Justice denied one , Is justice denied All..

In April 2016, I was fired from my job as a Juvenile Probation Officer, the only time I had ever been fired in my life, because I filed a Human Resources compliant. I took that litigation myself to the Georgia Supreme Court and was awaiting a decision and fleeing the domestic violence of a police officer in March 2019. I had been sexually assaulted in November 2018, while going to Atlanta to get documents from the Ga Supreme Court and the Ga Court of Appeals.

In May 2019, I was poised to go to law school, I had Federal Financial Aid to attend and just needed to retake my LSAT, I also had Federal Financial Aid to get a Master’s degree in counseling, which I intended to focus on first responder trauma counseling. My life while complicated was not complicated by my own making.

I set out to leave Chatham County in April 2019, I stopped at a Starbucks to get coffee and my car battery died. For the next two and a half months the Pooler Police Department would, in what I can only guess was an act of retaliation or to cover up their actions, left me in my car until July 2019. In July 2019, they took my car illegally, had already taken my animals, Jacob and Ella and Chatham County Sheriff’s Department had illegally taken my Apple Electronics, along with my credit cards, driver’s license, my step-father’s wedding band, evidence of my sexual assault including photographs, the written evidence in my wrongful termination and left me with no way to call anyone for help much less try to deal with the case still pending in the Georgia Supreme Court.

The Pooler Police Department left me without food and water so long I developed a medical condition and malnutrition, had to have a gall bladder surgery and when that was not enough, they began arresting me. They had arrested me in December 2018, for driving on a suspended driver’s license as I was coming back from trying to pay a speeding ticket, the day after I mailed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Ga Supreme Court, a ticket I deserved and accepted through exhausted tears after tolling away for days to not only get my job as a Probation Officer back but to protect law enforcement and first responders from facing retaliation I have.

The Pooler Police department created a misdemeanor criminal history over buying coffee at an IHOP, walking to buy a soda, and being stranded across the street from the Pooler PD when I went to pick up property they had taken, only to find personal items and jewelry missing.

The Chatham County State Court held on to those charges without an arraignment from October 2019 to May 2021. In the meantime, I was literally terrorized by law enforcement and social service agencies who would do nothing to help me, from getting housing, to getting my birth certificate or a copy of my driver’s license. Agencies like the Salvation Army in Savannah, refused to give me even a place to sleep, while the Savannah Police department would allow me to be a victim of a sexual battery, prevent me from getting medical care at any hospital in Chatham County, to literally even today withholding police reports.

Everything I ever had, law enforcement has taken and prevented me from getting back, every person I ever trusted for the last two years has refused to return an email, a text message, or a phone call. While even domestic violence shelters have literally dumped me in the street without food or any help. I have tried to get to everyone whoever meant anything to me, only to be left with the emotional, financial and investigative burden of trying to hold anyone accountable, and rebuild my life with nothing, from Brookhaven Police Officers who 10 months after reporting the sexual assault have told me I am not allowed to speak to investigators, while I begged them to conduct an interview and gather evidence and to assist in putting the tow truck driver behind bars, which they said they interviewed but not me, the victim, and left me to figure out what to do about it.

I have had to rebuild my life from nothing, when I had everything, I ever needed to be successful, while the very people anyone should trust have covered up, and obstructed me. I was one of them. I was their biggest supporter, I wanted none of them to have to face a total destruction of their careers or lives because they stood up to their employer. They have in response, for some unknown reason done anything but their jobs as law enforcement officers, and lawyers, when I have done nothing but the right thing. Not one of them would ever allow me to make a phone call or even take me to an officer I trusted.

