Just the truth Mayor

The following statement was given to CBS 4 News by the Mayor

Golden Beach’s Glenn Singer concerning the arrests:

“Although our town is small, we have always taken great pride in providing our residents with exceptional public safety. That’s what makes this situation so disappointing, not just for the commission and me, but for all of the honest hard working men and women who suit up each day to protect our residents. I want to be clear that the behavior that’s being alleged against these officers will not be tolerated in our town. We will continue to work closely with law enforcement so the truth can come out and if there’s any action we need to take internally to protect the good name of this department, we will do so at the appropriate time.”

I’m not amazed how politicians make statements that will come back to hunt them later.

Mayor Glenn Singer statements in this article are far from the truth. The truth is that Mayor Singer was informed in a letter of criminal activity within the police department, and possibly linking Town Manager Diaz to such activities. Mayor Singer did what he does best, he terminated the employee that brought the criminal allegations to his attention.

The facts are that Mayor Glenn Singer, Town Manager Alex Diaz, and Police Chief James Skinner were aware of the corruption within the Golden Beach Police Department. Yet, they chose to do nothing until their town’s image came to light.

The ethical officers of the Golden Beach Police Department spoke to the police administration regarding the corruption plaguing the department. Those ethical officers were ignored by the administration, and labeled as trouble makers or disgruntled police officers. The administration in return lashed out against the ethical officers by opening multiple bogus internal affair investigations against them, and even terminating their employment with the town.

Police Chief James Skinner was also given two votes of no confidence by the ethical police officers at the beginning of his tenure at the department, and the Golden Beach Town Council also chose to do nothing. Police Chief James Skinner was given the votes of no confidence because he has poor leadership skills, and in times of need made poor decisions.

Finally, the Town Council, Mayor Singer, Chief Skinner could have avoided this embarrassment, and the tarnishment of the town’s image. They also failed to perform their duty as elected officials of the town.

Outch Mr. Mayor ! Sounds like you just stuck the foot in your mouth with the statement you released to the media. :oops: For a rich person you sure are stupid. :lol: Looks like the Mayor got a spanking ! Shame on you

http://i518.photobucket.com/albums/u341/Coolina_nikita/Spanking.gif

The following statement was given to CBS 4 News by the Mayor

Golden Beach’s Glenn Singer concerning the arrests:

“Although our town is small, we have always taken great pride in providing our residents with exceptional public safety. That’s what makes this situation so disappointing, not just for the commission and me, but for all of the honest hard working men and women who suit up each day to protect our residents. I want to be clear that the behavior that’s being alleged against these officers will not be tolerated in our town. We will continue to work closely with law enforcement so the truth can come out and if there’s any action we need to take internally to protect the good name of this department, we will do so at the appropriate time.”

I’m not amazed how politicians make statements that will come back to hunt them later.

Mayor Glenn Singer statements in this article are far from the truth. The truth is that Mayor Singer was informed in a letter of criminal activity within the police department, and possibly linking Town Manager Diaz to such activities. Mayor Singer did what he does best, he terminated the employee that brought the criminal allegations to his attention.

The facts are that Mayor Glenn Singer, Town Manager Alex Diaz, and Police Chief James Skinner were aware of the corruption within the Golden Beach Police Department. Yet, they chose to do nothing until their town’s image came to light.

The ethical officers of the Golden Beach Police Department spoke to the police administration regarding the corruption plaguing the department. Those ethical officers were ignored by the administration, and labeled as trouble makers or disgruntled police officers. The administration in return lashed out against the ethical officers by opening multiple bogus internal affair investigations against them, and even terminating their employment with the town.

Police Chief James Skinner was also given two votes of no confidence by the ethical police officers at the beginning of his tenure at the department, and the Golden Beach Town Council also chose to do nothing. Police Chief James Skinner was given the votes of no confidence because he has poor leadership skills, and in times of need made poor decisions.

Finally, the Town Council, Mayor Singer, Chief Skinner could have avoided this embarrassment, and the tarnishment of the town’s image. They also failed to perform their duty as elected officials of the town.

You most definitely brought some great points to light, and I thank you for been courageous enough to speak out. However, it appears that Mayor Glenn Singer chose to develope a short term case of selective Alzheimer’s disease while preparing the statement for the media.

The Mayor apparently also forgot about the three massive mailings that were sent several months ago to all town residents , and council members informing them of the corruption occurring at the department. Furthermore, the Mayor forgot about the residents calling him, and pleading to him on looking into the corruption allegations made in the letters. According to a Golden Beach Resident, the Mayor responded to the concerned resident in a letter stating “ The matters are been investigated”.

The Mayor also chose to have selective Alzheimer’s disease in regards to the famous banner planes flying over the town for several hours stating quotes of corruption within the Golden Beach Police, and Town Administration. Yet, the Mayor dismissed the allegations by claiming that such allegations were unfounded, and were made by disgruntled employees. The current events obviously proof that such employees weren’t that disgruntled, and that the Mayor failed to really dig into the allegations.

