Officer Bass’s fist festival – Ms. Pinnock’slawyers would love to have a chat with you.

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— Denis O’Brien, PhD/Esq aka The Gutter GruntLogoPhere.com

This report is dedicated to David Diaz. Good man; well done.