http://www.charlottesvilletimes.com/2010/03/elisha-strom-arrested-again/

This is really getting interesting.

Apparently this sexual affair took place during the trial of her husband, Kevin Alfred Strom, on child pornography and other charges. Kevin Strom maintains his innocence and says he was forced to plead guilty to one count because of perjury on Elisha Strom’s part and the suborning of that perjury by O’Donnell. O’Donnell was the investigator in Kevin Strom’s case. Elisha Strom was the only witness.

Elisha Strom has just posted a link to a recorded telephone conversation she had with said Brian O’Donnell, in which it is quite clear she spent the night with O’Donnell on at least one occasion. He is very nervous about his wife finding out about his relationship with Strom. O’Donnell also expresses fear about possible repercussions to his career on the Joint Terrorism Task Force and JADE task force and to his career as a Charlottesville Police Detective.

O’Donnell states flatly that Elisha Strom lied to him on several occasions.

Link on the I Hearte JADE site by Elisha Strom:
http://iheartejade.blogspot.com/2009/11/five-fer-friday.html

Link to mp3 of the phone conversation:
http://www.upload-mp3.com/files/116457_vyhex/BrianODonnell-games.mp3

Transcript of conversation:
Detective Brian N. O’Donnell: Of course I got upset. So yeah, I said things… You there?

Elisha Strom: Yeah, I’m thinking.

Detective Brian N. O’Donnell: That was a good rant. I didn’t want to waste it on thin air. I thought you hung up.

Elisha Strom: No, no. It was wonderful, fantastic, delightful.

Detective Brian N. O’Donnell: (laughs) The point is…

Elisha Strom: (laughs)

Detective Brian N. O’Donnell: The point is, OK, you know, you treat me like shit. You have lied to me. You said you haven’t lied, and you have. I know you have. I’m not going to get into how I know, but I know you have. You were playing games. That’s NOT RIGHT.

Elisha Strom: I was not playing games.

Detective Brian N. O’Donnell: You are now. Even mentioning my wife makes me nervous. You spend the whole night over here. You don’t seem to understand. I’m a Task Force officer. I’m a Charlottesville Police detective. It’s only your word right now. There you go.

Elisha Strom: I didn’t bring anything up!

Detective Brian N. O’Donnell: Well thank you. That was decent of you. I meant that sincerely.

Elisha Strom: You know, you are just so arrogant –

Detective Brian N. O’Donnell: Is that — is that fair to say? I was actually thinking that about you.

Elisha Strom: (sighs)

Detective Brian N. O’Donnell: Hey, you know what? It’s your decision. It’s your decision. It really is. So, I will call you tomorrow. See ya.

Depends how they get knocked out. If a few cops get killed in such a fashion that they can be portrayed as martyrs, more cops will replace them. If they get pushed out in disgrace, and it’s clear that other bad cops will suffer a similar fate, bad replacements might be scarce.

I would conjecture that what has changed is that in years past, citizens would have been more than happy to protect sheriffs, judges, etc. from anyone who might do them harm. Nowadays, many citizens would be inclined to secretly cheer on the assailants.

If the government were not as able to shield its personnel from the citizenry, such personnel would be less inclined to alienate the citizens they are supposed to serve.

The call may be easier to make if one uses a less politically correct term: secret police.

Whether you are pro or anti secret police – calling them as what they are reveals the bloggers actions as what they are.

In the same regard, officers are also granted super-citizen powers in most states where they are permitted to carry concealed firearms, make arrests and otherwise act as a police officer even if he/she is off duty. To any degree, these individuals are both trained for and have willingly accepted the risk the commitment makes including the public disclosure of otherwise public information including addresses, phone numbers and photographs.

However, where I don’t necessarily agree with the blogger is the method of attack. Just like cops going after drug dealers, you can knock out one or two but there are always more to replace them. If you’re going to fight the task force’s actions, it has to be done at the public policy level – higher up the food chain. Otherwise you do nothing but wage war on soldiers who are there doing a job rather than working to truly eliminate the underlying public policy structure that is the problem to begin with. I don’t agree with the drug war at all but you can at least see that the police-state drug war logic can be used against them.

Then it would be an entirely different situation. Investigating real crime or a terror cell is a good thing. Enforcing the war on some drugs is an evil thing.

Drug Warriors ruin lives, and often end them. If outing them makes their job more difficult, good. If it makes it more dangerous, better. It it makes it impossible, best.

—quote—

And I don’t think that Brian N. O’Donnell or the Charlottesville Police are saints, either. O’Donnell sent someone to the slammer for YEARS just because he pointed his index finger at O’Donnell and said “pow.” Look here

romingerlegal.com/va_caselaw/virginia/1040939.html

People need to stop automatically believing what cops say. They lie all the time, worse than used car salesmen.

But I think Elisha Strom may well be violent and dangerous. She concocted a kooky story a year or two ago to justify shooting at some people, and, ironically, O’Donnell himself protected her from local law enforcement cuz she was a “witness” in a big federal trial at the time.

She’s made death threats, too. The gun stuff and mp3 recordings of the threats are online,

http://www.documents.iqradio.org/

—end quote—

So, generally, I say reduce the power of the police and keep a close eye on them – and receive anything they say with skepticism.

But Elisha Strom’s bizarre love/hate obsession doesn’t seem healthy and could have ended up tragically.

