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Sheriff Baca: Hilton cash, Scientology and alleged celebrity coverups
The smoke is clearing in the Hilton do-over for her jail sentence, and the story emerging that seems to be much more intriguing, is the spotlight now on Sheriff Lee Baca.
Radar online has posted information that Hilton money was donated to the cause of electing Baca to his office in the last election.
It gets even more complex. Apparently Baca is a high level Scientologist, and has appeared at numerous Scientology fund-raising events and functions, according to celebrity blogger Janet Charlton.
Baca is allegedly a big promoter of Scientology’s front group Narconon, and Charlton reports that “last year was picketed at his home by residents of Leona Valley who didn’t want a Narconon facility in their town.”
Charlton has posted a photo of Baca on the Scientology float in the Hollywood Christmas parade on her website.
Baca, who ordered Hilton released from jail after serving only three days in her 45-day sentence, accepted a $1,000 campaign donation last year from William Barron Hilton—Paris’s grandfather.
That was the maximum amount allowable under California campaign rules.
Baca has come under heavy fire for deciding to let Hilton serve out the remainder of her sentence at home, in apparent defiance of the court orders given by the judge who sentenced her last month.
Paris Hilton isn’t the first celebrity given white glove treatment by the seemingly star struck Sheriff Lee Baca.
When Mel Gibson was busted for DUI last summer, Los Angeles County’s Office of Independent Review probed the Sheriff’s Office to see if it had broken any rules to make things easy for the Jew-ranting star, reports the New York Post.
The Post reports that ex-federal prosecutor Michael Gennaco “found no wrongdoing but could not explain why the case had two different reports.”
The valid second copy of the two reports-the one TMZ chieftain Harvey Levin got his hands on, included all the salacious sugar-tit, jew spew details that we all have seen, and that made Baca very angry.
Now the New York Post has uncovered that since taking office in 1998, “Baca has accepted more that $42,000 in gifts, including tickets to sporting events,” citing the The Los Angeles Times as their source.
Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported Baca put one of his closest friends on the payroll as a $105,000-a-year adviser.
The LAT said he had accepted more than $42,000 in gifts since taking office, including some from those who do business with his department.
In 2004, according to Michael Blood, an AP reporter, “he (Baca) took more gifts than California’s other 57 sheriffs combined.”
Now, after the Gibson debacle, and the Sheriff’s handling of the arresting officer and his “reassignment”, Malibu Surfside News has reported on the interesting legal fallout:
The California “Mel Gibson Bill,” aka AM 920, has changed the playing field for leaked celebrity arrests.
The LA Sheriff’s department “has been conducting an internal investigation of how the material was leaked to TMZ. LASD Chief Roberta Abner, who now heads the division that is overseeing the investigation previously stated that its conclusion is expected shortly.”
Reporter Anne Soble of the Malibu Surfside News claims “computer files and other records belonging to the arresting officer, Deputy James Mee, were removed from his home under court order but the department has not disclosed the results of their analysis or any other aspects of the internal review. Mee is now reportedly back on assignment in the field, but not in Malibu.”
Soble reports “Brownley has stated that she does not know whether information was sold in the Gibson case, but stressed that the LASD is concerned about the possibility that scoop-hungry media outlets are offering to pay public safety officers for information, spurring her concern that such sales could ‘taint the right to a fair trial.’ ”
The bill, AB 920, would make it a crime for public safety employees to be a party to so-called “checkbook journalism, especially celebrity news,” to broadcast, print and Internet media outlets, and it has passed the state Assembly by a vote of 74 to 0.
This bill is aimed at sheriff’s deputies, police and California Highway Patrol officers, as well as law enforcement agency staff employees who sell privileged information, in addition to reporters or other media reps who offer to pay for information.
Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and fined up to $1000.
Brownley said to Soble: “In the age of instant information and Internet sites…the pressure to ‘break a story’ has raised concerns that some of these news websites may attempt to gain inside information on a story of a breaking event by paying a peace officer to obtain the information prior to its proper legal and timely release.”
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