When the Judge and the Defendant Wear the Same Team Colors

[XLFD]

A year ago, in the span of about a month, the Ludington Torch had asked the Ludington Police Department for bodycam video footage involving three unrelated arrests.  After many years of cooperation with city departments and receiving body cam footage of over a dozen other incidents without charge, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Coordinator and chief of police began making ridiculous FOIA fee charges using unlawful FOIA fee schemes that led to the filing of a FOIA fee appeal in the local circuit court, after getting the perfunctory appeal denial from an apathetic city council.

Unlike a half dozen other FOIA and/or Open Meetings Act cases I have filed against the city since 2015, 51st Circuit Court Judge Susan Sniegowski did not disqualify herself from hearing this case, due to her husband's decades of employment with the City of Ludington and her past long-term employment with the city as a FOIA Coordinator and a contracted attorney for prosecuting criminal cases.  Back in 2009-2010, she even represented the city defending against my attorney and the surprisingly contentious claim that a judge exceeded their jurisdiction (eventually admitted as true) and that a stop sign was illegally placed beyond a crosswalk (also true). 

The Ludington Torch has demonstrated over the years that she was not only an incompetent attorney and an incompetent prosecutor, but also that she was the most capricious judge ever encountered as regards to fealty under the law for us and others whose cases that we have followed.  If judges don't fairly apply the law and create their own rules to protect errant officials, there is no room for them in a respectable republic.  

At the beginning of June 2024, we filed a FOIA fee case in her court with four counts of malfeasance by the city in their responses with outlandish fees that failed to follow general FOIA fee policies.  Nearly eight months later, we will finally have a motion hearing in court about the facts and laws of this case.  The FOIA says that FOIA fee appeals are to be expedited in every way, and in prior FOIA cases, the final order was made in a couple of months from the day of filing.  

Not in Judge Sniegowski's court.  After finding herself qualified to hear this case, she would create a scheduling order that mandated 110 days for discovery (a time usually allowed only for complex cases).  Numerous FOIA cases (federal and state) dictate that discovery is only needed in exceptional FOIA cases, and then the only reasonable discovery is from the plaintiff.  In this case, the judge allowed the defendants to submit 8 nuisance interrogatories and nine requests for productions, saying they were proportional to the needs of the case-- needs which was for the defendant to show how their fees followed local or state FOIA guidelines.  Although the court forced the plaintiff to answer the discovery items, none of our answers had any impact on what defendant needed to show to justify their own policy.

While defendant was fighting for more irrelevant answers to their discovery questions, they submitted a motion for summary disposition.  In typical cases, court rules indicate that one must submit such motions four weeks (28 days) before a hearing is scheduled.  In her order, the judge mandated that such motions needed to be submitted 60 days before-- in a case where the FOIA puts a duty on the judge to expedite the case in every way possible.  Four months of needless discovery, two months of preparing for a hearing rather than four weeks.  

When the judge actively ignores court rules and duties required by the FOIA statute, can there be any confidence in her to follow the statute or other court rules in rendering a verdict?  Add to this her lack of disclosure in telling me that her COL-employed husband was set to testify against me in a criminal case for walking through a park last March, and you have some serious ethical concerns that we hope the voters consider the next time she comes up for election.  Then there's her lack of disclosure of that intimate relationship when Terry Grams challenged the city's deer cull last summer and ruled that the issue was moot, even when there was still another year on the culling contract.

Let's take a look at the background of the three incidents that I requested body cam footage from and received four responses, neither of which had a lawful fee thereon.  Then, for those who want to know how this exercise is going, we include the most recent court filing where we respond to the defendant's attempts to show their ridiculous fees are totally warranted.  

1) In Hamlin Township, on January 6, 2024, in front of his grown-up daughter, a man is arrested after multiple police cars show up at his father's house.  The daughter contacts the Ludington Torch with her concerns about the arrest, we send a FOIA request to the sheriff's office (MCSO) for body cam footage.  We witness an illegal arrest performed mainly by Ludington Police Department (LPD) Officer Austin Morris in the video.  We send a subsequent FOIA request to the LPD for the associated report and their body cam footage of the incident.  We receive a response from LPD using a never-before-seen cost estimation sheet saying it will cost $229, primarily for a straight $25 cost for 9 videos.  