In conclusion, the Mayor clearly had a case of Alzheimer’s disease while releasing such a ludicrous statement to the press

The following statement was given to CBS 4 News by the Mayor

Golden Beach’s Glenn Singer concerning the arrests:

“Although our town is small, we have always taken great pride in providing our residents with exceptional public safety. That’s what makes this situation so disappointing, not just for the commission and me, but for all of the honest hard working men and women who suit up each day to protect our residents. I want to be clear that the behavior that’s being alleged against these officers will not be tolerated in our town. We will continue to work closely with law enforcement so the truth can come out and if there’s any action we need to take internally to protect the good name of this department, we will do so at the appropriate time.”

I’m not amazed how politicians make statements that will come back to hunt them later.

Mayor Glenn Singer statements in this article are far from the truth. The truth is that Mayor Singer was informed in a letter of criminal activity within the police department, and possibly linking Town Manager Diaz to such activities. Mayor Singer did what he does best, he terminated the employee that brought the criminal allegations to his attention.

The facts are that Mayor Glenn Singer, Town Manager Alex Diaz, and Police Chief James Skinner were aware of the corruption within the Golden Beach Police Department. Yet, they chose to do nothing until their town’s image came to light.

The ethical officers of the Golden Beach Police Department spoke to the police administration regarding the corruption plaguing the department. Those ethical officers were ignored by the administration, and labeled as trouble makers or disgruntled police officers. The administration in return lashed out against the ethical officers by opening multiple bogus internal affair investigations against them, and even terminating their employment with the town.

Police Chief James Skinner was also given two votes of no confidence by the ethical police officers at the beginning of his tenure at the department, and the Golden Beach Town Council also chose to do nothing. Police Chief James Skinner was given the votes of no confidence because he has poor leadership skills, and in times of need made poor decisions.

Finally, the Town Council, Mayor Singer, Chief Skinner could have avoided this embarrassment, and the tarnishment of the town’s image. They also failed to perform their duty as elected officials of the town.

You most definitely brought some great points to light, and I thank you for been courageous enough to speak out. However, it appears that Mayor Glenn Singer chose to develope a short term case of selective Alzheimer’s disease while preparing the statement for the media.

The Mayor apparently also forgot about the three massive mailings that were sent several months ago to all town residents , and council members informing them of the corruption occurring at the department. Furthermore, the Mayor forgot about the residents calling him, and pleading to him on looking into the corruption allegations made in the letters. According to a Golden Beach Resident, the Mayor responded to the concerned resident in a letter stating “ The matters are been investigated”.

The Mayor also chose to have selective Alzheimer’s disease in regards to the famous banner planes flying over the town for several hours stating quotes of corruption within the Golden Beach Police, and Town Administration. Yet, the Mayor dismissed the allegations by claiming that such allegations were unfounded, and were made by disgruntled employees. The current events obviously proof that such employees weren’t that disgruntled, and that the Mayor failed to really dig into the allegations.

In conclusion, the Mayor clearly had a case of Alzheimer’s disease while releasing such a ludicrous statement to the press
Its great to know someone is paying attention and can see the truth

Its great to know someone is paying attention and can see the truth
Someone is paying attention. Too much has happened for time to erase...ain't that the truth Mayor ? :snicker:

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Congratulations Mayor for turning Golden Beach into a beach front trailer park community !!! You have outstanding trash servicing the taxpaying residents. My only suggestion is that you change the name from Town of Golden Beach to the 40-Over Club. The new name will fit just right with the image. The Capital Improvement Program was well worth it.

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Karma is a B

Who keeps deleting threads?

Who keeps deleting threads?

Read the first thread in the forum titled "New Moderation Tactics".

Wow, the doctor's just released Mayor Glenn Singer diagnosis. Apparently the Mayor has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and a bad case of Foot In Mouth Disease .

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee248/Dblitzer/Trotskyrevengedisease.png

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/05/17/go ... ief-quits/.

GOLDEN BEACH, Fla. (CBS4)
“After a long discussion with Chief Skinner on Monday, we both felt it was in everyone’s best interest for him to step down and for the Town to take the police department in a different direction at this time,” said Golden Beach Mayor Glenn Singer in a statement.
Mayor Singer also announced that Lt. Rudy Herbello will take over as interim chief until a permanent replacement can be found.

In simple terms, and a shorter version of Glen statements...basically Chief Jim Skinner got fired, and got kicked to the curb side after been used like a puppet.

Once again Glen makes a poor decision as Mayor. Come on Glen, you didn't become a millionaire by playing stupid. All this headache, embarrassment, wasted money on ridiculous Internal Affairs Investigations spearheaded by the thugs in charge of the police department could've been saved, and put to good use in these tough economical times your town is facing.

Mayor, you also made another mistake bypassing the Captain who is clearly under criminal investigation, and announcing the Lt. as the interim chief until a permanent replacement can be found for Chief Skinner. The Lt. himself has a shady past from his previous employer. Apparently your newly appointed interim chief resigned from the Miami Police Department rather than face a corruption investigation.

