Officer Neel resigned the night of Monday October 1st. His resignation was announced moments before a Village Council meeting where multiple instances of excessive force and false charging were going to be discussed by angry Village residents regardless of the desires of the Village government.
Since the Mockingbird's last article about the Yellow Springs School Board granting bullying Principal Tim Krier a golden parachute after repeated sexual assaults by his son on multiple students, the board has announced that an unnamed “outside investigator” has investigated and cleared them collectively and Superintendent Mario Basora individually of any wrongdoing. Sources have come forward with additional information for us via telephone. The sources, and their families whom they have expressed concern for the safety of will not be named.
An anonymous tip came early yesterday morning. They concealed their identity. A special quick school board meeting was to be held at 7pm. I checked. It had been legally announced, barely. The law requires that all public bodies must publish the time, place and agenda of any meeting for it to be a legal meeting. The Yellow Springs School Board does not regularly meet on the first Thursday of a month. If it requires a special meeting, those usually happen on the 4th Thursday.
The Mockingbird has received multiple tips that YSPD Chief Brian Carlson has been out “sick” for nearly for most of the last two weeks. While this is a critical time for the YSPD and leadership absent, it is not Carlson's first big break from the grind of police work during a critical time this year.
At the time that a sexual assault involving “several” Yellow Springs High School students was being reported, Brian Carlson was on vacation. The two week pay period from March 4th to 17th contained 61 out of 80 hours listed as vacation. This can be seen below.
According to sources, one YSPD officer remarked to another “Isn't this the sort of thing we learned not to do in that ethics class?” The short answer is yes in this case. The long answer is that there is an advisory ruling from the Ohio ethics commission clearing this specific instance but the optics are horrible. YSPD Sergeant Joshuah Knapp has a second job. He is interning as a support engineer for a company called Tech Advisers. Techadvisors LLC runs all the servers for the village of Yellow Springs.
The Mockingbird has been following the case of Angela Bussey, a former Yellow Springs school teacher bullied from her position by Principal Tim Krier, father of an accused serial child rapist Noah Krier. In response to her alleged social media post, the school system has invested massive amounts of money in the law firm Bricker and Eckland to bring suit against her for $20,000. She has counter sued.
Public Records searches, both by Mockingbird staff and sources (plural) that were held back fearing retaliation have revealed a third set of incidents that occurred during the 2017-2018 at YSHS/MS. The incidents, which included unwanted and inappropriate touching, groping and comments by one student to another, occurred over a four month period from August to November 2017. This was happening at the same time that the High School swept a sexual assault by Principal Tim Krier's son under the rug.
The beginning
7 weeks ago the staff of the Mockingbird began a series of public records requests. There are over 5 outstanding requests right now. We have been met with denials, lies and obfuscation on all of our requests. The law on the matter reads “reasonable amount of time” and in my life I have never seen so much gas lighting, obfuscation and denial. The typical time is ten days.
In jiujitsu there is a concept called an arm drag. Your opponent pushes against you hard and over extends themselves. You pull their arm horizontally across their body, leaving them further off balance. This opens them to further, finishing techniques. The Yellow Springs School Board, during their dismally failed campaign to raise taxes to unseen heights, sought to intimidate and silence all potential opponents.