Thursday, September 2, 2010
Police beat Pulaski Schools: The stench increases
Posted by Max Brantley on Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 1:06 PM
Lt. Carl Minden of the Pulaski sheriff's office said investigators have located Ricky Weathers, whose name appeared on a letter to the Pulaski County School Board that was released by Board member Charlie Wood. Weathers said he didn't write the letter and knows nothing about its allegations of misconduct by School Board member Gwen Williams. Weathers also told investigators he didn't know the man seen chatting with Williams on her porch nor did he recognize the truck in the video.
In other words, Charlie Wood — a committed enemy of Williams and facing a tough re-election battle — managed to leverage an apparently dishonest letter and some ambiguous video into front-page suggestions of bribery in a sidewalk contract (no such work has been done) against a School board foe. The proper course would have been for the material to be turned over to authorities, quietly.
The sheriff's office would still like to find the man in the video. Know him? Give us a call. We'd like to ask him a few questions, too, including whether he knows Charlie Wood.
UPDATE: While Charlie Wood acknowledges he supplied this material to the Democrat-Gazette, he said it was in the hands of many others, including other news media and law enforcement officials, before he gave it to the Democrat-Gazette. He said he first saw it late Sunday night after returning from a weekend bicycle race. He doesn't know the man named in the letter or the man seen in the video. He said that he was anxious to see the matter thoroughly investigated and thought sometimes newspapers got to the root of issues quicker than the justice system. But he said he had no political intent.
Comments (5)
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I strongly believe Wood is involved in this, but believe even more strongly that they will find Tim Clark's paw prints all over this, too. He's still pretty ticked off that taxpayers found out about his overstated mileage reimbursement request, and there's no doubt he's looking to gain a replacement gang member for Wood before September 21.
Clark apparently uses the same chrome truck accessory installer as the man in the video. There's not a piece of trim on his Escalade that hasn't been chromed. Might start there to find the owner of the truck...
Nothing to see here; move along (unless you want to get busted).
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.” Oscar Wilde
Charlie Wood's response is complete bullshit. Several media outlets already had it, so it makes it okay for him to take it to the media rather than law enforcement? Because the media investigates and gets to the root of issues quicker? How stupid does he think we are?
He wanted the poorly-organized smear campaign to get as much publicity as possible in the quickest manner possible. Period.
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