The irony, in May 2019, while the ex-boyfriend’s department was taking away my life, I developed a conference for First Responder’s modeled on the Georgia Gang investigators conference. My former FTO, Gus Markes, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy had taught us when you are the victim of a physical trauma on the job, if you could keep your mind going you had a better chance at survival. So, I channeled the trauma into creating my Conference since I couldn’t attend the GGIA one. While I can’t actually, call it KCCO Carebear Baby Quantico, because aspects of it are trademarked, the thought behind it was this- A safe environment for first responders, like I had always known, to be trained by the best of the best to treat citizens in a holistic, trauma informed manner through a unification of emergency services to provide policing and care based in evidenced based best practices and integration of policy making to improve the communities in which it was taught, for long term solutions to crime reduction, community safety and wellbeing. This included cooperation from local business in implementation of a component developed for the families, to include hands on education of skills in a manner that was fun and educational for their children for which they would receive educational credit. It was for governmental agencies to develop cooperation within their ranks to expedite cases that had a high human cost, and work together to create and facilitate justice, rather than worry about getting the glory of the arrest.

For two years, I have been prevented from going to law school by the very people who I wanted to represent, trusted and cared about because I didn’t want what was done to me by the system to be done to anyone else for speaking the truth. Originally, I wanted to build a boutique law firm, that was a family, where all the things that government does wrong wasn’t the norm. The firm was based on my time as an analyst for a private security firm where I did consultant work, but more on the legal side then the protection side. It was place where those who had no one to go to, but needed representation because of things outside their control could come. When they were afraid and no one would help them, we would. My employees would be educated not only in the law but the areas of trauma, and safety, I named it Valkyrie’s Sanctuary- after the Norse mythology for their honor, wisdom, generosity, and justice.

I want to build a law practice that is a place where people never had to worry about the things I have had to, injustice, violation of their rights things I never thought I would experience and didn’t need. Employees would have a voice; they would be treated like they are family. There would always be input from the employees and all the things that government does wrong we wouldn’t do. It started out with me wanting to employment law for first responders, because in my experience the majority of them are good people, who pay their own salaries, who face a job I understand all too well. When they have to make split minute decisions, they end up losing their careers. For the people who didn’t feel like they were heard and to change the world, to make it a place where military members didn’t have to raise money for Kevlar, K-9's were treated as well as human officers, where veterans never had to worry about medical care, where public corruption was eliminated, and the constitution was a living breathing act, not something written in black and white that people broke.

I read every day about good first responders and people doing the right thing and being punished at the cost of their careers, and their lives. From Jacob Thompson, with the Georgia State Patrol who is facing a murder charge for doing his job, to Charles Blount with the Sonoma County sheriff’s department, who lost his 25-year career over a traffic stop, to NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who found innocent by the Department of Justice is still not a police officer again. They lost their careers to public perception, political cowardness not illegality. That has a cost, to them personally, their families and the loss of good officers who in doing their job have been overshadowed by the attempt of the world to be politically correct and politically motivated, not on merits of the case.

There may be what appears to be a contradiction in what I am saying. How can a woman so victimized by the system, for doing nothing other than essentially existing, want to be a lawyer for these people? A women who has been sexually assaulted and the Brookhaven PD in Georgia refuse to investigate it, who was threatened with arrest when a man she didn’t know committed a sexual battery by the Savannah PD, whose father literally left his only daughter in the middle of a war zone of police officers who she trusted to put criminals in jail, and there is no explanation other than the officers have committed a Federal RICO violation against her, for no reason, there is no nexus other than they made the choice to commit crime and protect criminals despite that I was one of them. There is no why except it happened, and even the District Attorney’s Office in Chatham County has knowingly allowed it. They will prosecute officers for things that no one should even really be fired for, but when given evidence that even Police Chiefs have been aware of police brutality, harassment and criminal behavior for over a year, they won’t even return an email. The saddest thing is, they have taken any way for me to succeed, because no one wants to be the one to do anything about it. There is no why. It happened and no one wants to take accountability, and the press hasn’t bothered to look into it, another unanswered question that quite frankly is ridiculous. If any one of the things that had been done to me in the last two years was done to anyone else, it would-be front-page news, and it should be, because there is still a tow truck driver who committed sexual assault not being held accountable, police officers who are stealing cars, and not investigating anything and no one is listening, only making untrue allegations against the person it happened to.