We contact the MCSO and make a complaint about the crime of public extortion conducted by FOIA Coordinator/City Attorney Ross "Sewage" Hammersley and/or Police Chief "Thief" Christopher Jones.  The elements of the crime are there for all to see, after my deposit payment on the outlandish fee:  1) a fee is duly established by law (the city and state FOIA policy/law), 2) an official whose duty is to provide public records to the public with lawful fees attached creates an illegal fee scheme and the unauthorized paperwork that establishes that illegal fee, 3) they then willfully and corruptly demand and receive from any person a greater fee than is allowed by law.  

These two crooks didn't stop there, however.  Once caught red-handed, they changed their first illegal scheme to a second and nearly doubled the fees they charged the first time, claiming that videos of the illegal arrest of this man required over eight hours of editing out exempt material.  The deputy's body cam of the arrest sequence that took less than six minutes showed there was zero material to edit out, and Officer Morris could have told you that.  Eight hours of a police captain editing a five-minute video with zero edits needed is perhaps an even better example of attempted public extortion, since they have balked at returning my initial deposit.

2) On February 15, 2024, multiple agencies led by LPD officers went to Danaher Street to serve a warrant on a man, their media release printed by the MCP gave the following details after talking about that man's arrest: 

"The female subject at the residence was given commands by law enforcement and was refusing to comply with their orders when asked her name and date of birth. She also refused to give officers her phone and attempted to run from officers. The 22-year-old Branch female was taken into custody on a charge of resisting and obstructing a police officer. She was lodged in the Mason County Jail."

The woman, who was not part of the warrant, had no duty to provide her own details or her phone to the officers, and when the Ludington Torch received the report, found out they actually arrested her for not providing her name and not providing them her phone, which would have been an illegal seizure, followed likely by an illegal search.  Which likely happened after the arrest, anyway.

When we had asked for the bodycam footage of the arrest, we expected the LPD to do what they had done in prior years before for such warrant arrests/searches, black out the video of when they were inside the building so as not to unwarrantedly invade their personal privacy, and then provide the full audio, since she would not provide any information on herself during the arrest sequence.  This is easy to do according to AXON editing tutorials with very user-friendly redacting software. 

One would think you'd have a couple of LPD body cams of 10-15 minutes tops each with such editing as described, no real additional costs.  Not the case, we were told that the time it would take to separate out exempt material would take over 16 hours of a police captain's time, basing it on a formula that it would take three minutes for every minute of footage to redact material, and that they had over five hours of footage of the warrant arrest.  This was nearly $900 for footage of an arrest of two people that was likely made in under ten minutes from what the report indicates. 

3.  On February 29, 2024, Joe Oquist was listening to music in his backyard, adjacent to the Chesapeake Bay Car Wash, when (according to the police report) City Manager Mitch Foster, who lives across town, made a noise complaint on him from across the street at Ludington Bay Brewery (LBB).  This complaint was generated even though LBB regularly lets the community enjoy their amplified music that this reporter can hear two blocks away at times at his Dowland abode (but never hear Oquist's music, even though he's closer).  

In the security cam video that follows, Oquist (who has been similarly harassed by LBB and LPD over the years for trying to hear his own music over LBB's)) is seen noticing the police arrival up front, retrieves his speaker underneath the cam and starts taking it back into the house.  Before he makes it up the stairs, Officer Jared Versluis grabs him from behind and tells him he's under arrest (no reason given).  He then throws the sexagenarian Oquist down to the hard, snow-covered ground, where Captain Michael Haveman joins the party by putting a knee on his back, an action that would puncture his lung.  

Oquist would be charged with disorderly conduct and resisting & opposing.  Frankly, neither the video or the report indicates any R&O occurred, and when one looks at the city code for the other charge, one notes that Mitch Foster is not a neighboring inhabitant, nor is the business known as LBB:

The neighboring inhabitant in these cases is Joe Oquist, whose house is across from a business that regularly belts out amplified music outside, about 20 yards from his front door.  But the police don't answer to Joe Oquist, as can be seen in several other police reports indicating that LBB can play their music as loud as they want, but if Oquist plays his in his backyard at the same time, he is guilty of the law that LBB is objectively breaking every time they have amplified outdoor music interfering with Oquist's quiet enjoyment of life in his own house and/or backyard.  

