The Ways and Means Task Force, dba WaysNMeans TaskFarce, is a series on tools to facilitate good government. Find all of the articles by searching "WaysNmeans" or "TaskFarce" on PAFOA.

The Comprehensive Guide to Taking Down Your Public Official is a book we all need, even those of us whom have been there and done that (and few of us, if any, have.) We need a road map. We need flow charts. We need checklists. We need reminders. We need insights and we need tips. We need forms. That's what we'll be trying to get together here. We need a plan, and we need it to bridge the law with the people, that is, we the people.

As someone interested in Taking Down My Public Official, I want a quick reference that tells me the statute of limitation on particular crimes the official might commit. I need to know when I can prosecute an offense myself (e.g. as in summary cases) or when I have to find other means of consummating a prosecution, perhaps either by private criminal complaint, working with a peace or police office or district attorney or attorney general on a police criminal complaint, or going through a grand jury.. I want to know what tools I have to uncover, discover, and preserve evidence of wrong doing -- how can I use a subpoena? an interrogatory? a deposition? discovery practices? investigative grand juries? private investigators? police detectives? I want to know what the next step is when my first step fails. I want to know what forms I need to fill out and whom I give them to. I want to know my alternative means of proceeding if I don't like one way I've been given. I want to know what the lawful way is to do something when the government officials are trying to tell me to proceed some other way.

The thing is, we really have no evidence around here, not even any real stories, of people Taking Down Their Public Officials. Stories have been started -- we have about 3 posts regarding someone who has filed a private criminal complaint and then failed to appeal it when the DA did nothing with it. We have a handful of departmental complaint posts. That's really the whole shebang, because we don't know what we're doing, we're not seeing anyone else do anything, we're not being emboldened and bolstered in our efforts. We have no example and no initiative, no support network. We need stories that generate empathy for those who have never known anything but subjugation, so we can take them and twist them into stories of success and justice.

Let's collaborate and put this together. There's sure to be some more than others who both help to put together the words and help to make the examples. But whether you're the person with the question on how to proceed, the person researching the law to back the claims, or the person actually doing the dman thing, we're going to need it to help each other. There is so much crime among out public officials we all have something to prosecute, and we all have someone to sue.

The most important things to start collecting are miniature treatises on Taking Down Your Public Official in Pennsylvania, and anyone's example of actually trying to prosecute an official in any way: what did you do? what did you encounter? what was your real story -- not the law, not the procedure, but your leg work, your experiences? why did you do or not do something?

(Whether you're filing a private criminal complaint for the summary offense of the sheriff charging the wrong fee for a license and prosecuting it yourself before a Magisterial District Judge when no attorney for the Commonwealth shows up, or you're trying to get a DA to take your official oppression complaint against a police officer who interfered with your right to openly carry, that's the type of thing we seek to address and exemplify in this manual.)