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# Inglewood Mayor Celebrates Press Freedom Day by Threatening Journalists
May 01 2014
Written by Randall Fleming.
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***INSIDE INGLEWOOD***-Press Freedom Day is Saturday, May 3. Exactly one week before the international event that seeks to “celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession,” Inglewood mayor James T. Butts chose instead to make what could be perceived as a death threat against a community newspaper journalist: “This Randall Fleming has no compunction about life, none whatsoever, and it’s time he be stopped.”
Were such a statement made toward a politician by a member of the public, such a statement could be perceived as a threat against the pol. Turned around, it should be no different.
(Full disclosure: the author of this article is the same “Randall Fleming” and is also an editor-in-chief to the community newspaper that Butts has repeatedly attempted to defame.)
Butts did not stop there. He also made statements against an entire newspaper that is critical of his apparent corruption, duplicitous policy and overt intimidation of residents during city council meetings and elsewhere.
“They call themselves the Morningside Park Chronicle and as you know they always write critical stuff about me—actually false stuff about me—and the council. But they’ve gone too far.”
The event was a city-funded town hall meeting held in a tax-exempt 501(c)(3)church, First Church of God, that has received favorable attention from Butts. It has been the site of no fewer than four town hall meetings in less than one year. Butts did not allow for any rebuttal before he quickly exited through a side door.
The entire statement was caught on video.
Press Freedom Day was conceived by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) General Conference on May 3, 1991 in Windhoek, Nambia.
According to UNESCOE’s Web site, “Every year, May 3rd is a date which celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.”
At a separate event, Butts was asked to qualify his misleading statements and apparent threats. He literally grabbed two women and used them as shields in an apparent attempt to protect him from hard questions regarding his attacks against the First Amendment.
It is not the first time that Butts has used his police and/or government authority to attack constitutional rights.
In 1995, the case California Attorneys for Criminal Justice (CACJ) v. Butts, pitted the then-Santa Monica police chief against the ACLU for his institutional practice of refusing to observe Miranda rights with suspects in custody. Butts continues to deny he was responsible for the case, but his being named defendant clearly states otherwise.
According to a January 4, 2000 story in the LA Times, “\[t\]he suit sought to redress the alleged deprivation of the defendants' rights under the 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.” It ultimately made its way to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where all 21 active judges denied the hearing, which allowed Butt’s argument against the three Amendments to be overturned.
Unfortunately, Butts appears to have established a pattern of disregarding Constitutional law and the rights of Americans, the press and most anyone who refuses to agree with his highly questionable behavior, non-transparent policy and unethical methods—the same kind of governmental inference that prompted the conception of Press Freedom Day.
***(Randall Fleming is a veteran journalist and magazine publisher. He has worked at and for the New York Post, the Brooklyn Spectator and the Los Feliz Ledger. He is currently editor-in-chief at the Morningside Park Chronicle, a weekly newspaper based in Inglewood, CA and on-line at***[***www.MorningsideParkChronicle.com***](http://www.morningsideparkchronicle.com/)***)***
***-cw***
***CityWatch***
***Vol 12 Issue 36***
***Pub: May 2, 2014***
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