Author: Fergus Nolan

We wrote about Berlin Boyd’s bogus educational qualification and realtor license claims, his irrational attempt to defund Overton Park Conservancy and his complicity in a scheme to defraud the government in Chapter 1 of our Boyd series.

In Chapter 2, we went into detail about his false claims of being a realtor during the 2015 election cycle, and the case which Tennessee Real Estate Commission is taking against him.

The most disturbing fact about Boyd’s many misrepresentations is that the Memphis media, including all the print and TV media and several online media, and also his leading opponents in District 7, were aware of Boyd’s misrepresentation of himself as a realtor during the 2015 election campaign, and not one of them mentioned anything about the scandal.

While every medium ignored Boyd’s lies, we view the Commercial Appeal as a leading cause of the problem, because they published false information.

On September 2^nd, 2015, in this bio by Kyle Veazey, they published that he was a realtor, despite the fact that his real estate license had expired in July 2014.  They also said that he had a B.S. in Business Administration from New College, Stamford.   This is false.  New College Stamford does not offer bachelors degree in business, and they have no record of Boyd ever being registered there.   Chapter 1 deals with these issues and how easy they were to fact-check.   The reporter, Kyle Veazey, now works for the City, and this piece is fake news.

When I published Chapters 1 and 2 of Berlin Boyd – District 7 Man of Mystery, fact-checking and revealing the TREC case against him for his fraudulent realtorship claims, the media maintained their silence, despite a mail blast we did to dozens of reporters.

Ryan Poe, the City beat reporter for the Commercial Appeal, invited me to send him the material, which I did in a series of emails between November 8^th and 11^th 2016.   I sent all the information behind Chapter 1  and selected information from the TREC episode, including the case number and a list of the documents in the file.

I sent him the following links to articles in the CA archive: the Veazey Boyd profile and a piece on the day care raids in these emails.

http://archive.commercialappeal.com/news/government/politics/elections/candidate-profile-berlin-boyddistrict-7-ep-1251898792-327929921.html is a link I viewed and saved on November 26^th 2016.  After sharing this link with Poe, it has since disappeared from the CA archive.  The Google cache is here.

Another link I shared with Poe, about the day care raids, viewed and saved on November 26^th, is also missing from the CA archives.   The Google cache, viewed on January 9^th, is also missing.  Here’s a copy of the Google cache, saved on January 9^th 2017.

Ryan Poe, quoted from social media on January 9^th, said: “we’ve had lots of problems with our archived articles. I’ll let the tech folks know that link is broken.”   I have a master’s degree in computer science and 32 years experience in IT, and my professional opinion is that a sysadmin that cannot maintain a simple, low-volume archive like this with 100% reliability would not keep his or her job for long, and would subsequently be unemployable.

Mr Poe also said that he was still ‘looking into’ the information I provided two months previously.   It took me about ten minutes to do the fact checking that Veazey should have done in 2015.   Mr Poe attends City Council meetings on Tuesdays and manages to meet the deadline for publication in the Wednesday paper.

On January 9^th, I tried searching the CA archives using the publication dates of the missing pieces,  and what seemed like otherwise full issues were found.  I tried searching other candidate bios, also successfully.  I tried loading every CA article in my browser bookmarks and history.   I only found one other saved link which would not load, a January 2015 article about how Boyd recently moved into District 7.  I was unable to find a single Boyd 2015 candidate profile remaining on the Web, from any publication, although there was a 2014 profile from his County Commission run.

Boyd’s Linkedin profile, which mentioned his bogus degrees, has also been removed from public view since November.   It was changed in September, after TREC notified him of the case against him, to remove the false realtor claim.   It still contained a falsehood, that he had been a Council member continuously from 2011 to 2016, when it was removed.

I singled out the Commercial Appeal for criticism, because they published a fake bio of Berlin Boyd which subsequently has disappeared.   This is because I was in possession of contemporary screen grabs of bogus Boyd information and could verify that the information was there before it was removed.   I do not know if other publications also printed false Boyd information, other than what I documented in Chapter 1.

The rest of the Memphis media – the Flyer, the Daily News and the TV stations, also received information proving that his Realtor claims were false.  They chose not to publish it in 2015, and again when it was shared with them in January 2017.

Why is Boyd-related material disappearing from the record?   Why does The Commercial Appeal selectively lose Boyd material to their archive problem?   Why do the entire Memphis media remain silent on Boyd’s bogus bio and involvement in the day care frauds?  Is there a cover-up in progress?

