The Boondocks Lounge has been at the center of the election-intergrity squabble and debate regarding the sighting of Pima County Elections Division employee Bryan Crane.
According to former county employee Zbigniew Osmolski, Crane allegedly told Zbig that he was instructed to rig the Regional Transportation Authority election one fine night at Boondocks. Crane has reported that he had to look up Boondocks to know where it was located–he’s never been there, he said. The conversation between the two supposedly took place on the Boondocks patio the night of Jan. 27, 2008.
One blog-comment-leaver wondered what folks at the Boondocks saw, or if anything was captured by a security camera.
Well, dear blogger, a call to Boondocks co-owner Cathy Warner didn’t produce much–except for the revelation that Warner has now been interviewed by Attorney General investigators regarding the night in question. Warner said she was asked about cameras and if anyone reported to her that they saw Crane enjoying a smoke out on the patio.
Warner was clear: She doesn’t know Crane, and formally met Zbig only a couple of months ago when he came up to her one night and explained who he was (although she said she recognized him as someone she’s seen at Boondocks in the past).
As far as surveillance goes, Warner said that in January, she was still using an old system that only had cameras focused on the bar area. There were no cameras on the patio. The sytem used video tapes, and once Warner reviewed the tapes for suspicious activity, she often used those tapes over again. And that’s exactly what happened: The Attorney General’s office asked her to look, and she confirmed that a tape from Jan. 27 no longer exists.
The Attorney General investigators also took pictures of the patio area–and lamented to Warner that this case just won’t go away.
What they didn’t ask Warner is about her staff–those working that night who could have potentially ID’d Crane and Zbig, with Crane wearing his fedora and ponytail, and Zbig with a Brazilian shirt and cigarettes telling Crane in his Polish accent that he is Billy from Brazil.
Warner said she’d have to turn her office upside down to find the staff schedule from that night. She said most of the Sunday staff is usually pretty young and doesn’t keep up on the news.
To this day, she said, no one on her staff has told her that they saw anything that night–or that they even read about this Boondocks affair in the Weekly.
Ouch.
This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2008.
wow, mari thank you for following up on that!
you took it pretty far i could get all watergate about the tapes but i think that is stretching it.
what is done is done and yes january was a long time ago.
however, and i’m not saying you should do this, but if you wanted to shut every door, perhaps visit boons with a picture of crane and show it to the sunday employees?
maybe give a copy to post at the bar for the work crew?
maybe visit boons on a sunday and work the crowd a bit?
have you seen this fella. that sort of thing.
but i know i’m pushing it a bit here.
and again really appreicate what you’ve done. so if not that is groovy too.
perhaps the a.g. is already doing it? i hope so.
but my ears did burn a bit when i read “Warner said she’d have to turn her office upside down to find the staff schedule from that night.”
what would get cath to do so?
it sounds like it is there but she dosen’t want to bother or dosen’t have the time. maybe she could give you the stack of staff schedules and you dig through.
and if you had those names then you could take it to the interview step and see what comes next. fish or fowl?
there is still a trail if you want it, mari, but you might have to leave the office phone and follow it which i’d think would be nice. i know you all have much going on but it’s not really that far from the t.w. office. a short drive and cathy is friendly. maybe even get a beer and something to eat while there.
What they didn’t ask Warner is about her staff–those working that night who could have potentially ID’d Crane and Zbig, with Crane wearing his fedora and ponytail, and Zbig with a Brazilian shirt and cigarettes telling Crane in his Polish accent that he is Billy from Brazil.
one other short thing: what was up with this?
why’d the a.g. let this pass?
is this the way they do things really?
i hope they are now showing pics but if not wtf?
sounds sloppy at best.
the whole sheebang of — this thing won’t go away– makes me think somebody is going through the motions but not really doing their job.
That the Attorney General investigators “lamented that this case just won’t go away” is a revealing remark. The potential crime being investigated is the rigging of a $2 billion dollar sales tax funded road plan. If true, the crime of the century by folks still running our elections. The definitive evidence is the ballots that the AG can subpoena and count in days. Both daily newspapers and many local leaders want the answer to whether the election was fixed. The AG “crime fighters” want only for the case to “go away”. Instead of looking at the ballots they take pictures of the bar patio. What we are witnessing is a staged pseudo investigation by the same office that doesn’t want to know the answer, which is now and has been within easy grasp.
Bill Risner
Thank you Mari Herreras for doggedly pursuing this story. Admittedly, I was a critic of the Weekly’s earlier coverage of this story, but you’ve helped to restore my faith in the paper. Jimmy Boegle also deserves a pat on the back for standing up to Huckleberry’s threats and intimidation.
But Huckleberry’s and the AG’s refusal to act makes me only more suspicious of what’s going on here. Huckleberry has gone to great lengths to do whatever he can to bury this thing, whether it’s under the guise of “we can’t release proprietary Diebold databases” to “I’ve fixed the election security problem with my 50 page memo” to “Brad Nelson is an outstanding elections director” to insisting that he wants the ballots counted (yeah right). Meanwhile he’s blown hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars stonewalling, done nothing to discipline anyone in the elections department, and things are still getting fouled up during every election. The only way a guy as shrewd as Huckleberry would tolerate this mess he’s been in for the past two years is if he’s done the calculation that the alternative would be even worse. The alternative, of course, is that the election was rigged and he would be among those to be implicated. He won’t fire the incompetents in fear that they will rat him out. Huckleberry is doing his damnedest to fight this because he doesn’t want to spend his retirement in the Arizona State Prison in Florence.
The same goes for the AG’s lame investigation – he’s starting to make inspector Clouseau look good. First he conducts an investigation in which he lets the suspects run the show. Then he says he has no jurisdiction. Then after lots of public pressure he reverses course. And now he appears to be in the midst of a whitewash. If the AG was serious, first and foremost he would just count the damn ballots. If he were to find that the numbers don’t add up then he would use this and other available evidence to turn the screws on Crane. Offer him a deal: “Fess up, cooperate, turn in the big shots and we’ll go easy on you or do hard time – the choice is yours.” If Crane did it he’ll sing like a canary. My guess is that the AG is too fixated on making a run for Governor against Brewer after Napolitano splits for DC. He doesn’t want a big mess on his hands and all the political turmoil it might cause, so he figures he’s willing to let the possible theft of $2 billion in public money go and the public trust along with it straight down the toilet.
The wild west indeed.
I’m glad to hear the AG’s office actually found out where The Boondocks is and at least asked about evidence, even if they didn’t really want to find any. But I’m reminded of the harsh interrogation Assistant AG John Evans put Bryan Crane through on August 22, 2007. At the end, Evans told Crane, “I’m sorry we had to do this, but we had to dot the i and cross the t. If there’s any other issues, I’ll be in touch….” And then, “…rest assured that whenever we get done, you won’t catch any shit, I’ll be catching it all.” I’ll bet that’s almost exactly how it goes at Guantanamo.