(PRWEB) March 7, 2006 -- A ten minute Full Disclosure Network™ Internet video reveals that powerful interests and a "lack of courage" on the part of the District Attorney were to blame for preventing prosecutions in the Belmont Learning Center corruption investigation. This is according to Roger Carrick, former Special Legal Counsel to the Los Angeles Unified School District Inspector General. The video is available FREE “On Demand” at URL:
http://www.fulldisclosure.net/flash/393-4Carrick.htm as a public service, 24/7.
Roger Carrick, who also served on the District Attorney's Task Force Investigation of the Belmont Learning Center told Full Disclosure Network™ the following:
"Los Angeles has developed a culture of extreme corruption when it comes to high dollar projects" and the Belmont Learning Center is an example of that.
Carrick refutes the claim made by District Attorney Steve Cooley that his office did not prosecute because his investigators never named names, presented a "draft indictment", or presented any evidence of a crime.
Carrick, said that Cooley's statement was a "false statement" and says that he himself named names when he wrote the Inspector General's Report and that it was generally known in the investigation that a “draft indictment” had been prepared by the District Attorney’s office.
He also describes the intense pressure surrounding the investigation. "We felt a lot of pressure. A number of the companies that were under investigation hired public relations firms…a lot of these large entities did everything they could to create an atmosphere so that it would be difficult for the facts to come out."
Full Disclosure Network™ has interviewed all the major players involved in the planning, financing, development and investigation of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Belmont Learning Center since 2003. The school, never completed, has been renamed “Vista Hermosa”. While it has never been occupied and was partially demolished in the winter of 2004-5, the costs have escalated to approximately one half a billion dollars. Reconstruction of the demolished buildings is to begin in March 2006 in concert with remediation of the toxic methane and hydrogen sulfide gases which are present on the site.
Full Disclosure Network's™ two-part interview with Roger Carrick was originally videotaped in 2004 as a part of a historical series on the LAUSD Belmont project. It has been featured on 43 Cable systems and the Internet at the website
http://www.fulldisclosure.net/. Cable channels and airtimes can be found on the website.
In 2002 host Leslie Dutton was presented with a local public affairs Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for the series “L.A.’s War Against Terrorism” featuring the Chief of Police Bernard Parks, Police Union Director Lt. Kenneth Hillman and L. A City Councilman Mark Ridley Thomas and L. A. County Sheriff Leroy Baca.