With that said Glen, I'm going to say that your statement : " For the town to take the police department in a different direction at this time" is completely outrageous, and far from been the honest truth. How is placing an interim chief with a shady past taking the town in a different direction Mayor ? The truth is the town isn't going in a different direction, and is just replacing the head puppet.

Finally Mr. Mayor, if you really want the police department heading in a different direction you should remove the cancer from within the police administration, and demand the mighty Town Manager Diaz to submit his resignation immediately. After that's done and over with, you should hire a police chief that doesn't have a shady background, and from outside the state.

It's time for change Mayor, stop being ignorant, and death....it doesn't fit your personality. Change the batteries on your hearing aide if you have problems listening to the employees watching out for the best interest of the town.

Wow. Pretty harsh.

Wow. Pretty harsh.

"Pretty Harsh"...not even close ! Pretty harsh is when employees get labeled as disgruntled employees after the fact of bringing to light the corruption within the department. Harsh is when the Chief, Town Manager, Mayor turn a blind eye to the corruption, and fire the so called " disgruntled employees".

http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l75/Richard0249/Flying%20plane%20for%20webpage/AirplaneHello.gif

We got you a nice banner plane for today at 5 pm Mayor.... just cause we care.

http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l75/Richard0249/Flying%20plane%20for%20webpage/AirplaneHello.gif

We got you a nice banner plane for today at 5 pm Mayor.... just cause we care.

Without pictures, it never happened...

Wow. Pretty harsh.

"Pretty Harsh"...not even close ! Pretty harsh is when employees get labeled as disgruntled employees after the fact of bringing to light the corruption within the department. Harsh is when the Chief, Town Manager, Mayor turn a blind eye to the corruption, and fire the so called " disgruntled employees".

sooooooooo true... wanna laugh? check out the mayors profile on facebook one of his only eight friends is smoley... then check out smoleys profile where the mayor is one of his 4 friends and read smoleys philosophy and info who is currently serving time in jail... birds of a feather flock together... you will then have a true understanding into the mind of the mayor and will explain everything!

What in the world happened down there..whats the corruption??..what happened to Capt Joe B?

This is the same stupid question that was asked on the North Miami Beach PD forum.

See the forum for the answer...

He is prepping for the "BIG HOUSE".

:devil:

In case the more stupid question of what the "BIG House" is? Here is a picture of Capt. Joe B's future home.

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h245/paineszj/WV%20Penitentiary/IMG_0475.jpg

Isn't a picture worth a 1000 words?

BTW's this Capt Joe B's future friend at the "Big House".

http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii317/greg_mcfc/secretsoutbosan.jpg

Wow. Pretty harsh.

"Pretty Harsh"...not even close ! Pretty harsh is when employees get labeled as disgruntled employees after the fact of bringing to light the corruption within the department. Harsh is when the Chief, Town Manager, Mayor turn a blind eye to the corruption, and fire the so called " disgruntled employees".

Employees get labeled as digruntled when they have a track record of causing problems like this at every department they have ever worked for.....and there have been quite a few. When you have these problems at every department you ever worked for its time to start thinking.....maybe I am the problem. Check the common denominator.....she goes by TV.

[quote=Guestguest]Wow. Pretty harsh.

"Pretty Harsh"...not even close ! Pretty harsh is when employees get labeled as disgruntled employees after the fact of bringing to light the corruption within the department. Harsh is when the Chief, Town Manager, Mayor turn a blind eye to the corruption, and fire the so called " disgruntled employees".

Employees get labeled as digruntled when they have a track record of causing problems like this at every department they have ever worked for.....and there have been quite a few. When you have these problems at every department you ever worked for its time to start thinking.....maybe I am the problem. Check the common denominator.....she goes by TV.[/quote:b711g5fo]

Obviously you must be one of the moron administrators within the department putting a spin to it. You also must have dreams about T.V. since she keeps getting blamed for everything. You want to talk about officers/administrators with problems ? Let’s start from the top shall we....

For starters the incompetent Chief Skinner that's hated by most or if not all officers in every department he's been too, and that's not counting the bathroom appliances that fear the moron because he can’t handle a gun after years of service. Skinner has no business holding the position of Chief since he don’t know his head from his a$$.

Then we have two face, and savor of the day Capt. B. That's another moron with a horrendous employment history that has no business holding the title of Captain nor is he worthy of been called a friend. Everything that comes out his mouth is a lie, and will use anyone to get what he wants. The missing radios from NMB to start, and shady history with other departments up north.

How about our new appointed interim Chief Rudy Herbello who was being railroaded by IA for malicious allegations made against him during the ELEIAN GONZALEZ RIOTS. Let's not forget the time Herbello, and his wife were involved in voter fraud at the City of Miami. They both became state witnesses to avoid jail and he somehow kept his job. Herbello's wife had to wear a wire as part of the deal. Google it, apparently somebody took the time to transcribe the wiretap, and posted the whole thing on the internet.