You don’t see the potential correlation for violence in the two? Where anti-abortionists have gone out to intimidate/threaten/kill doctors, you couldn’t see criminals related to gang and/or drug violence doing the same? There’s a reason prison guards are kept at arm’s length from prisoners & don’t give out ANY personal info… and it’s not because they don’t want extra birthday cards. Same argument applies here – at the end of the day, these people go home & should be able to live in peace with their family.

While I don’t support the expanded power & general pattern of misconduct by police, I don’t see how that should correlate to them giving up to a safe & peaceful private life… one which we hope they in turn respect as well.

In our modern age, the first amendment is much more powerful safeguard against tyranny than the second. This isn’t just a matter of law and application of the constitution, but symbolic of practical application of available tools. In 2009, an oppressive government is much better fought with untraceable words than with weapons. The most powerful weapons: information and anonymity. No matter what laws the State invent, they can’t shut you up. They can, however, easily pry your guns from your cold dead fingers.

While I don’t think the woman in question should be arrested, or that she broke any laws, posting someone’s home address to apply professional pressure crosses a line for me. By all means, publish complaints & the like on your website — as is done on this very site. But posting the officer’s home address, to me, has parallels to anti-abortion activists posting personal info of those doctors who perform the procedure.

The police in question are performing an ethical service to people in distress; except in the most extreme of circumstances they are not killing human beings, merely keeping the peace. Abortionists, OTOH, destroy innocent lives daily, turn law-abiding women into accomplice killers and ruin young people’s reputations.

***

Not all cops are bad and many (most maybe?) of them don’t enforce the dumbest laws. We are all troubled, however, that they may do so arbitrarily and legally.

Disclosure: I am fundamentally and vehemently opposed to the war on drugs. It is colossally stupid, wasteful and unsuccessful. It ruins lives. And I believe it will eventually fail Constitutional tests. I am also a recreational drug user who in general appreciates the cops on my street, who have a tough job and usually do it well.

A link to it is in the story above, but the whole site with every article can be seen as one big page if you go to the site and then append this to the base url — …/search?updated-max=2009-07-17T19%3A12%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=1000

Leaving aside the legal issues, it’s a testament to a totally obsessed woman. Celebrity stalkers and John Hinckley’s “thing” for Jodie Foster are nothing compared with Elisha Strom’s obsession with Brian O’Donnell and the JADE Task Force. Apparently Elisha once had a close relationship with O’Donnell that went bad: See her post …/2008/12/ghost-from-christmas-past.html

That relationship, whatever it was, started when Elisha Strom was a star witness in the politically-tinged trial of her husband, in which O’Donnell was the lead FBI – Joint Terrorism Task Force agent:

http://www.kevinalfredstrom.com/2009/01/kevin-alfred-strom-address-to-the-court/

It’s not clear how the relationship went bad, but Elisha says O’Donnell’s actions inspired her anti-JADE blogging and stalking, as she makes clear on her very first post at ../coming-soon_25.html

She also had what appears to be a sexual relationship with another unnamed officer linked to the JADE Task Force (who she nicknamed “Boomslang”), and was using him to get confidential information about other officers and about JADE operations. See her post …/2009/04/put-camo-green-up-somewhere-anywhere_30.html

She also says O’Donnell (who she nicknames “Longhead” or “LH”) “bullied” her: See …/2008/11/longer-version-with-oodles-of_13.html

Right at the end of the above post, she implies that she’ll retaliate somehow if the FBI (probably meaning O’Donnell, who works with the FBI as well as the JADE and JTTF task forces) comes down on her.

It’s not clear what she means by retaliation, but revelations of inside information on agents – possibly including marital infidelity and law violations – seem the most likely: In other posts, she claims to have discovered a married agent’s mistress/girlfriend. She asserts she had close relationships herself with the possibly-married O’Donnell and “Boomslang.” Maybe it’s a kind of blackmail, though money doesn’t seem to be a motive: “Leave me alone or I’ll tell all I know.” Were there other demands we don’t know about?

It’s cosmically bizarre the lengths to which this woman went to stalk her prey: following agents into stores and gyms, finding out their pants sizes, tailing them within inches of their bumpers for miles into the country, going to the property rolls and then letting everyone know where their families live, where they do target shooting, what kind of cars they drive (even down to updates when something is added to or repaired on the vehicle), lying in wait for them at home, at work, at stakeouts, at court. When did she have time to work – or to raise the 12-year-old daughter she claims to have? Just the writing alone must have taken many many hours, to say nothing of the stalking.

Please remember: it wasn’t illegal [and could not be made illegal] for the press to print articles about how Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The only criminal charges reporters could face were contempt of court charges if they refused to testify regarding who their sources were.

The only people facing criminal charges for revealing “secret” information were employees of the Federal government. Because while the state can criminalize Federal employees revealing information they have access to in the course of their jobs, it can not prevent a private citizen who comes into possession of that information from publishing it.

If CIA agents can’t constitutionally be protected from the press, I don’t see how beat cops can be.

Come on, this is the worst argument offered yet.

She observed police activity and procedures, photographed it, and published it.

“Oh heavens, she’s a stalker!”

Give me a god-damn break.

Every single last newspaper reporter and tv reporter is a “stalker”, too, in that case. OK, not the Mike Barnicle types who just make their stories up, but all the others are.