The report indicates that only Versluis was wearing a body cam, which means that if he activated his bodycam just before getting out of his vehicle and the arrest sequence ended with Oquist being put in the back of the video, less than three minutes elapsed.  As the arrest sequence happened in a place without an expectation of privacy throughout, without anything being said that would be exempt, there should be no charge for redacting this footage.  But somehow, Captain Haveman estimated this would take him over two hours to redact three minutes of footage without justification from anyone ever since.  

EPILOGUE:  It's not hard to make the link that the court's indifference to following statute and court rules in our FOIA fee case is related to their desire to prosecute and commit lawfare on this reporter for two bogus crimes that would be thrown out of a fair court system.  In that case, the city's contracted criminal attorney, County Prosecutor Beth Hand, is claiming that this reporter operated a vehicle with a suspended/revoked license; a driving record printout from the local SOS office shows that's a fantasy, as is the notion that one can be trespassed from a public park without any due process involved.  I saw this played out back in 2011 with many of these same actors involved, you think they would learn after settling the ensuing federal case.

The defendant's motion for summary disposition was a combination of using an affidavit drafted by serial court perjurer, LPD Captain Haveman, trying to give some credence to his own fee scheme (and failing miserably to find any authority behind it) and the attorney ignoring the fact that it shouldn't take over a day to edit out absolutely nothing from a video.  It will likely win in this court only because the judge is on the same team, which is proven easily enough by her efforts against expediting this case, mandating unproportional discovery without any legal reason, and even ordering that plaintiff could not introduce any evidence (including evidence used to impeach the defendant's propositions) if he didn't provide it first to the defendant.  That latter is against court rules, since the two videos we had from the security camera and the sheriff's office were solely to be used for impeachment purposes:

It's a shame when you spend the money to file a case, and you find the court actively working against you in the many ways they are doing here, and them knowing about all of the lack of disclosures and appearances of impropriety as if they are part of what is justice in Mason County.  The Ludington Torch has no confidence in this court to render a fair judgment in this case, and we presume this case is more of the rule and not the exception in our courthouse.

Cross Motion

Response/cross brief

[Freedom Seeker]

A shining example of small-town corruption. Reviews should be filed on County Court, Snigowski and LPD. I pray for true justice to be done. Except for your oversight, X, their in-house corruption and injustice would rule. Thank you for efforts to expose these corrupt players.

https://www.fhgov.com/department-and-services/police/how-to-file-a-....

[XLFD]

I appreciate that you're not only a freedom seeker, but also a seeker of justice and truth, as it feels as if I'm going up against the antithesis of all three.  The sad thing is that I paid about $200 bucks to file this case with the hope that I would get an expedient resolution that would recognize the iniquity of the people behind these FOIA responses and the outrageousness of the fees, but all I'm getting is judicial intemperance, to put it mildly. 

You can bet there will be a Judicial Tenure Commission investigation initiated on her Honor's course of conduct in this case, I have had enough restraint so far to not file it prematurely, before she shows her full hand.

[Freedom Seeker]

In the end justice, freedom and truth will Reign. Hang in there, X, the corruptors seem to be pulling all stops, throwing stop sticks and wronger allegations than ever.

[stump]

It would be interesting what the " Judicial Watch " has to say about this.

[Willy]

The legal system in Ludington is comparable to a Tijuana kangaroo court. The only difference is the language spoken. These people should be ashamed of how they have carried out their duties as officers of the court. The average citizen who lacks any kind of influence or cronyism with those in charge does not have a chance against all of this corruption. If an individual pleads not guilty then the establishment will try their best to burden them with lawfair so that the only winners of a conflict will be the attorneys hired to combat City Hall and the Courts. It's very sad, X,  that this has been going on for so long and that you have had to defend yourself against this corruption since your confrontation with deputy Fife over how you approached and reacted to an illegally placed stop sign many years ago. We are all screwed when the courts are corrupt and dishonest.