Updated 2/13/2016:  TREC announced on February 10th that they had voted to close the case against Boyd.
We also learned that the 1978 Consent Decree between ACLU and City of Memphis forbids City of Memphis officials to “disseminate damaging, derogatory, false … information about any person”, like what Boyd said about me in his response to TREC .

In Chapter 1 I wrote about how Berlin Boyd’s actions against the Overton Park Conservancy caught my attention.  I wrote about his misrepresentations during the 2015 campaign, where he claimed non-existent degrees from an obscure British community college and that he was a Realtor.   We also documented his involvement in a fraudulent day care operation.

Tennessee Real Estate Commission (TREC) administers Real Estate licenses, and it is an offense, punishable by a civil fine, to represent yourself as a realtor without a license.

I filed a complaint on August 10^th, 2016.  The appendix contained screen dumps also seen in  Chapter 1 Non-public personal contact details in these documents have been redacted to comply with our privacy guidelines.

When a response seemed overdue, I emailed TREC, and received this reply on September 26^th.  Somehow, the certified letter TREC has sent to Boyd’s home address had not been accepted and had not been returned to TREC.   A confidential source at City Hall recounted how TREC ‘s second notification was signed for by a City official and how Boyd exhibited extreme annoyance when given the letter.

Berlin Boyd responded to TREC’s  complaint.  My rebuttal email and the attachment, as well as TREC’s most recent email are available.   All links except the one in the first paragraph are to copies of public documents, which may be obtained via Open Records Act from Tenn. Dept of Commerce, citing TREC complaint number 201604873.   TREC’s legal counsel was reviewing the case as of November, and the case could be dismissed, settled via consent order or go to a public hearing in Nashville.   It is interesting to note that TREC took on this complaint with exactly the same information as was presented to the Memphis news media in 2015, and which they declined to report at the time or since.

Berlin Boyd response is interesting.

• He starts out apologizing for me. Like I said in my rebuttal: “He apologizes for my complaint where a sincere apology for his own actions would have been appropriate”.  If an apology becomes necessary, I’ll do my own.  This is an ad-hominem attack.
• He included an excerpt from the Commercial Appeal report of my May 31th arrest in Overton park. He failed to mention that my false arrest for the protected activity of photographing police was dismissed on September 19^th, and my record expunged.  This was before his September 26^th letter to TREC.   The legality of a public official citing an expunged arrest is doubtful.   As the arrest had nothing to do with Boyd or his Realtor claims, I view this as an ad-hominem attack, designed to discredit me,  rather than any of the evidence I presented.
• Mr Boyd also said that, subsequently (to the May 30^th arrest) that I had been removed from Council chambers and that I had engaged in verbal attacks. This didn’t happen.   The Council meetings are reported in the press and are on video.  I challenge anyone to produce video or evidence of me being thrown out, or engaging in anything but constructive discussion of the issues, with all due decorum.   This is not just an outright lie, like his bogus educational claims, but an ad hominem attack.  In my opinion it reflects a misunderstanding of the First Amendment.
• He claimed my complaint was a “personal attack”. In fact I did not make any ad-hominem claims in my TREC submission, which was entirely supported by documentation.   His response, however, is largely a personal attack on me.
• Mr Boyd said in his response that “I do not go on Linkedin” to explain why falsehoods appeared on his profile up to September 2016, when he updated it in response to the TREC complaint. The attachment to my rebuttal contains three dated Linkedin screenshots, showing several changes during the period.   Boyd does go on Linkedin.   His Linkedin profile is no longer viewable by the public.
• Mr Boyd, in the Linkedin profile and on Ballotpedia, (where he still claims to be a Commercial Real Estate Agent and cites a bogus degree) claims he was a City Councillor from 2011 to present.  He was co-opted to the Council in 2011 for a few months to fill a vacancy, did not stand in the 2011 ballot, and was not on the council in 2012 through 2014. He was again co-opted in 2015 and won election in 2015, taking office on 1/1/2016. In his response, he again used this claim to conflate his 2015 City Council bio, claiming membership of “MARA”, with the 2011 bio, which went away when he was not a councilor.

In summary, the author’s opinion is that, rather than providing contradictory evidence to the complaint, Boyd chose to go ad hominem and to add a couple of more inaccuracies (not going on Linkedin, my being thrown out of Council chambers and claims of continuous Council membership since 2011) to his already numerous prevarications.

The ad hominem is what it is: an admission that he has nothing.  I expected this when I went public with the TREC complaint, and I am happy to let Mr Boyd do his thing.   His reply to TREC, by additional falsehoods on the record and by his apology on my behalf, implies contempt of the lawful process of TREC.   It also suggests that Mr. Boyd’s political judgment is flawed, which also makes him unsuitable for public office.

