Texas Gang Database Case

[Elderberry]

The Aging Rebel January 20, 2020

There was an important ruling in a Texas Gang Database case last week in El Paso.

A disabled combat veteran named William Apodaca-Fisk sued Greg Allen who is the Chief of the El Paso Police Department and an El Paso policemen who identified as John Doe on October 14, 2019.

Apodaca-Fisk is a former Army Command Sergeant Major. He was deployed eight times and has been awarded the Legion of Merit, two Purple Hearts, and five Bronze Stars. He is the founder of the Squad Veteran Riders Motorcycle Club and he is an officer in the Southern New Mexico Council of Clubs. He is inarguably a good citizen. He is a Senior Board Advisor for the Mesilla Valley Community of Hope; Co-Chair of Willie’s Heroes Community Foundation for Wounded Warriors; a member of the Las Cruces Mayor’s Veteran Advisory Board; Vice President of the Dona Ana County Humane Society; and as a board member of the Order of Purple Heart and National Association of Amputees. He was awarded the Red Cross Regional Hero Award in 2016.

He testified during the Jake Carrizal trial in Waco. During his testimony he described one percenters as “professional bikers.”

Gang Database

He wound up in the gang database after attending a funeral at a Catholic church in El Paso. The deceased was a motorcyclist and, according to court documents, “Law enforcement heavily surveilled the funeral and took almost 4,000 photographs of the funeral’s attendees and motorcycles, despite the fact that the Catholic church and cemetery are not documented areas of criminal street gang activity. After hearing in 2019 that other motorcyclists that attended the funeral had been included in the TXGANG database, Plaintiff contacted DPS and asked if his name was in it. DPS informed Apodaca-Fisk that his information was in fact in the TXGANG database and that the EPPD had in put him into the database.”

Apodaca-Fisk sued in federal court seeking “declaratory relief that” his “inclusion in TXGANG database was improper because (1) it violates his right to associate; (2) it attaches a stigma with legal disabilities (including deterring travel and preventing him from exercising his Second Amendment rights); (3) Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article is unconstitutionally vague overbroad; and Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Articles 67.202-203 violate substantive and procedural Due Process. On October 14,2019, Defendants filed” a “motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.”

In a turgid, timidly worded, 27-page ruling a week ago Federal District Judge David Campos Guaderrama ruled that inclusion in the Texas gang database does not violate Apodaca-Fisk’s “asspciational rights.”

The reason these databases exist in the first place is to grant police permission to frame innocent people. Once you’re in the database, you become low hanging fruit for any cop with a quota to meet.
Eventually the subject must be reviewed by the United States Supreme Court.

More: http://www.agingrebel.com/17823

[Smokin Joe]

Pretty bad when you get shoved into a database of alleged criminals for going to church  (even if it is a funeral).

What will they think of next?