Moving on to the man with diarrhea out the mouth also known as Sgt. L.P. L.P. can't keep his mouth shut even if his life depended on it. How about L.P's past at Pahokee Police Department.....hhhhmmm, and his current affairs at the Golden Beach Police Department. Google his name, and lots of interesting articles regarding Pahokee will show light on his character.

Another outstanding supervisor is Sgt. O.P. who resigned from the City of Miami because he was about to get steam rolled by IA, and the S.A.O. for having sexual acts performed by a female while he was on-duty. Let's not also forget his most recent fraud case that got him a ride to the house of shame.

How about the man with no d*ck, also known as Sgt. L.S. Sgt. L.S. was hiding behind Chief Skinner for protection from the other morons within the rank. Leo has no experience as a cop, and surely has no business calling himself a supervisor since he can't make a decision on anything he comes across. No that Skinner is gone he will be eaten by the maggots in command.

Finally the queen of the nest, also known as Town Manager Alex Diaz. He has a criminal, and a traffic history that speaks for itself. After all, don't you know who he is, he's the town manager b*tch. The queen was arrested in Miami Beach for having sexual activities with another male, and most recently arrested for DUI. Clearly Mr. Diaz belongs in a pillow with the rest of the feathers.

T.V. has been labeled as a disgruntled employee because she exposed the corrupted parasites in every department she's been to. She chose to stand up with her pair of brass balls between her legs and do something about the corruption she came across with. It's amazing how many cops turn a blind eye to the criminals within the ranks, and fellow officers next to them across the country.

One thing the Golden Beach rank has in common is that they are corrupt, cowards, lazy, malingerers, and are supervisors who abuse their powers. It's time for them to be held accountable for their actions.

[quote=Guestguest]Wow. Pretty harsh.

"Pretty Harsh"...not even close ! Pretty harsh is when employees get labeled as disgruntled employees after the fact of bringing to light the corruption within the department. Harsh is when the Chief, Town Manager, Mayor turn a blind eye to the corruption, and fire the so called " disgruntled employees".

sooooooooo true... wanna laugh? check out the mayors profile on facebook one of his only eight friends is smoley... then check out smoleys profile where the mayor is one of his 4 friends and read smoleys philosophy and info who is currently serving time in jail... birds of a feather flock together... you will then have a true understanding into the mind of the mayor and will explain everything![/quote:3jf955cq]

Way to go Mayor ! I'm willing to bet Mayor that your philosophy isn't much different from t Smoley's. I took the liberty of copying Smoley's philosophy and Pasting it here. You are welcome to check Smoley's Facebook account for authensity.

Robert Andrew Smoley (Facebook Page)
•
Dept. of Correction
Inmate • 2011 to present
I hope to be re-united in jail with a few of my co-conspirators as I did "spill the bean" on quite a few of them in order to minimize my sentencing.

o Online Telemedicine Website: MDliveCare.com
Dec 2008 to present
I launched about 3 years ago a telemedicine website, www.MDliveCare.com (http://www.MDliveCare.com) (previously named www.MDWebLive.com (http://www.MDWebLive.com) . withd Dr. Randy Parker. Considering my "other extra curricular activities, I placed Dr. R. Parker as www.MDLiveCare (http://www.MDLiveCare) as its Chairman, This was an attempt for me to try to go "legit" after pilling up millions with my illegal drug business. What will happen about MDLiveCare.com? no one knows at this time as the Feds are still investigating some of my assets. I was smart enough to shield a few of my assets under corporations, relatives or ghost partners names, including my “$4 mil residence located at Golden Beach, Florida, where my wife will wait for me to do my time...

o Illegal Online Pharmacy Business - United Mail Pharmacy Services (UMPS)
Dec 2005 to Mar 2008
was operating United Mail Pharmacy Services (UMPS) located at 800 E Hallandale Beach Blvd - Hallandale, Florida 33009. I had and ran 3 online illegal pharmacy websites. I was filling orders and shipping them daily nationwide, without any legal pharmacy licenses. With my business, I was pocketing on average $150 to $200.00 per order, and he was filling and shipping on average 800 to 1500 drug orders per day. In addition to my own orders processed via my websites, I was also filling and shipping drug orders for numerous other individuals located overseas, including Jeffrey Entel (Dominican Republic), an individual originally from Ocala - Florida, and Diego Podolsky Paes from Costa Rica (comapany named Pitcairn) to name a few. Those individuals were commonly called: "AFFILIATES” and me, Melissa Perkins and Brian Lloyd we making sure that all orders were being filled and shipped throughout the US, in exchange of an average “fee” ($50 to $100 per order).
•
Philosophy
Religious Views •
MONEY & GREED
I believe in the religion of the "Green Paper"
________________________________________
Political Views •
My wallet
First my Wallet - Second: Me - Third My Family... In that exact order...
________________________________________
Favorite Quotations "The World Is Yours" - Scarface

