"Accused candidate for Governor wins release of surveillance video"

[ProgressiveEconomist]

From http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2006/oct/31/103110789.html :

"Accused candidate for governor wins release of surveillance video; By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY

ASSOCIATED PRESS LAS VEGAS SUN > NEWS > U.S. > NEVADA October 31, 2006 at 14:20:31 PST

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A judge has ordered police to release video surveillance tapes from the parking garage where a casino cocktail waitress claims a Nevada congressman running for governor assaulted and propositioned her. "I think it's important that U.S. Rep. Gibbons have the ability to have this evidence," District Court Judge Douglas Herndon said Tuesday, before ordering Las Vegas police to release the video to lawyers for Rep. Jim Gibbons and his accuser. Herndon said releasing the video would not compromise an ongoing criminal battery investigation into the accusation, and would not violate either parties' privacy. "It's all been aired," Herndon said, noting the back-to-back news conferences held last week by lawyers for Gibbons, a five-term Republican from Reno, and Chrissy Mazzeo, a cocktail waitress at the Wynn Las Vegas resort.

Mazzeo, 32, says Gibbons, 61, pushed her up against a wall, held her arms and made a sexual advance in a parking garage near a bar where the two had been drinking with a group of people on the night of Oct. 13. Mazzeo withdrew the complaint the next day, but asked police to reopen the investigation Monday. Gibbons denies her account. He says he was walking Mazzeo to the garage when she slipped less than 10 feet from the entrance. He caught her by her wrist, stood her up and walked away, Gibbons says. Surveillance video from the garage surfaced late last week, more than a week after police had said none existed. ...

The company that owns the garage turned the tapes over to police, and have said that the congressman is not captured on the video, Gibbons' lawyer Don Campbell told the court. Gibbons, a five-term congressman from Reno, filed suit Monday to obtain the tapes that he says will exonerate him. "I want these tapes released. I want my good name cleared," he said. Gibbons' lawsuit said the allegations have damaged his campaign and turned people to vote for his opponent, Democrat Dina Titus.

Deputy District Attorney Robert Gower argued that it was not department policy to release evidence during criminal investigations. He said if the tapes were released Gibbons or Mazzeo could "tailor testimony or tailor statements" to conform to the video. Herndon noted that both Mazzeo and Gibbons already had been interviewed at least once by police. He said the parties would change those statements "at their own risk" to their credibility if the case ever went to trial. Herndon, a former district attorney, disclosed he had received campaign contributions from Young, Clark County District Attorney David Roger and Gibbons' top campaign adviser, Sig Rogich. "I don't perceive there is any conflict at all in terms of my ability to decide this," Herndon said. Gower and Campbell agreed."

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. As a former Nevadan, can state...

Gibbons is a piece of shit.

[keepCAblue]

2. *Wins* release of tapes ... more like *engineers* release of tapes

This is all very fishy. It has all the appearance of Gibbons' people effecting a release of scrubbed tapes to "prove his innocence"...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2006/oct/31/566639179.html

Rogich once lobbyist for firm that gave tapes to Metro

Security experts: Cameras may not have been 'on' during incident

U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons' top campaign consultant has past financial ties to the company that turned over to police surveillance videos from the night of Gibbons' encounter with a woman who accused the gubernatorial candidate of trying to force himself on her sexually.

Rogich Communications Group, whose chief executive, Sig Rogich, is a campaign consultant to Gibbons, has been a lobbyist for Crescent Real Estate Equities, which says it gave police videos from inside a parking garage where the alleged battery occurred.

...more

Sidebar to story:

Questions no one would answer Monday

# Is it normal procedure for surveillance camera tapes to be removed? If not, who removed them and on whose authority?

# Who placed the tapes in a company safe, as has been reported? Assuming the safe's combination isn't widely known, was a top company executive of Crescent Real Estate Equities involved?

# If Crescent was in possession of tapes so valuable that they were stored in a safe, why did the company not disclose their existence for nearly two weeks despite repeated inquiries from the media?

# What prompted the company to turn over the tapes last week, given that nothing had changed in the official status of the case and police had not yet reopened their investigation?

# How did Gibbons' attorney, Don Campbell, learn about the tapes' discovery before that was publicly announced last weekend? And why did Crescent officials discuss the tapes in advance with Campbell but not Mazzeo's attorney?

# What is the recording time of the tapes in each camera? Are they on a loop in which previous footage is constantly being recorded over, or are the tapes routinely preserved for a specific period?

# Why did police tell Mazzeo the night of the incident that they expected to soon have surveillance video in their possession, only to say the next morning that none existed?

# The night of the incident, why did police take the word of one security officer that the surveillance cameras were not recording at the time of the incident ?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. Great list of questions; nice catch--I didn't see the sidebar.

Not getting the tapes to the police at the earliest possible moment IMO makes it highly likely that whatever may have been on them was "taped over" with subsequent, much less interesting, surveillance.