4 ms·

All Flint water crisis criminal charges dismissed by AG's office

32 points by colinprince 7y ago

rmason 7y ago
This is just a legal maneuver that can at first seem confusing. After taking office the Attorney General's staff found a room full of Flint documents. The previous team had missed them because they weren't filed where they were supposed to be. According to a buddy in state government they very cleverly were hidden in plain site. Later the AG made a big press release on how they had 'seized' the former Governor's phone and laptop. But it turns out they were in the room with the missing documents as he'd turned them over as is practice on his last day in office. Stay tuned, it's likely a few people will be going to jail.
leshokunin 7y ago
As per the other comment, I sure hope it's a clever legal maneuver. It is absolutely shameful that a city in the richest nation in the world cannot have clean water. I don't understand how no one's been to jail, no one is taking charge, nothing seems to be urgent. Sitting on the West Coast where things are comparatively amazing, it's really sad to see such negligence from the local leaders, due to either incompetence or helplessness. Human beings deserve better. Fix it already.
- pesmhey 7y ago
  Be the change you want to see!
- tropo 7y ago
  The pipes were in place for many decades. Jailing decades worth of city officials would be unjust. Neighboring cities were better run. They struggled to fund pipe replacement without any state or federal help. They did it. If now Flint gets handed money for being irresponsible, shouldn't those other cities get paid the money with interest? We're providing an incentive to be irresponsible if we reward Flint. Voters chose irresponsible people to run the city. Flint was so badly run that the state had to intervene, sending people to make difficult emergency decisions. If somebody is to be blamed, it should be the people who came before. It should be the people who ran the city into the ground for decades, not the people who got stuck trying to salvage a far-gone hopeless mess.
  - AngryData 7y ago
    The emergency state management were the ones that knowingly skimped on water treatment chemicals that everyone knew needed to be used, not to mention there are known falsified water tests. If the water was properly treated, the pipes being old or containing lead wouldn't have been a problem and would have been used for decades more without any problems. The previous local government have little to zero liability for their state-appointed forced replacements fucking up. On top of that, both the people in the state and the local city population voted against the emergency manager takeover. What actually happened is very simple. They changed the water source, knowing full well that it required treatment, and then the treatment was not done, while the water tests were falsified to make it look like it was treated, and pretty much immediately there was complaints. Within a few weeks the local hospital reported their stainless steel sinks corroding from the untreated water, a local automotive plant shut off their local water source and had their own well dug and water treated because it was so corrosive it was destroying parts, among the endless complaints from residents. Some people even contracted legionnaires and died because of the water. Then when the managers got called out, they started partially treating the water to prevent legionnaires, but continued to falsify water tests and not ordering or utilizing pH balancing treatment chemicals. There was more than a few people that knew 100% what was going on, even if they didn't fully realize the consequences at the time.
    - tropo 7y ago
      You are demanding to punish people for running a city without money. The water could not be properly treated. Better water could not be obtained. This is how things go when you are out of money because you squandered it over decades. So, what would you have the emergency state management do? The obvious choices seem to be... a. bad water b. fail to pay for good water until that supplier shuts it off (then NO WATER at all) c. shut off the water I guess they could try to steal good water, and then go to prison for that. We all want nice stuff, but sometimes we can't have it. This is how life works. I suppose there might be one more solution. It's a bit weird. There may be an affordable flavoring agent that would prevent people from consuming the water. We do this with rubbing alcohol. We make it intensely bitter so that people don't drink it. City water with that treatment would still be fine for flushing toilets. All things considered, I think the emergency state management did a reasonable job with the hand that they were dealt. The city was broken when they showed up to make painful decisions. The city needed some adults to run it.
- sadris 7y ago
  They were given $600m to fix it. But they racially discriminated in the hiring process and got a black owned firm with no experience and then wasted the money: https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/05/flint-lead-pipe-replacement/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/05/flint-lead-pipe-replaceme...
southern_cross 7y ago
I remember reading about some of the criminal charges that were being filed, and in one instance at least, someone was being charged for "criminal negligence" (or whatever) in the water testing that they did. But after reading about the procedure they used, I thought to myself that AFAIK their procedure seemed valid, so I couldn't understand why they were being charged. Now granted, it could probably be argued that their procedure could have been more comprehensive. But for the testing they were actually trying to do (determine how much lead was leaching from the main water lines) the procedure they did use seemed to me to be a valid one.
yostrovs 7y ago
Check your paranoia: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poisoning-water.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poison...