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms;" Gordon Gekko - Wall Street

"When I get a hold of the son of a ***** who leaked this, I'm gonna tear his eyeballs out and I'm gonna suck his ****ing skull." Gordon Gekko - Wall Street
________________________________________
Activities and Interests
Activities •
Wash my Black Porsche Cayenne Bi-Turbo
•
Reaping off people
I love to rip off people and screw them
More

________________________________________
Interests •

Always trying to circumvent the law

________________________________________

Basic Information
About Robert I am a well-known Miami-Dade lawyer, and former mayor of North Bay Village who pleaded guilty on March 3, 2011, to selling tens of millions in pharmaceutical drugs without prescriptions via my Pharmacy, United Mail Pharmacy Services (800 E Hallandale Beach Blvd - Hallandale, Florida 33009)

I was indicted on September 1st, 2010 () and took a plea agreement on Nov 5 2010. A few reasons for this speedy plea. The main one being the faster I could reach a plea, the less I could be exposed to "future" discovery still unknown to the Government. Yes, most of my assets were seized, but I'd like to emphasize on the word "most" if you know what I mean.

On March 3, 2011, I pleaded guilty before federal Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco in November to conspiracy to distribute schedule III and IV controlled substances and conspiracy to launder money, as I had setup several offshore accounts in Central America, Caribbean and Israel in order to try to hide the earnings of my illegal activities.

I screw people for a living. Yes! That's what I do. Isn't it after-all the essence of Living the American Life? It may not be for you, but for me it is.

I maybe a "soon to be disbarred attorney", but I don't care.
I may be a crook, and a douche bag, or whatever you want to name me. I don't care 'cause I love it!

bob@smoleylaw.com

Love & Loathing
A routine traffic stop led to
Pahokeefs own Rodney King
incident. Too bad there was no
videotape.
By Wyatt Olson
published: May 05, 2005
Now
Hiring...
ADMISSIONS
REPRESENTATIVES
Call 954.237.2295
Pam Shavalier
Robert Love felt his heart race and palms sweat onthe steering wheel of his 1993 Ford Explorer as hereached downtown Pahokee just before 9:30 p.m. on February 25. The police squad car behind him, driven by a rookie cop unaware of who it was driving without his headlights on, had just flicked on its cherries. Love, a 48-year-old black man and former drug dealercum- political activist, knew that this could be it. This could be the confrontation in an ongoing feud that would lead to his demise — or the death of a small-town cop. Love's peculiar mixture of street savvy and religion led him to believe that the devil and God were struggling for control over his next move. The devil was pushing him to keep driving, to take the easy way out, to coast just far enough to get to the Rardin neighborhood a few blocks away, the safety of black downtown. "Come on downtown, Robert Love; let 'em shine the lights on you," the devil called. "C'mon downtown. Then when you get out, they ain't gonna do nothin'." Down in the 'hood, the cops wouldn't dare go too far. There had been too many times when the bottles and rocks had flown at them from the midst of a crowd. But Love's good side prevailed. He stopped on the deserted main street, beside an old storefront festooned with weathered planks nailed over the
windows. Here's where God would see to it that "everything'll get done," he believed. Ten minutes later, Love was facedown on the concrete, with one cop's arm wrapped around his neck and another officer raining down a flurry of blows. Even by the officers' own accounts, it was a brutal encounter.

