DL Open Thread: Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Delaware Cops Doing Delaware Cops Things. Utterly disgraceful:

Delaware Pastor Tony Neal said he turned his life around in the early 1990s after leaving prison. But his criminal record prevented him from being allowed to attend his son’s U.S. Air Force graduation ceremony in 2014.

“That was hurtful,” the Georgetown resident said. “One of the greatest moments of my life [and] because of my past, it seemed like my kids had to pay for it, and I just felt it wasn’t right.”

A criminal record can be a barrier in many areas, including employment, housing and education. The 2021 Clean Slate Act aimed to give Delawareans a second chance by automatically expunging low-level offenses from their records. The goal was to expand access to jobs and living wages so families could rise out of poverty.

But the promise of Delaware’s Clean Slate Act has yet to be realized almost a year and a half later because state police have not automated the process, leaving hundreds of thousands of individuals unable to move on from their pasts. This is while a similar law in Pennsylvania clears millions of cases annually. The situation has outraged criminal justice reform advocates, civil rights groups and even Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer.

“It’s reprehensible that in 2021 we passed a law to automatically expunge records, and here we are in 2026 talking about how it still hasn’t gotten done,” Meyer said last week on “Ask Governor Meyer,” a call-in show hosted by WHYY and Delaware Public Media.

The Clean Slate Initiative is a national bipartisan effort to pass record-sealing laws in all 50 states and in Congress. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have passed versions of it, with Pennsylvania being the first state, with implementation starting in 2019. Delaware passed it two years later.

The Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security had three years to prepare for the law’s implementation in August 2024, including developing the processes to automatically expunge records on a monthly basis. Delaware expunges or destroys the records, while Pennsylvania seals them from public view. While some documents are destroyed, Delaware does keep an official electronic record.

The Delaware Criminal Justice Information System estimated that 290,980 adults with 594,537 cases would immediately be eligible, according to the bill’s fiscal note.

Charges eligible for a free automatic expungement include marijuana possession, underage drinking, some misdemeanors and a few felonies. Some offenses can be removed immediately, and others require a waiting period.

Delaware has cleared fewer than 19,000 cases since August 2024, with other states far outpacing that rate. Pennsylvania sealed over 34 million cases in its first year.

Let’s do the math.  Law was passed in 2021.  Police had three years to develop procedures to implement it.  An approximate 594,000 cases eligible, only 19,000 cleared. By my calculations, that’s less than 3.2% of all cases.  Here’s why:

That’s because the Delaware State Bureau of Identification, where criminal history information is centrally stored, is manually reviewing each case that has been identified as eligible for automatic expungement. That’s leading to just a fraction of eligible cases being approved.

Cue the cop arrogance:

In a statement, Delaware State Police spokesperson Tyler Wright argued they were meeting the requirements of the law and defended the manual review as a matter of public safety. He said the list from the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System also includes ineligible records, requiring the extra scrutiny.

That’s, what’s the word I’m looking for, a lie.  The police have taken it upon themselves to deny something over 250,000 Delawareans rights granted to them by the General Assembly and the Governor.

Tell me again, who polices the police?

More Trump Shit.  Y’know, I sorta understand why the press doesn’t headline these disgraces every day.  He commits so many that it’s become normal.  Anyway, two more for you:

Trump Drops Toxic Waste At  A Public Golf Course:

Soil at a public golf course in Washington where the Trump administration dumped debris from the demolition of the White House East Wing has tested positive for lead, chromium and other toxic metals, according to data released by the National Park Service.

The data, which the Park Service published on its website last week, showed relatively low levels of these contaminants in the soil at East Potomac Golf Links.

Yet the dump raised questions about the decision by the Trump administration to bypass environmental laws when it dropped truckloads of mud, rebar, plaster and other debris in the middle of the popular public course near the Jefferson Memorial.

The president is planning a sweeping overhaul of the 105-year-old golf course, where generations have played in view of monuments and memorials at bargain rates that currently run $42 for 18 holes on weekdays. Mr. Trump wants to transform it into a championship course, which would likely spell the end to an existing mini-golf course as well as a surrounding roadway that is popular with cyclists and runners.

How can he just do stuff like this?

Trump Pushes Stolen Election Fantasy In Georgia:

The Justice Department has demanded the identities of every worker who staffed the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga., according to court records, escalating an ongoing federal investigation of the 2020 vote in Georgia’s most populous county that relies on false and debunked claims.

The demand targets employees of Fulton County elections as well as volunteer poll workers, who likely numbered in the thousands during the 2020 election, according to court records.

The demand, which came via a federal grand jury subpoena, appears to be the latest effort by President Trump and his administration to use the investigative power of the federal government to pursue false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. With midterm voting underway in many states, including Georgia, the effort risks further undermining public confidence and sowing chaos among voters.

It is not known what the Justice Department intends to do with the names of election workers. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘Drugs For Rethugs’ Scheme Deep-Sixed By Trump’s DOJ:

To the narcotics agents investigating drug smuggling in Puerto Rico prisons, it seemed at first like a typical scheme: associates of an inmate gang sneaking drugs into the prison, gang members distributing them inside and bank records showing the money flowing.

Then the agents discovered something unusual.

Leaders of the prison gang known as Los Tiburones, or the Sharks, were selling drugs to inmates not only for money, but for their votes. Specifically, votes for now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a longtime Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump, investigators found.

To make sure the inmates — many of whom were addicted — complied, the gang’s leaders threatened violence and to withhold drugs, the investigators learned. Corrections employees in on the plan looked the other way as the gang, formally known as Group 31, ran the enterprise.

What at first seemed like a routine drug case had turned into something bigger. Puerto Rico, along with just a couple of U.S. states, allows inmates to vote. Puerto Ricans living in the territory can vote in all contests except federal general elections. It is a felony to willfully offer money or gifts in exchange for support at the polls. A conviction carries fines of as much as $250,000 and imprisonment of up to two years.

Investigators had gathered solid evidence of election fraud implicating both inmates and staff, and they were working toward determining whether González-Colón or her campaign was involved, four people with knowledge of the case told ProPublica. They requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

But as federal prosecutors prepared an indictment against the inmates and staff in November 2024 — just days after Trump won the election and González-Colón clinched the governorship — they received a surprising directive. Their bosses in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico instructed them to exclude the voting-related counts against the inmates and all charges against the prison staff, an investigation by ProPublica found.

In December, they filed an indictment charging 34 inmates and associates with crimes including drug distribution resulting in at least four overdose deaths, money laundering and possessing a firearm. And while prosecutors described the drugs-for-votes scheme in the court filing, they did not include a single charge related to it.

Soon after Trump took office, the lead prosecutor, Jorge Matos, was told by a supervisor to take the investigation no further, according to four people familiar with the case.

“Before the election, it was definitely full steam ahead,” said one person familiar with the case. “After the election, that all changed.”

ProPublica, already working on their next Pulitzer.

BTW, does anybody here give two shits about the Bezos Wretched Excess Met Gala?  Didn’t think so.

What do you want to talk about?