Wouldn't it just be more convenient to move the city government into prison or to just treat government buildings as prisons? It would save commuting time and make trials much simpler.
Locks and bars didn't stop East Chicago Councilman Robert Battle's inauguration.
The newly sworn-in Battle can retain his public title and annual salary of $42,356 a year despite being held in Porter County Jail on federal drug and homicide charges.
He is pleading not guilty to a five-count indictment alleging he possessed cocaine and marijuana and killed a street gang member as part of a drug-dealing conspiracy.
Democrats are oddly unhappy, even though they seem to be big fans of Obama's "free the drug dealers" plan. Not to mention restoring voting rights to felons.
“I can’t remember a situation like this,” Sheriff John Buncich, chair of the Lake County Democratic Central Committee, told the Tribune in November, when Battle was reelected just a few weeks after being charged with murder and drug dealing. “It’s wrong for the taxpayers, wrong for our party.”
How, exactly, a man charged with murder and drug dealing just days before an election could win reelection says a lot about life in this poor northwestern corner of Indiana.
The answer: he's a Democrat.
Battle ran unopposed, winning with just 308 votes in a city of about 30,000 people.
Battle didn’t even vote for himself because he was in jail and didn’t request an absentee ballot, Buncich told NWI.com.
“I just think it’s just a matter of people not knowing [about the charges] and voting for the party they are familiar with,” Eisenstein told the Tribune.
That's what happens when you have a one-party system.
As early as April, the agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Lake County High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force were tapping his phone and investigating him for drug trafficking, according to an Oct. 14 indictment obtained by the Tribune.
On Sept. 23, officials caught Battle with 73 grams of marijuana and $100,700 in cash in his car, according to the indictment. Police also linked him to nine ounces of cocaine and three stolen guns found elsewhere, according to the documents.
Roughly three weeks later, Battle allegedly shot Camarillo in an alley behind Battle’s apartment. Battle said that he killed Camarillo in self-defense after Camarillo pulled a knife on him, according to court documents. But the Lake County Coroner’s Office ruled that Caramillo was shot once in the back, and police failed to find a knife at the scene, the Tribune reported.
Forget Trump, this is a guy who actually got reelected after shooting somebody in the back. Now those are real political skills. But the Democrats, despite their protests now, let it happen.
In 2014, reputed Imperial Gangster Eddie “Macho” Torres tesitified that East Chicago Councilman Robert “Coop” Battle had been involved in the drug trade in the past. Add that to the multiple arrests for possession of marijuana and you get a picture of a candidate most political parties would want to dump. Not so with the Lake County Democratic Party. Battle could have been easily removed from the ballot in several ways, but no one ever challenged him.
Election Board records show that Robert Battle filed a pre-primary report in 2011 showing that Battle neither received nor spent money in the campaign. While that alone should be enough for a challenge, he never filed a single report after that. Candidates are required to file 3 reports in an election year and an annual report in non-election years. Despite that, Battle appeared on the 2015 ballot unchallenged.
What's the difference between a criminal and a Democrat? No, seriously. What's the difference?