OMAR BRADLEY'S LOSES IN COURT AGAIN. DREAM DEFERRED

By Cynthia Macon

What's bothering me about the Omar Bradley verdict so much so I can't sleep?

The verdict is in and former Compton Mayor Omar Bradley was so confident he had been wronged that he put his fate into the hands of a jury versus the judge. He wanted to experience ultimate vindication. And yet it was not to be.

Do I believe Omar Bradley is perfect. No, I told him so, personally. Yet I know something is seriously wrong here. The numbers just don't add up:

-1 Man.
-Pursued 16 Years since 2001 by the county District Attorney
-3 Times (2004, 2012, 2017).
-3 Years in Jail.
-1 Acquittal by the California Court of Appeals
-1 Million dollars estimated spent by the LA County DA in pursuit of conviction.
-4 years of recorded tapes of attempted bribes he declined from FBI agents.
-Convicted over a total of about $4000 in the end, yes $4000.

-For 3 movies, golf clothes, golf tees, cigar, cash advances, etc.

One ultimate goal: KEEP OMAR BRADLEY OUT OF OFFICE.

That's the tag line and everyone knows it.

So is keeping Bradley out of office about Omar, the man, or about Compton, the city, or both? Some see Omar as the man who can get the job done, and some as a relic of the past. Forgiveness offered to many but not to him. What is it that we are not being told?

But all I know is Omar Bradley must have hit a nerve and a toe of someone, that's for sure. Or was the mystique of the times back when, the era of the ascent of gangsta rap and NWA and others, so large things got blown out of proportion and remained so? Did the hubris to call yourself "The King of Compton" bring out the wrath of some people? Notice the district attorney Ana Lopez made a point of saying that there is no royalty in politics. Seriously. Someone introduce her to the Kennedys and tell her about the ascent of the present day queen of Compton, Mayor Aja Brown.

While in office serving 1993-2001, former Compton Mayor Omar Bradley paved the streets, cut the trees, kept the city clean, recovered the city from the LA Riots, put gang members to work, rehabbed drug houses, built housing, forced the Alameda Corridor underground, gained a shopping center, built the MLK-Chavez Memorial, served during turbulent gang and drug times yet reduced murders and violence, got significant funding from Washington DC, left a $22 million dollar surplus, and shut down the some call corrupt Compton Police Department. Yet despite what Bradley accomplished in office, what others in Compton could not do, he may go down in history remembered for one thing by some:

CORRRRUUUPPPTTTIOOOONNNN!!!

Nowadays, politicians just start up sanctioned non-profits, yet I digress.

Omar Bradley’s bid for re-election to office as Mayor in June 2017, desirous to help correct the many problems of the city the current Mayor has failed to address, essentially failed because of her capacity to scream "corruption” and use his upcoming court date to completely deflect and avoid discussing her dismal record versus his while in office. Most people cannot even articulate what Bradley supposedly did to even earn his charges or his reputation given he also is a college-educated teacher. Is that an indication the charges be trivial?

So who then are the people behind the scenes making the call that Bradley should not serve in office again and for what reasons when I am watching such incredible present day corruption take place that gets seemingly deliberately over-looked. They keep acting as though Bradley was the worst, and I am here to tell you, he is not. Much more harm than I ever could have imagined is presently being done and sanctioned in Compton. Is it because others are achieving the goal of being on the right side of wrong sided people, sanctioned by the hidden "they." Because $4000 gets plea bargained away in court every day and this, two felony counts of misappropriation of public funds, seems the extreme of much ado about nothing.

Salvador Galvan in the City of Compton treasurer's office walked out with, at times, an average of $8000 in a just a single day, almost every day, to total 3.7 million in six years. Bradley's accusation represented just 1/2 day of Galvan’s transgression! Yet I never hear or have seen Salvador Galvan persecuted to the level I have witnessed Omar Bradley, who was again vilified in the press the day of the verdict over $4000. How horrified I felt for this wife Robin and family.

Where are the videos and screams of CORRUPTION and the press swarming over the 3.7 million Galvan stole!! The DA outrage! Why the dichotomy? Galvan's story just slipped into darkness. Explain this to me, please. Does Omar just bring out the "gotta get him" in some people. There must be more the public is not being told.

I hate to keep seeing an image of Kunta Kinte whipped in public, a runaway slave, beaten down until it knows its place, and yet this is the image that keeps popping in my head. Did we just stand there while a black man who did great works was unjustly cut down, did we contribute many black people in our own way by buying in to it, was the reckoning correct and proportionate, or did a system just try to decimate a man while we looked on, then hand him a public defender?

And did I get this right, the FBI could not bribe him as seen in 600 recorded tapes covering several years, yet Bradley was taken down finally by some black folks opening envelopes looking for something, a credit card bill, who came to court to testify as though some grand corruption had occurred. All the while, while others call his accusers—among them the current city treasurer Doug Sanders and former city clerk Charles Davis-- the certifiable crooks! Yet I digress.

I kept waiting for the real juicy bribe moment, the big pocket money, the catch that tells me something major happened for him to deserve this case, this level of pursuit, yet it never came. The DA was reduced to pushing pay-per-view movies as Omar Bradley’s supposed assault on the public trust!

Makes me wonder what is the conspiracy behind the conspiracy? Who are the conspirators conspiring? Who has been pulling the strings for this many years of continuous pursuit? .Inquiring minds want to know the real damn deal. This cannot be all there is.

But let's take Omar Bradley completely out of the equation. It still does not make me feel better about Compton and its future in the great design. I keep hoping justice will prevail somewhere and sometime for this poor city.

Go back to sleep, Compton, or wake up because the army is at the gate and the enemy has slipped into our midst. But one thing is certain, Commander General Omar Bradley, his namesake, has fallen today. But thank God for the Appeals Court. People from Compton never stay down. If you don't know, thought you knew.