32 points by colinprince 7y ago

This is just a legal maneuver that can at first seem confusing. After taking office the Attorney General's staff found a room full of Flint documents. The previous team had missed them because they weren't filed where they were supposed to be. According to a buddy in state government they very cleverly were hidden in plain site. Later the AG made a big press release on how they had 'seized' the former Governor's phone and laptop. But it turns out they were in the room with the missing documents as he'd turned them over as is practice on his last day in office. Stay tuned, it's likely a few people will be going to jail.

leshokunin 7y ago

As per the other comment, I sure hope it's a clever legal maneuver. It is absolutely shameful that a city in the richest nation in the world cannot have clean water. I don't understand how no one's been to jail, no one is taking charge, nothing seems to be urgent. Sitting on the West Coast where things are comparatively amazing, it's really sad to see such negligence from the local leaders, due to either incompetence or helplessness. Human beings deserve better. Fix it already.

pesmhey 7y ago
Be the change you want to see!
tropo 7y ago
The pipes were in place for many decades. Jailing decades worth of city officials would be unjust. Neighboring cities were better run. They struggled to fund pipe replacement without any state or federal help. They did it. If now Flint gets handed money for being irresponsible, shouldn't those other cities get paid the money with interest? We're providing an incentive to be irresponsible if we reward Flint. Voters chose irresponsible people to run the city. Flint was so badly run that the state had to intervene, sending people to make difficult emergency decisions. If somebody is to be blamed, it should be the people who came before. It should be the people who ran the city into the ground for decades, not the people who got stuck trying to salvage a far-gone hopeless mess.
- AngryData 7y ago
  The emergency state management were the ones that knowingly skimped on water treatment chemicals that everyone knew needed to be used, not to mention there are known falsified water tests. If the water was properly treated, the pipes being old or containing lead wouldn't have been a problem and would have been used for decades more without any problems. The previous local government have little to zero liability for their state-appointed forced replacements fucking up. On top of that, both the people in the state and the local city population voted against the emergency manager takeover. What actually happened is very simple. They changed the water source, knowing full well that it required treatment, and then the treatment was not done, while the water tests were falsified to make it look like it was treated, and pretty much immediately there was complaints. Within a few weeks the local hospital reported their stainless steel sinks corroding from the untreated water, a local automotive plant shut off their local water source and had their own well dug and water treated because it was so corrosive it was destroying parts, among the endless complaints from residents. Some people even contracted legionnaires and died because of the water. Then when the managers got called out, they started partially treating the water to prevent legionnaires, but continued to falsify water tests and not ordering or utilizing pH balancing treatment chemicals. There was more than a few people that knew 100% what was going on, even if they didn't fully realize the consequences at the time.
  - tropo 7y ago
    You are demanding to punish people for running a city without money. The water could not be properly treated. Better water could not be obtained. This is how things go when you are out of money because you squandered it over decades. So, what would you have the emergency state management do? The obvious choices seem to be... a. bad water b. fail to pay for good water until that supplier shuts it off (then NO WATER at all) c. shut off the water I guess they could try to steal good water, and then go to prison for that. We all want nice stuff, but sometimes we can't have it. This is how life works. I suppose there might be one more solution. It's a bit weird. There may be an affordable flavoring agent that would prevent people from consuming the water. We do this with rubbing alcohol. We make it intensely bitter so that people don't drink it. City water with that treatment would still be fine for flushing toilets. All things considered, I think the emergency state management did a reasonable job with the hand that they were dealt. The city was broken when they showed up to make painful decisions. The city needed some adults to run it.
sadris 7y ago
They were given $600m to fix it. But they racially discriminated in the hiring process and got a black owned firm with no experience and then wasted the money: https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/05/flint-lead-pipe-replacement/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/05/flint-lead-pipe-replaceme...

southern_cross 7y ago

I remember reading about some of the criminal charges that were being filed, and in one instance at least, someone was being charged for "criminal negligence" (or whatever) in the water testing that they did. But after reading about the procedure they used, I thought to myself that AFAIK their procedure seemed valid, so I couldn't understand why they were being charged. Now granted, it could probably be argued that their procedure could have been more comprehensive. But for the testing they were actually trying to do (determine how much lead was leaching from the main water lines) the procedure they did use seemed to me to be a valid one.

yostrovs 7y ago

Check your paranoia: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poisoning-water.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poison...