I have watched a war on law enforcement happen during the pandemic. Despite the actions of the officers who remain employed because no agency will investigate them, or what they did to me, I still want to reform law enforcement for the good ones. The officers I knew, like Ofr. Steve Collins of the Dalton Police Department inspired me to want to do domestic violence cases for men, why I want to do divorce law for children, who needed someone to look after their interests. I want to represent officers who in the course of doing their jobs, when they have not done anything wrong have had their careers destroyed. I want to be the attorney that says, let me help you. I want to represent firefighters, who when doing their jobs are disciplined like Captain Daniel Dwyer, who was punished for trying to save an elderly woman’s life, and Major Corey Britt, who was demoted for taking a burned child to the hospital. These are not things people should be punished for. These are acts of bravery and courage, of humanity. For a Savannah Police Officer, who made a Facebook post about having used welfare to get by, whose simple post took away his job, for the 33 officers with the Georgia State Patrol, who will always have an invisible target on their careers, for standing up for the truth.

How can one want to do this with what officers have done to me- because there are good ones. They are a Nagg’s head, NC officer who listened to me cry for two hours when I was being threatened by a domestic violence caseworker with being dumped in a homeless shelter, in another state who later dumped me in the street; they are a Richmond County Sargent, who even without jurisdiction to arrest anyone cared enough to ask me questions about what happened when I was sexually assaulted, a Chamblee police officer who called the right jurisdiction when I could not get to them, even though Brookhaven didn’t care and doesn’t, they are a paramedic, who happens to be a firefighter who rather than let me be in physical pain, gave me more medical treatment then an emergency room, they are a professional colleague who has become a friend when my friends have abandoned me, Christopher Hoyer, who survived the trauma of losing his friend David Glasser, and in sharing his story has helped me survive mine. They are Linsey Daley, a Navy veteran who is a sexual assault survivor, and unashamed of what was done to her, and has the courage to continue to speak up about sexual assault, it is the people whose trauma has not defined them, who have the courage to tell their story without shame, without fear and without judgement. These people are my heroes, they are why I fight so hard for someone to listen, for someone to step up and do the right thing, they are people not defined by their experience, with the courage to do something good with it.

We have created a culture where we punish the right, where one case has changed everything in the wrong direction. That has been pandemic America. Where the George Floyd case has fundamentally and erroneously rippled through law enforcement making the unusual the determining factor. Other than Chatham County law enforcement, and my case hopefully is a rarity, I see officers afraid to go to work, policies being upended by people with no understanding of police culture, I see the peacekeepers being made into villains. The officers that took away my life for the last two years held unaccountable, marring those that understand what duty, and honor are. These officers are still police officers, they will do this to someone else, they will do everything that makes the good ones look bad until someone holds them accountable. When Derek Chauvin, tried to take more accountability for George Floyd’s death any officer has for anything they have done to me, one has to wonder how anyone is sleeping at night. When EMS personnel will refuse to take someone to the hospital, when they will threaten to have a woman arrested for “abuse of 911” for medical care, this is not okay. These people and their agencies are the problem. Their Chiefs ignoring severe breaches in protocol and protecting felons with badges, and felonious acts by citizens are the problem.

Should not the lesson from Floyd’s death be not one of racial divide and a trend in defunding and setting up law enforcement, to one of responsibility for our actions. I cannot ever say from a tactical standpoint I agree with a 9-minute prone, restraint. I can say this was not a man who was making quilts and handing out $20 bills to the less fortunate, and even he tried to take responsibility for it. He is a better human being then the police officers in an entire county in Georgia, because he at least tried to accept responsibility for his actions. Sadly, George Floyd was a career criminal, he made those choices. He committed crimes, and in the course of committing another crime he died. Had he been white would the reaction have been the same? No. It would not. Had he been a white man with the same criminal record, the state of law enforcement would not look like the apocalypse. There is the issue. If we cannot react to an event, without weighing importance by skin color and then we create a system of reform that punishes the peacekeepers- all we have done is legalize a war on law enforcement. How does that solve anything?

