88 Year Old Church Going Man Arrested in Mexico on Trumped Up Charges - Mexico sees $$$
January 20th, 2009Does anyone really need any more reason to AVOID MEXICO for ANY REASON ? Now we have this case that shows the depth of corruption in Mexico and that they will stop at nothing to extort money from elsewhere. This is how desperate the situation is in Mexico and I don’t know why any American would go there at this point. Read the following horrific story and CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN and SENATORS to have them get this poor guy and his grandson RELEASED IMMEDIATELY from the MEXICAN PRISON! 
Family protests Arlington man’s jailing in Mexico
The family of an Arlington man and son blames corruption for their arrest.
ARLINGTON — Edward Chrisman just wanted to take a day trip across the Mexican border with his grandson.
Now, the 88-year-old Arlington man and his grandson are being held in a Mexican federal prison with no release in sight.
Chrisman was spending his winter in Yuma, Ariz., when his grandson, Gary Chrisman Jr., invited him along on a trip to get inexpensive dental treatment.
Mexican police arrested the pair Jan. 8 on pornography charges after Gary Chrisman took a photo of two fully clothed young women in a convenience store in Algodones, Mexico.
For nearly two weeks the Chrismans’ family has been scrambling. Both men say they are innocent. Their relatives are convinced the pair are victims of a corrupt system attempting to shake down the family for cash, said Shannon Perkins, Edward Chrisman’s granddaughter.
She and her father, Gary Chrisman Sr. of Yuma, have traveled across the border daily.
“When they see Americans, they see money,” Perkins said of the Mexican justice officials they’ve met. “Every one of them is crooked.”
Edward Chrisman is an unlikely international criminal.
An Arlington resident for most of his life, Chrisman is described by family as a religious man who has attended the Arlington Assembly of God Church for decades. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He worked as a civil service machinist for the Navy before retiring years ago.
Edward Chrisman was married to his wife, Norma, for 63 years. He cared for her until her death from Alzheimer’s in 2007.
“How in heaven’s name could this happen in our world today?” asked Kathy Carlin, who works at Chrisman’s church. “Talk about the epitome of innocent. This just blows me away.”
The church of 350 is in shock, she said. Chrisman is “like the church grandpa,” she said.
Here’s what family says happened:
Chrisman and his 40-year-old grandson traveled from Yuma to Algodones, Mexico, eight miles south. The town is known for offering heavily discounted prescriptions and cut-rate medical and dental care.
After Gary Chrisman’s dental work, the pair stopped at a convenience store. Edward Chrisman waited in the car while his grandson went to buy a soda. Gary Chrisman said he asked a family in the convenience store if he could pay them $25 to take their photos. He’d been taking photos of Mexican culture all day with a new camera.
The mother granted permission and took his money. He snapped headshots of her two daughters, 17 and 18, and left the store.
The elder Chrisman never got out of the car.
Local police arrested both men a few minutes later. Their money, passports and other belongings were taken. The pair were placed in a holding cell in Morelos. The charge: “intent for pornography.”
The men later told family that for two days they had nothing to eat and no place to use the bathroom. On the third day, a charitable organization brought them food, blankets and an old mattress to sleep on. Gary Chrisman asked the man delivering the items to contact his family.
Gary Chrisman’s family hired a Mexican lawyer, who seemed confident the charges had no merit. After six days, the case was brought in front of a judge. Both men were asked questions about their annual incomes. The family was told both men were found innocent. The judge said they’d be released the next day.
But when the family came to pick up the men, authorities said the verdict had been changed. Both men were transferred to a prison in Mexicali, the capital of the Mexican state of Baja California Norte.
Authorities refused to share court documents with the family.
Perkins fears her grandfather won’t survive.
Saturday, the only visiting day, Perkins waited in line for hours to see the two. They were being held in a concrete cell with 40 other prisoners. The room had one toilet and her grandfather had been sleeping on a metal bed frame with no mattress.