This is the second in a series of posts on Berlin Boyd.  Future chapters will examine Boyd’s relationship with the press, the TREC outcome, and a review of his public record at City Council.    Sign up for our RSS feed or our e-mail notifications to follow the unraveling political career of Berlin Boyd.  We also have a confidential contact form for whistle blowers and informed sources.

Fergus Nolan

Memphis Truth Commission – MemphisTruth.org

1/16/2017

I am is a researcher based in Memphis, TN.  I am an environmentalist, social activist, Greensward Protector, fully paid up geek, small businessman and inventor.  This is my introductory post to Memphis Truth Commission.

This site was set up to crowdsource transparency problems seen in the Memphis media and government.

This post, on City Council Chair, Berlin Boyd, is an example of the problems we face.  Mr Boyd is found to have claimed bogus academic degrees and to have falsely claimed to be a Real Estate Broker, while unlicensed, during the 2015 election campaign.  These claims were published without subsequent retraction, in the newspaper of record, The Commercial Appeal.   The material relating to Mr Boyd’s claims of being a Realtor was widely circulated to the media, social media and some of his opposing candidates during the campaign, and the story was not taken up by the media or the candidates.

Subsequently, the information in the piece was shared with a Commercial Appeal reporter in November of 2016.  This did not result in a correction of the record and the reporter, two months later, said he’s “looking into it”.   However, two links to stories in the CA archive, which were shared with this reporter, were seen to have been removed from the archive in January, 2017.   Mr Boyd’s LinkedIn profile had also gone from public view.

I have a  a record of public research.   Here are some of my previous publications.
MPD Policy Manual
Berlin Boyd’s itemized contributions from 2015 (xlsx)
https://motorcycleaction.org/2016/12/16/did-harley-davidson-convince-the-feds-to-fake-a-major-safety-report/
https://motorcycleaction.org/2016/12/16/the-governments-policy-on-motorcycle-antilock-brakes-is-based-on-junk-science/
https://motorcycleaction.org/2016/12/20/how-the-american-motorcyclist-association-helped-make-american-motorcyclists-less-safe/
https://motorcycleaction.org/2017/01/02/nhtsa-and-the-2009-crash-causation-study/
https://motorcycleaction.org/2017/01/14/harley-davidson-sued-over-abs/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/58544eaee4b0d5f48e164f36?timestamp=1481920466830
I also engaged in back room research for the Greensward Protectors.

 

 

Welcome to our transparency website.   We’re here because of a major problem with transparency in our beloved City of Memphis.

The prolog is a piece I wrote on Berlin Boyd.  It details a story of how Candidate (now Chairman) Berlin Boyd claimed degrees and professional qualifications to which he was not entitled during the 2015 election cycle. It also cited involvement in a day care fraud scandal and his irrational dislike of the Overton Park Conservancy.

The information on the false claim of Realtorship had been widely circulated to all the media in town, some prominent social media pages and to some of Boyd’s opponents in the District 7 race, but no-one published this vital information.

The post details how Mr Boyd’s inconsistent statements about the OPC aroused my curiosity and how I was concentrating on indoor activities in the summer of 2016.   A crew, consisting of me and three confidential sources, came in possession of the dossier that had circulated in 2015 and was able to confirm that the realtor claims were bogus, and investigated further.

In an attempt to hold the press accountable for false reports, the information in the Boyd article was sent to a CA reporter.  It included this link to the CA profile piece on Boyd: http://archive.commercialappeal.com/news/government/politics/elections/candidate-profile-berlin-boyddistrict-7-ep-1251898792-327929921.html  and this one to a story about the Chism day care raids: archive.commercialappeal.com/news/police-federal-agents-raid-memphis-day-care-centers-ep-307256715-326325241.html

I noticed that these archived pieces had been removed from the CA archive in January of 2017 and both links were still dead at the time of writing.

The CA reporter with whom I shared the information in November claimed he was still “looking into it”  two months later, and was also informed of the missing archives.

The lengths to which the press is prepared to go to protect public figures is a concern to anyone interested in the efficient working of democracy, which requires transparency.

I have a long list of other issues:  over a dozen unresponded City open records requests, some dating back to May.   The Zoo’s refusal to follow the Open Records and Open Meetings acts, as a quasi-governmental entity.   Evidence that City Councillors talked about defunding the OPC in March of 2016.   Failure of the City to follow plans to install solar panels on City buildings.  MPD violations of the first and fourth amendments.   I have spoken to numerous members of the public who have similar issues.

If we are to have fact checking and transparency in our media and our politics, it will have to be people-powered and crowdsourced.

Welcome to Memphis Truth Commission.