Officer James Levey, a plump-faced 27-year-old, who is white, slammed his
retractable baton into Love's torso over and over. When the baton collapsed,
he punched Love in the ribs with his fist several times. Fearing that Love was
going to break his fellow officer's arm, Levey moved up and began punching
Love on the side of his head. Finally, Levey cuffed the stunned Love and
dumped him into a squad car. His head swollen like a macabre melon and the bone around his eye a shattered mess, Love moaned for medical attention from the back seat of the car. Colby Katz Robert Love stands beside the street where he was beaten by Pahokee
police this winter, the climax of a yearlong feud.Sharon Love Kinsler An encounter with police left Love bruised, swollen, and broken. He requires surgery to repair a shattered bone around his eye. Colby Katz Love, however, who requires reconstructive bone surgery on his face, was not the only casualty of the night. The incident had rapidly escalated from routine traffic stop to violent arrest to ham-handed police action, threatening to spill over into the city's troubled civic life. Police came within inches of throwing several city officials, including the mayor, into the slammer for asking questions. The city
manager, long a critic of the police, stumbled back into her car when a
deputy raised what she thought was a real gun at her — an incident for which
the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office is now investigating two of its
deputies. Within days, Levey had resigned. Rafael Duran, the native son
who'd returned home to run the Police Department, stepped down in lieu of
termination after a rocky, i6-month ride. At its most basic level, the bloody confrontation was the inexorable climax of a personal feud that consumed a handful of men. For more than a year, Love had been warring with the Police Department, claiming certain officers were corrupt and out of control. Love's confrontations with the cops had escalated,
and they'd arrested him several times for everything from disorderly conduct
to stalking. In a greater sense, though, the dispute — like a small-scale Rodney King
incident — was part of a struggle for control of the city, a clash of wills over
what the volatile town can and should be. Faced with numerous complaints about the city's police, Pahokee Mayor J.P. Sasser pressed the city manager to intervene, and the police
chief lost his job. There's something soothingly predictable about Pahokee. Trapped by
thousands of acres of sugar cane to the east and pinned against Lake
Okeechobee to the west, the town of 6,500 souls is so remote, it provides few
diversions. So its residents have a knack for providing their own
entertainment — particularly in Rardin, the black neighborhood east of
downtown named for the avenue that runs through its heart.
On a Thursday evening early in April, everyone's getting a jump on the
weekend, buoyed by the extra sunlight brought by the sudden switch to daylight-saving time. The blocks of Rardin are alive, as though a festival has commenced. Middle-aged men sip bottles of Corona and set up homemade barbeque grills on the curb. Other would-be merchants splay their wares on the sidewalks and empty lots: baseball cards, clothes, snacks. Old men play dominoes. Teens and young men and women - pegged by locals as "jitterbugs" for their constant motion — bop up and down the
sidewalks and around the handful of convenience stores on the main highway leading into town. Some sell drugs; some harbor grudges; quarrels are not infrequent.
Regardless of age, though, there's uneasiness between the inhabitants of Rardin and the police. A dozen so-something black men are drinking bottles of beer, talking and joking on a patch of vacant land on Rardin Avenue, a lot still littered with the remains of several mobile homes destroyed by hurricanes last fall. Parked on it are a van and a freshly washed and waxed Dodge Ram pickup, whose owner is barbecuing whole chickens and keyboard-sized racks of ribs on a smoke-billowing grill. In another hour, around 9, he'll sell baskets of either for $6 each. "The Pahokee Police Department is full of rejects," declares Ulrik Williams, a so-year-old who sports a red Nike skullcap and flashes several gold teeth as he speaks. Williams' assessment is not idle criticism but an observation that even police brass have acknowledged. "They get tossed from five other places and then come here," Williams says. A supervisor with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, Williams is still stinging from a run-in with the cops last fall, when he was on the way home from work in his white car. Unfortunately for Williams, the police were looking for the same color car involved in a shooting when they stopped him north of town.
One of the cops told Williams he was going to take him to jail because his "mouth is too smart," Williams says. "You mean to tell me, I'm 30 years old and you're going to disrespect me, and I'm supposed to say, "Yes, sir' and 'No, sir'?"
"No," interjects Adrian Walker, who's sitting nearby. "We ain't in the segregation days no more."Pahokee's police force has indeed long been a troubled one, partly because it's not a department that draws the cream of the crop. In June 2000, the city hired Gary Frechette as police chief, despite the fact that he'd been fired as a captain with the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office over allegations that he'd had an affair with a subordinate officer.
Two and a half years later, Frechette quit after accusing his top officer, Capt. Timothy Kenney, of selling department weapons for personal profit and using charity-drive money as a "slush fund" for officers. Kenney claimed that Frechette had misused a $13,000 federal grant. No criminal charges were filed against either, but the imbroglio left the Pahokee Police Department leaderless for months. Adding to the town's administrative disarray, Pahokee City Manager Jim Smith quit in February 2003
after less than three months on the job. His replacement, Vincent Finizio, recommended that the City Commission hire the Sheriffs Office to police the city. That idea went nowhere, but Finizio did: Under a hail of public criticism over his aggressive approach to code enforcement, he also left the job after only three months.
In the wake of these events, Rafael Duran, then a youngish 50, returned to his hometown to become police chief in August 2003. Lantern-jawed, with finely coifed graying hair, speaking softly in a coffee shop in the rough-and-tumble Westgate neighborhood of West Palm Beach where he started his career as a patrolman, Duran recalls his rise and fall as Pahokee's top cop. He worked for years with the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office, as everything from detective to hostage negotiator. He resigned in 2000 for an unsuccessful run for sheriff, after which he figured his time as a cop was over. Pahokee had always held a special place in his heart. He and his family had arrived there on
