Friday, September 2, 2016

New York Times Article says Dearborn County, IN has one of the Highest Incarceration Rates in US

Dearborn County, IN- Roughly a month after the filing of a public records lawsuit alleging the Dearborn Superior Court II altered grand jury transcripts and audio to assist Dearborn County Prosecutor F. Aaron Negangard obtain criminal convictions, the New York Times featured Negangard in a front page story titled "This small county sends more people to prison than San Francisco and Durham, N.C., Combined. Why?". Below are excepts appearing in the article by  John Keller and Adam Pearce:

"But the extraordinarily high incarceration rate here [Dearborn County, IN] — about one in 10 adults is in prison, jail or probation — is driven less by crime and poverty than by a powerful prosecutor, hardline judges and a growing heroin epidemic."

"Mr. Negangard has faced few obstacles to getting more convictions. He supervises his own police force, an unusual arrangement that allows him to investigate and prosecute most of the county’s serious crime."

“By 2014, Dearborn County sentenced more people to prison than San Francisco or Westchester County, N.Y., which each have at least 13 times as many people.”

“Mr. Negangard said the long sentences here are the envy of police officers in Cincinnati. If a suspect is willing to sell drugs in Dearborn County, the Cincinnati police will help steer the case here, where greater punishment is almost assured, he said.”

“’I am proud of the fact that we send more people to jail than other counties,’ Aaron Negangard, the elected prosecutor in Dearborn County, said last year.”

“To handle the expanded caseload, Dearborn County officials spent $11.5 million to double the size of the local jail and approved $11 million more to expand the county courthouse.”

“Mr. Negangard said he wished the county could find more money for drug treatment.”

Negangard claims he wished more money was available for drug treatment when Dearborn County spent $22.5 million on expanding the jail and county courthouse to help with the "expanded caseload," which Negangard alleges is partly due to the Cincinnati Police Department "steering" criminals toward Dearborn County, Indiana. Rather than arrest and convict drug dealers in Cincinnati, Ohio, Negangard claims Cincinnati Police have some sort of policy where the CPD "steers" the drug dealers to Dearborn County, Indiana. Negangard is an unchecked force gone mad. Those who question his authority subjected to vicious retaliation as seen by his closing arguments in State v. Brewington:

"It is about our system of justice that was challenged by Dan Brewington and I submit to you that it is your duty, not to let him pervert it, not to let him take it away and it happens if he's not held accountable. He's held accountable by a verdict of guilty. That's how he's held accountable and that's what we're asking you to do. You cannot allow our system to be perverted that way. The rule of law will fail and ultimately our republic."

Ironically it is Negangard who represents the perversion of the justice system.

   

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