Indiana

Did Bisard ?Stack the Deck??

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

There’s a trick some comedians will use at open mic night contests.  If you’re playing a room you’re not familiar with, you invite all your friends, scatter them throughout the club and make sure they laugh loudly at all your jokes.   If they do it right, you win the contest.  David Bisard must be a real comedian deep down inside.

Just four days after 100 members of the Fraternal Order of Police voted to pay for Bisard’s legal defense, I’m hearing from very reliable sources who were at the vote that Bisard managed to stack the deck in his favor.   The sources, speaking on anonymity, laid out the following fact pattern.

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving Bisard reportedly went to the FOP headquarters and filed an official request for representation.  I’m told the Executive Board of the FOP usually meets on the last Thursday of the month and the general membership meets on the first Thursday of the month.  In this case the last meeting would have been the 18th since the last Thursday was Thanksgiving.

Sources say when Bisard filed his request the Board was not aware of it because they had already met and according to FOP bylaws any request for representation must be heard at the next business meeting.    Therefore, sources tell me, when December 2 came around, the day of the business meeting, Bisard had time to get the message out to his supporters and friends to show up and vote for him.   On average I’m told only 30-40 people show up for general FOP business meetings, this time it was 100.

This entire matter has outraged a number of officers who say they did not know about the vote, and if they had, they would have shown up and voted no.  A number of them plan to show up at the next general meeting of the FOP in January and vote to revoke the legal representation.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on December 07, 2010 (boomark / email).