Thanksgiving Day in 1960, ten days after fleeing Cuba. His father had been in the sugar business in Cuba, so the move out west to the cane fields was a natural. Pahokee then, Duran recalls, was straight out of a scene from American Graffiti, busy streets and a citizenry that thrived on the agricultural jobs of those premachinery days.
But that era was long gone when Duran took on the top job with Pahokee's Police Department. Unemployment in town is a chronic plague, usually hanging around 20 percent. The rate of HIV/AIDS infection is among the highest in the state, and the town's major employer during the early 19905, the Everglades Regional Medical Center, closed in 1998. "I knew about all the trials and tribulations of Pahokee," Duran says. "Pahokee has been one of those communities where things are different. It does its own thing." Becoming chief, he felt, was a way of giving back to the town that gave him and his family a chance for a new life many years ago. What he found was not promising. "I came into a department that, really, had been decapitated: sergeants, lieutenants, and chief, literally gone. There was no morale. They had no sense of value."
Duran began rebuilding, instituting new operating procedures, bringing the department up to the standards of the Sheriffs Office. "It was a struggle from day one," he recalls. "Lack of funds, trying to recruit officers. As much as I hate to say it" — he sighs, carefully choosing his words — "the majority of officers there all had some sort of
blemish on their records — a bad driving record or been cut loose by another agency because they didn't meet the standards. I interviewed each person, and I'd give them a chance. I'd tell them, 'If you don't make it in Pahokee, you won't make it anywhere. This is your last-ditch effort. You've got to change who you are. You've got to see that something in your background made you go askew. Now it's time to change.'"
Duran's view of the city was analogous: It had gone astray, but with some serious attention, it could get back on the right path. "I always said that one of the solutions for Pahokee is to clean up certain areas," he says. "You can't keep this area clean and let this one go to hell. If you've ever been through what I call the 'night life' there, well, it's everything from drug-dealing to prostitution to stolen merchandise.
It's incredible what goes on in just a three-, four-block area, the Rardin Avenue area. The majority of calls in Pahokee were there — a good 75, 80 percent were from the Rardin area, the black community." Duran's policing philosophy would soon put him on a collision course with Robert Love. The irony of Duran and Love is that they grew up together decades ago in a Pahokee that was vibrant, even idyllic. Even then, though, a chasm existed between them because of their four-year age difference; Duran says he knew of Love only by reputation, while Love professes no recollection of the
future chief. With the approach of the new millennium, both swore they wanted to do their part to rebuild the town, to give back to the place of their childhood. The paths that led them to those proclamations of beneficence, however, couldn't be more different.
Sitting on a love seat at his girlfriend's apartment, which is filled with a bunch of framed portraits and is heavy on the zebra-stripe motif, Love talks about his life and the town he loves. In truth, Love doesn't actually talk; his voice is usually in the decibel range between a fundamentalist preacher in the pulpit and a Marine drill sergeant. He jumps up often to punctuate points and peppers his storytelling with frequent inquiries of, 'You know what I'm sayin'? Know what I'm talkin' about?" He's six feet tall, around 250 pounds, and although he has a bit of a paunch, his athletic build keeps him from looking heavy. (His son, Robert Jr., is a championship quarterback at the high school and enters his senior year this fall.) He's wearing a T-shirt that reads, "Got sum tail at Grumpy Gator" — referring to the lakeside eatery where he earns $400 a week as a cook. He comes from a family of farmworkers who harvested fruit and vegetables on the East Coast and returned home to Pahokee in between. Love gave up the fruit-picking life in 1976 at age 20 and moved to a much more lucrative line of work: selling drugs. He did well at the trade, helped by all the travel
and connections he'd made. "A lot of the children around here now be breaking into homes and going to jail," he says of modernday Pahokee. "They're crack babies. I know because I sold crack to their mommas. It ain't like I went across country and didn't know what I was doing. I was the one who started crack cocaine here because back in '79,1 was one of those young geniuses who knew how to cook up cocaine. "When I was selling drugs, I thought I was doing something positive. I thought, 'Somebody's gotta do something for them peoples who need it. Somebody gotta stay here to keep the town.'" He pounds on the glass-topped coffee table to emphasize his account, which is an odd mixture of confession, boast, and regret. "I know where I come from. It not like a damned rap star who write about what he ain't done."
By his mid-sos, he had been charged with everything from gambling to attempted first-degree murder before he was sent to federal prison in 1990 for trafficking drugs. "Did four years, two months, seven days, eight hours, and 37 minutes in federal prison," he sums up. "I promised the Lord and all his angels that I'd do more for my community after I got out than I did when I was selling drugs."
Love was a bit of a lost man when he was released, looking for direction. After police Maced a man during an overzealous effort to clear a Rardin street corner in 1996, Love says, he and other residents went to a City Commission meeting to complain. "There was a black mayor, but they didn't give a damn what was going on up here," he recalls. "The mayor can't even read the damned agenda!" Then the city barricaded a busy street block in Rardin, apparently in an attempt to stop loitering and traffic congestion.