We get rid of the officers who are truly, a threat to the public, who have no remorse and we support the those that do what is right. I was sexually assaulted by a tow truck driver in November 2018, making sure law enforcement could file a complaint, about working conditions and due process violations, and law enforcement won’t even investigate it, leaving a rapist on the street.

Their Mayor, John Ernst, Their Police Chief Gary Yundara, Lt Anaya, Detective Sarah Miller, and the patrol officers who took a report are more concerned about a victim having a lawyer then the man who raped a woman, and taking her statement. Those are the officers that are a disgrace to their badge and community. Those are the officers hurting the public far worse than the man who raped me, those are the officers who dishonor every law enforcement officer lost in the line of duty, along with the Pooler Police department that committed felonies and it has been covered up by their Police Chief Ashley Brown and the Chatham County DA for two years. The Nicole Lantano’s , with the Savannah Police department, who threated to arrest me after reporting a sexual battery by a black man, or the Capt. Susan Fowler’s who think theft of $25,000 worth of property is a small claims matter.

These officers are far more dangerous than 10 Jacob Thompsons, or 20 Charles Blounts. They are protecting criminals because they themselves are criminals. There is no explanation for their behavior, there is no explanation for a district attorney Shalena Cook Jones , to not be calling for a massive investigation, yet it is happening. She has protected officers who don’t protect and serve, and not removed officers from the street where they abuse their discretion and authority.

It should never be about skin color, gender or sexual orientation, it is about we do not allow bad police officers to be police officers, and we do not arbitrarily punish ones for using their constitutional rights on social media. We have to not protect someone based on their job title, but we cannot attack every officer in the United States based on even on the actions of Chatham County, Georgia.

As a white female, would I have been told that I was “a drug addict, an alcoholic and mentally ill” by a Captain of the Pooler Police department when I tried to have the officers held accountable. No, I am a college educated woman who for over a decade worked with children, who has never used a drug not prescribed to me, other than when my mother tried to give me them when I was 18. I have never had an alcohol problem, because I watched my parents both have an alcohol problem. I have sought treatment for what has been done to me, because I know mental health is important and have always gone to therapy when my job started to affect my wellbeing. That is called being cognizant, self-aware and trying to maintain my mental health so that I do not let the trauma become who I am.

Should I then be attacked by my own former attorney, Alan Lowe , through the Ga State Bar for him not giving me documents, that he turned into a threat by him of having me arrested, if I even requested the additional documents he refuses to turn over. The same man who in 2017 was willing to write me a recommendation to attend law school, who I paid $43,000 to get a job back that I now don’t want to ever do again because I would have to work with the police officers who did this to me, and the probation officers who walked by and left one of their own in the street, and the people who turned their backs on me even after writing letters in my defense about what a good probation officer I was.

I have stood firm in my statements and been ignored by every agency I have told, ignored by the press that even Georgia POST has told me to go to, clearly not an indication that they don’t believe me, they just can’t do anything until a district attorney, police chief or sheriff makes a single call, which none of them will have the courage to do, because it means doing something they think is hard, me living everyday with what they have done and gone unpunished for, without everything I ever worked for, without my cats, without my friends, that is hard. Yet I do every day, what they will not, I tell the truth and expect the system to do its duty.

In 2015, I worked with an amazing FBI Agent, Kathyia Jackson who was my friend and a lawyer, and an amazing prosecutor named Isabel Pauley, who said to me “Devani, why didn’t anyone listen to you?” when I had to email the FBI to find one of my juvenile probationers because she was being sex trafficked. I applied to be an FBI victim specialist, because I wanted to help people, and only didn’t get an interview because of a paperwork scanning issue. I didn’t have an answer for her about that case, and I definitely don’t have an answer about this.

