I long suspected who and what was behind the publicity overdrive on actor Mel Gibson’s recent DUI arrest in Malibu. I could not help but focus my thoughts on the arresting deputy who happens to be Jewish as the source of leaked reports and perhaps a retaliation campaign to embarrass the tipsy actor.TMZ.com published a story today about a search warrant being served on Deputy Mee in connection of leaking four pages of an early report of Gibson’s arrest. TMZ’s Top Gun, Harvey Levin was the happy recipient of the unlawfully leaked records and proceeded to beat that story to death screaming about a Sheriff’s cover-up of Mel Gibson’s bigoted verbal tirade.
Harvey Levin is a lawyer and knows full well that racially insensitive speech, even made by a drunken driver is protected in America under the First Amendment. Since the insensitive speech is not a crime it’s incredibly inappropriate for a cop to include a four-page summary of the speech with in a report about a crime. That's especially true when the speech does not impact or somehow aggravate the crime such as in a physical assault.
It’s obvious that Deputy Mee was really offended to try and put all that crap in his report. I say that’s too bad because being insulted by arrestees is a real part of police work. If you don’t have really thick skin becoming a cop is a horrible idea. The issue was not drunken speech but drunken driving.
TMZ and Levin have criticized the L.A. County Sheriff's department, constantly clamoring that there was a cover-up to protect Gibson. If that were the case Gibson would never have been charged or convicted of DUI. Harvey needs loosen up but that would not bring needed readers to TMZ.com.
As for Deputy James Mee, I hope he did not somehow profit from leaking information. If he did, I wonder if Harvey Levin will hire Mee at TMZ when he gets fired?
Here is the TMZ.com story.
You can see a video story put up by KABC-TV. It shows an earlier interview with Deputy Mee where he plays dumb about the actual copy of the leaked report. It seems he could not tell if he wrote it or not. Find it in Top videos here.
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