Word: peppers
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...ever there was a case of the Justice Department embarking on a wild-goose chase to satisfy a tragically deluded family, this is it. The farce began when King's family came under Pepper's bamboozling spell. He convinced them that Ray, the convicted assassin, was just a fall guy set up to take the blame for an intricate plot that encompassed, among others, Lyndon Johnson's White House, the Pentagon, the Mafia, the Memphis police and a mysterious figure named Raoul. Key parts of the story soon collapsed--for example, the leader of an Army sharpshooting team who Pepper...
...civil rights leader. Its report, due out in a few weeks, concludes that the Kings' allegations are not "credible" and provide no basis for new criminal charges. In other words, they are hogwash. Considering that these lurid fantasies sprang from the fertile imagination of Ray's former lawyer William Pepper, the conclusion is no surprise...
...years after the murder, the Kings implored the President to investigate Pepper's wild story. Clinton passed the buck to Attorney General Janet Reno. She appointed a team led by Barry Kowalski--a tough Justice Department veteran who prosecuted the Los Angeles cops who beat Rodney King--to examine two of Pepper's more checkable allegations: former Memphis bar owner Loyd Jowers' claim that he set up the shooting and ex-FBI agent Donald Wilson's claim that he found a scrap of paper in Ray's getaway car with the phone number of a Dallas nightclub once owned...
...some point, it may have dawned on the Kings that Justice was mounting a serious investigation that would demolish their conspiracy theory. But late last year a wrongful-death suit that Pepper had filed on their behalf against Jowers came to trial in Memphis, providing a chance for a verdict that would shore up at least part of Pepper's tall tale. The proceeding was a fiasco. Jowers--who has changed his story so many times it ought to come with a version number like computer software--never took the stand in his own defense. Ballistics testimony was provided...
...should be the case. I might be 5'4", but that's why I went to police academy; they teach you to work with what you've got and get yourself out of a bad situation. And that's why we carry the tools that we carry--a firearm, pepper spray and a baton. I'd be justified in using my pepper spray before a guy who's 6', 200 pounds and lifts weights everyday, because I need to break up a fight or someone's resisting arrest. So overall I think people are always thinking about things like that...