I had never been traumatized by anyone until May 2019, even after being sexually assaulted, as I have been since, and by the people who are supposed to serve and protect. All while trying to protect innocent people from ever having to face being victimized, much less alone. The shame is always on the perpetrator, whether he is a white tow truck driver, a black street thug, or a police officer protecting them from being prosecuted. Justice knows no title, no color, no gender, no species, no sexual orientation. Justice denied one, is justice denied to all. The constitution isn’t written to protect just criminals, it is written to protect the citizen. The law does not exclude white women from justice, it applies to everyone, with only a few exceptions, but a court has to take away those rights, and that has never been the case. Not one judge has ever said, you don’t have the right to own a firearm, but mine was taken away by a judge, Thomas Bass without jurisdiction in 2018, it is 2021 and no one will even assist me in getting it back.

I am legally allowed to vote, because I have never been arrested for anything more than walking to buy a soda, which is illegal nowhere in the United States but Pooler, Georgia.

I have the right to drive a car, but mine was taken by police officers for no legal reason, who continue to lie about it, and tell me to investigate it myself.

My animals were taken and I was left in a parking lot to starve, because two officers wouldn’t jumpstart a car. Sadly, they are considered property, but they are my family, and they would not be gone but for two police officers' actions.

My electronics, credit cards taken because I went to the Courthouse, where I could legally go for help, and was going to people I trusted when I could not trust one police department, and was put in the sun for hours by sheriff deputies, because they wouldn’t use a computer. Things I bought and still am being held financially liable for and cannot get anyone to return, when there was no reason, they could be taken, no court order, no case that they should have been taken in, a wedding band is not evidence, and if anyone had asked for the electronics to investigate what had not even been reported, I would have given them to federal law enforcement. I have been left unprotected as the witness to all of this, because no law enforcement agency will investigate, or ask me to come in and make a statement.

I have reported my own father for his death threats against two men I do not like, who are cowards and took my job as a juvenile probation officer because that was easier than doing the right thing, because it happened and I will not be part of my father’s vendetta. I have reported a felon wanting to kill my police officer ex-boyfriend, despite he has done nothing to help me when I needed his protection, because it is right. I have reported every crime committed against me, and cannot even go to a medical hospital in an entire county because of a police officer and a nurse- one who banned from two hospital while I was a patient at one, and a nurse’s false allegations that there is a restraining order that has never existed.

The injustice is if they will do this to a former juvenile probation officer, stripped of everything she owned because of a dead car battery, what will they do to someone else? The injustice is no one in the State of Georgia doing anything to keep it from being done to someone else. The injustice is the silence of the people I trusted, and any person should trust to make it right, and that two innocent animals were separated from the only mother they had ever known, because of two police officers forcing me to give them up, and then leaving me to die in a hot car. The injustice is two years spent trying to get everything back and being verbally attacked and being told “Forget you were raped”, “Don’t ever talk to anyone you know”, being brutalized by police officers, criminals and caseworkers, and dumped literally in the street by domestic violence shelters who would help drug addicts, and women who have had their children taken away with drug problems, being told “God wanted you raped, molested and your animals killed” while having caseworkers prevent me from getting housing, being unable to work because of not having a car, or even being allowed to have medical care because hospital caseworkers told me “I am doing nothing to help you” and having women berate me at every opportunity. This is not the America I knew two years ago, it is also not the land of the free home of the brave, but it is Georgia. Not the Georgia I wanted to make better, not the Georgia that inspired me to make it better, but the Georgia that exists in 2021. The Georgia that needs to change. One woman should not be left alone to face this all on her own, but it has been done. Despite all of this, I choose to hold to what I knew before May 2019, despite having no evidence that I should, because of the ones that have said “We are not okay with it, we just can’t do anything”, the ones that reach out an encourage me to do go things and wish me well, the ones that are there in the darkest moments with reassurance that the entire world is not like it is in Georgia. These are the people, that I want to create something good for, the people who still believe in to serve and protect, and law school would let me do that.