Mark Ridley-Thomas Gets Prison Time

 

 

The Southern Truth

By Gloria Zuurveen
Editor-in-Chief

The day has come and it is a sad, sad day for the Black Political King of LA, former 10^th District Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, on Monday was sentenced to serve for more than 3 years in prison. This has been a battle watching, listening, and hearing, all the gossip and the news reports too about what happened and how he ended up in this position. The Department of Justice from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California website headline in bold blue said, “Mark Ridley-Thomas Sentenced to 3½ Years in Prison for Corruptly Securing Benefits for Son from School via Bribery and Fraud Scheme”

Who would have thought it about Mark. Oh no, not Mark. But here it is. It is a fact or at least according to the press release it said, Ridley-Thomas, whose political career spans more than 30 years, was a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors when he participated in the corrupt scheme. Ridley-Thomas subsequently was elected to the Los Angeles City Council, which suspended him after a federal grand jury in October 2021 indicted him in this case, and he was permanently removed from the City Council following the guilty verdicts. On Monday, August 28, Mark was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison for a bribery and fraud scheme in which the longtime politician demanded benefits for his son from a university dean in exchange for Ridley-Thomas’ political support for lucrative Los Angeles County business. Ridley-Thomas, 68, of Los Angeles, was sentenced by United States District Judge Dale S. Fischer, who also ordered Ridley-Thomas to pay a $30,000 fine. At Monday’s hearing, Judge Fischer said Ridley-Thomas engaged in a “shakedown” and that he used his “[political] support as a bargaining chip to get benefits for his son.” Judge Fischer also noted, “There is simply no justification for monetizing a public office.”

According to Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff, Ex-USC dean who bribed Mark Ridley-Thomas avoids prison with 18 months home confinement. Yes, Louise Flynn, 84, of Los Feliz, formerly the dean of the  University of Southern California’s School of Social Work and a tenured professor, who in some communities and especially the hood, she would be considered a “Granny Snitch” who squealed to  save herself got off with only 18 months of home confinement.  Was she a “Granny Snitch” or was she an instrument of possible entrapment? Was Mark a political pawn for the sake of saving the image of USC with all of its drug and sexual debauchery? All the attention served as distraction and a media delight especially when Bass and Caruso were arm and arm in a political mayoral fight all the time many in the public were not aware but you have USC making an agreement to pay more than $850 million to former patients of a campus gynecologist who they say sexually abused them. Now mind you this happened a long time before Mark was even thought about or at least talked about on the nightly news before the Department of Justice said he had broke the rule. Nobody was hurt, nobody was molested nor did anyone overdosed on drugs as Carmen Puliafito,  a disgraced medical school dean at the University of Southern California used methamphetamine while working at the school   and who was allegedly addicted to a 21 year old hooker who overdosed in a hotel room in Pasadena in March 2016 who was found by Devon Khan, a reservations supervisor, who said he saw Warren slumped over in a wheelchair “like a rag doll” and saw a bag of small metal cartridges on the floor, as well as a small butane torch and burnt bedding the New York Post reported. But here we have Mark already one and done and Puliafito and George Tyndall, who NPR reports was the primary campus gynecologist at USC for nearly 30 years starting in the 1980s. And he left the university in 2017 but only emerged the next year, 2018, in a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times that he had had complaints against him building really from the beginning. And this included both physical comments he would make that were racially and sexually insensitive but also, unfortunately, physical allegations, including inappropriate physical exams, that he would digitally penetrate people without gloves on, that he would take photos inappropriately of women, that he would ask them to take their clothes off in front of him and other things like that. “Things like thank.”

Mark is one and done while Puliafito and Tyndall who just recently, on Tuesday, faced a judge and he pleaded not guilty. What’s wrong with this picture? Something mighty fishy is going on here. Remember people the role that Caruso, you know, Rick Caruso, the billionaire, who ran against Mayor Karen Bass? Yes him,  Caruso who had access as the head person in charge and a powerful decision-maker at USC. It leads one to believe that he would have known about Tyndall and his uncouth proclivities but did he say anything? No, not Rick Caruso. No he didn’t. He was the leader at USC and Chair of the Board of Trustees since 2018 and a heavy influencer at USC but all of a certain, while USC is paying out $850 million dollars to Tyndall’s victims, Mark’s issue of bribery made the headline news for $100,000. Come on people don’t be fooled. Now don’t get me wrong, Mark may have stepped on plenty of toes with his sometimes overt arrogance with an assured confident spirit and from the looks of it he did screw up when he hooked up with Flynn, the “Granny Snitch” and now he is going to pay but again I say, “Something fishy is going on here today.” Cuniff reported in her headline that the former dean Flynn bribed Mark Ridley-Thomas, yet she gets a slap on the wrist and get to play with her great-grandchildren if she has any while on home confinement in the meantime and in-between time the 10th District former councilmember, Mark, is sentenced to three and a half years to languish in a jail cell.

 The Southern Truth