He looked dehydrated and disoriented, she said. The prisoners leave the cell twice a day, when they’re shackled together and ordered to move at a jog to the cafeteria. At one point, her grandfather couldn’t keep up and a guard shoved him, Perkins said.
Her grandfather is a soft-spoken, gentle man, she said. He didn’t complain.
“He’s a trouper,” she said.
Family in Yuma have contacted legislators, including Sen. John McCain’s office, and the U.S. consulate in Mexico.
“The U.S. Consulate repeatedly told us all they can do legally is make sure the prisoners are cared for and treated humanely,” Perkins said. “They can’t advise us.”
They also tried to contact Congressman Rick Larson and Sen. Patty Murray.
The consulate has suggested another Mexican lawyer and started an investigation. No trial date has been set. The family has been told the pair could linger in prison for months.
Calls from The Herald to the Mexican Secretary of Public Security in Baja California, the organization that runs the courts, were not answered.
Perkins said that her family already has paid $3,000 to attorneys and others in the Mexican justice system, all of whom offered resolution in the case.
Guilt or innocence seems immaterial, Perkins said, adding “The longer you’re there, the more money you pay.”
La Raza del Noroueste Reporter Alejandro Dominguez contributed to this story.
I, as an American, am sick and tired of tolerating this crap-hole of a country at our southern border. It’s time we get tough with Mexico. How would they like it if we started rounding up Mexicans here illegally and held them in prisons? Oh yeah that’s what ICE is supposed to do.. wouldn’t it be nice if they actually did such a thing????
No one, including the Mexican authorities, believes that Edward Chrisman was anything but an innocent bystander. That’s why they let him go. It took way too long for him to be released, but that’s how the Mexican legal system works, slow and creaky.
But why is everyone so quick to decide that the case against Gary Jr. is just a corrupt attempt to stick it to a rich American? The US news reports have been completely biased - nothing has been published here except what Gary Jr.’s family says, and they only know what he told them. It took some searching but I finally found the case as it is being reported in the Mexican media:
1. On 5 Jan 2009, Gary Jr. stopped at a convenience store, “Novedades Jasmine,” and snapped headshots of two fully-clothed girls with their permission. He gave them 200 pesos ($25).
2. On 8 Jan 2009, three days later, Gary Jr. returned to the store and offered the girls money in exchange for taking nude photos of them. The girls refused, but he wrote his name and Yuma phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to them in case they changed their minds. Before leaving, he flashed a knife and told the girls not to say anything to anyone about his offer.
3. The owner of the store (and mother of one of the girls) returned soon afterward and found the girls visibly upset. In spite of Gary Jr.’s warning, the girls told the woman what had just happened.
4. The woman called the local police and reported the incident, and gave them the piece of paper with Gary Jr.’s name and Yuma phone number as proof. The police located Gary Jr. with his grandfather and arrested both men.
Shortly after this story broke, a woman in Yuma reported that Gary Jr. was a known meth addict and had attacked her sister several years earlier. Allegedly complaints were made against Gary Jr. to the sheriff’s department during the period 2004-2006, but nothing ever came of them.
Is Gary Jr. innocent? I hope he is, but to decide that there’s nothing to the case merely because he is an American and the alleged activity occured in Mexico is both racist and stupid.
Turns out I was wrong - I did find an unbiased account of this incident on the website of the main Arizona newspaper, “The Arizona Republic,” published in Phoenix.
The owner of the store and her daughter are American citizens and live in Yuma, Arizona. So to change the picture a little, an American citizen in Mexico called the local police for help when her daughter was approached by another American for immoral purposes. The police responded and arrested the man - rather than looking for a bribe from a “rich American,” the police were providing protection to an American and her daughter.
The grandfather should not have been arrested - no one on either side of the border disagrees on this point. However, it appears that the one primarily responsible for his ordeal is Ed Chrisman’s own grandson. Much easier for the family to blame the Mexican police and judicial system for the old man’s suffering when, if the grandson is guilty, the fault lies mainly with the grandson for callously putting his grandfather in harm’s way.
From “The Arizona Republic” …