I'm really getting sick of the Parish Hilton, Judge Sauer and Lee Baca crap. Special treatment or not, this whole freakin' issue has become a grandstand for political debate and personal retribution. And since the media is so "hot on the story" about this case in particular, anything that remotely is associated with it become the top story of the day. What the hell are we doing. Hilton violated her probation and served about the average time for that violation. Shefiff Baca, under a law that allows him to release prisioners to alleviate overcrowding, did it in this case and he's done it in many others. So what? If it wasn't for a blond bombshell with the IQ of a peanut, you and I never would have given a crap about this. And now, an idiot with a grudge has launched an effort has begun to remove Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca from office.Officials at the county registrar's office confirm that former (read that...former) county employee Andrew Ahlering has submitted paperwork to begin a recall campaign. Baca has been accused of giving Paris Hilton preferential treatment by allowing her to return home after serving less than four days of a 23-day jail sentence. Baca has repeatedly denied accusations of giving Hilton special treatment and said overcrowding in the jails mandates the early release program. Once the county certifies the recall paperwork, campaign officials will have 160 days to collect nearly 400-thousand signatures in order to put the matter on the ballot.
Ahlering conceded that recalling Baca would be costly and time-consuming but said the public frenzy about Hilton's release could generate the necessary interest. He discussed the recall drive live on CNN Headline News (ahh, let's use the media) and has been interviewed by half a dozen local television and radio stations. To qualify the recall effort for the ballot, Ahlering must collect more than 395,000 signatures of registered Los Angeles County voters within 160 days.
Now the backstory on this idiot and his personal reasons for doing this. Ahlering is familiar with Baca's jails. He served 23 days in County Jail last year after he was accused of disrupting a Board of Supervisors' meeting. He later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge. He was placed on probation and ordered to stay away from board meetings. Ahlering's political experience includes an unsuccessful campaign for supervisor last year against incumbent Gloria Molina. It was during that campaign that Ahlering was arrested in downtown Los Angeles after allegedly disrupting a supervisors' meeting. A month later, he was fired from his county job. Ahlering has appealed his firing so I guess he's a little pissed off! Oh and by the way, during his attempt at election, he auctioned off a date with himself on eBay, and the only bidder was someone who happend to have a similar name to the incumbent he was seeking to replace.
Yesterday I blogged about a lady who died in a hospital emergency room because she was a frequent flyer and had a history of being there for no real reason. This time, it was overlooked. Now Sheriff Baca, going on the advice of Medical Professionals, made his decision. He's not a doctor, they are. Baca cited an undisclosed medical condition as the reason to allow the hotel heiress to switch from a tiny cell to home detention and electronic monitoring, noting that she had served the 10% of her sentence currently being served by most female inmates in the county.
"For decades, where [inmates] were housed and how they were housed was up to the Sheriff's Department," said Stan Goldman, a professor of criminal law and procedure at Loyola Law School. "Now that all may change, thanks to, of all people, Paris Hilton." Baca defended his decision to let Hilton leave jail and said he was concerned about how Sauer's order — if copied by other judges — would affect the jail system. "This has the strong potential to set up what will become an untenable precedent because of overcrowding in jail and the lack of adequate housing," Baca said in an interview.
Sure, the system of early release isn't bulletproof. In the last five years, the Sheriff's Department has released more than 200,000 inmates early, including some who ended up committing murders and other serious crimes when they otherwise would have been behind bars. But the bottom line is this - the releases were possible because of a nearly 20-year-old federal court order allowing the Los Angeles County sheriff to alleviate overcrowding by letting county offenders go home early.
As of May 30, Los Angeles County was housing between 1,200 and 1,400 state prison inmates in its overcrowded facilities in which the 26-year-old Hilton is now residing. Tens of thousands of inmates, meanwhile, are getting early releases from the Los Angeles jails that are accommodating those state-sentenced inmates, whom the California prison system otherwise can't house. Despite the public angst over Hilton's brief early release, corrections officials say the truth is that those with similar convictions rarely serve their full sentences in Los Angeles.
The sheriffs association said 13,000 new beds promised to the counties and already funded by the recently enacted $7.9 billion prison-and-jail construction bill might help resolve any face-offs like the one involving Hilton in the future between judges and jailers. This is definitely is a symbol of the problem at the state and local level. f nothing else, the Hilton controversy has focused the spotlight on the problem of early inmate releases at the local level, regardless of its causes.
I think this is another example of America's obsession with celebrity. Fortunately for Paris, who is very limited, she has one skill and talent - celebrity. Without it god knows what this pathetic young woman would do. Now she's become a news headline every day. And idiots are coming out of the woodwork. It's time to forget about the Hilton saga, fix the early release program if it needs fixing and let the damn Sheriff do his job. He doesn't need to spend my money defending himself on this issue. Let him get busy getting the real criminal element off the streets...like maybe a murderer?Isn't that what he's paid to do?