Thoroughly irked, Love rounded up a couple of hundred signatures from residents saying they wanted the road reopened. "They said, 'Well, we could get more names than that saying it should stay closed,'" Love recalls. "It stayed blocked four months. I worked with the police and got a proposal to turn it into a one-way street, no parking. Since then, there hasn't been a problem."After that, Love started asking questions about how the city was being run, and he became a regular at commission meetings. "We had $113,000 in unpaid water bills!" he shouts. "Every day, I was checking this, checking that."
It was during those meetings that Love met J.P. Sasser, the current mayor, who back then was just a lifelong resident pissed off about his hometown.
"We both thought the city was dying," Sasser says. On the cusp of 50, Sasser is tanned and trim with a mostly gray crewcut. His heavy drawl is the kind no longer common to Floridians living south of Orlando. His parents moved to Pahokee in the 19303 and opened a tire shop, then a number of Shell gas stations, and, finally, auto parts stores. Sasser and his sisters took them over eventually, then sold the businesses in the 19905. He still owns rental properties in Pahokee and helps a friend run an auto body store in Belle Glade. He's fond of telling people that he's well off enough now to live anywhere he wants, and he does: Pahokee.
Sasser and Love were part of a citizens group that went out and found candidates to run against the sitting commission. Sasser ran and narrowly lost a commission race in 2001 and was preparing to do so again in 2002 when the group's candidate for mayor dropped out of the race for health reasons. Love insisted that Sasser run, and with both of them rounding up voters from their own neighborhoods, he won.
"The good ol' boy network was very upset," Sasser maintains. "That's the group that basically was pushing their own personal agenda and profiting by it at the expense of the city and the rest of the citizens. We turned the financial situation around by putting the money in the bank instead of in people's pockets."
It was not an easy transition for many, regardless of race. (The current commission consists of two white men, two black men, and one black woman.) "When change started coming, they screamed," Love says of the faction he calls "black panthers."
"They said the white folks gonna take this, take that. I said, yeah, Sasser's a white mayor, but what do I need a black mayor who's not doing the city any good?" When they attacked him for "working for a white man," he'd answer, "No, I'm working for the right man." Love's political influence isn't limited to Pahokee; he convinced County Commissioner Tony Masilotti to pony up $250,000 in county funds to build a children's water park in Pahokee. The city will name the park after Love.
Duran came on board as chief in August 2003, shortly before the City Commission hired Lillie Latimore to replace Finizio as city manager. A 58-year-old business consultant and former assistant to the city manager in Miami, Latimore was the first black and first woman to be hired for the position. Capable of a steely stare from behind her gold-rimmed glasses, she had a no-nonsense reputation.
Duran reported directly to Latimore, and the two immediately clashed. "In Pahokee's form of government, a police chief is a department head," Latimore explains in her understated manner. "Chief Duran came from an elected department, the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office, and they did things
differently." Part of their conflict arose from Duran's directive to officers to crack down on petty crimes. "I told my officers that if you see people gambling out there, you need to do something about it," Duran says. "If you see them drinking, open container, you need to do something about it. If you see them selling drugs, you need to do something about it."
As the police presence grew, so did citizen complaints of harassment. Latimore intervened in some cases. Duran got the message to cool it from commissioners and other townspeople in subtle ways, he says. "'Pahokee's always been like this,1" they'd say. 'It's a way of life. So what's wrong if we mosey around the streets with an open container?'"
In the wake of such hyperpolicing, it didn't take long for law enforcement to snag Robert Love. He'd been driving with a suspended license because of unpaid child support in North Carolina -- a delinquency he'd corrected without bothering to inform the Florida DMV. After several warnings to Love about his suspended license, Duran says, he told his officers, "You see him, you nail him."
On Easter weekend in April 2004, Love received several tickets for suspended license from Lyndean Peters, an imposing, 25O-pound, doughy-faced white cop with a thin mustache. He'd left the Belle Glade Police Department in 2003 while being investigated for "violating moral character standards," according to his personnel file. "From that point on, [Love] was against the cops," Duran says. "He'd antagonize you. After football games, he'd see us, lower his window, and give us the finger and yell, '*****-ass cracker mother****ers!'"
Love's jihad against the cops, however, wasn't sparked by narrow self-interest, he insists. A growing number of Rardin residents were getting fed up with the new, aggressive policing. "I had people at my house every week, from girls to 6o-year-old people, sayin' what the police is doing to them," Love says.
"How the police come to their house and show no respect for them. The chief couldn't do nothin' with "em!" Latimore says she cajoled Duran to find a community-relations role for Love involving the Police Department. "He'd been active in the community, and he wanted to remain that way," she says, adding that it was Love's way of "being made whole by being a part of something bigger." Asked about Duran's
reaction to her suggestion, she says, "The chief rarely reacted to anything."
The breaking point for Love came in January 2004, when Sgt. Lawrence Holborow Maced and arrested Love's half-brother, Christopher Simmons, who was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence, possession of cocaine with intent to sell, disorderly conduct, and obstruction of justice. Love contended that the charges against his brother were bogus. Nicknamed "New York" for his frequent boasts of working as a cop in the Big Apple, Holborow possessed the same beefy frame as Peters and, at 40, was one year his senior. Holborow was a holdover
from the Frechette days, and Love considered him to be the root of all evil in the Police Department, a bad cop whose attitude rubbed off on the new hires.
Indeed, Holborow's career has been an unimpressive hodgepodge of short stints at police departments and security firms. According to his personnel file, he was asked to leave the NYC Police Department in 1989 after working two years and resigned from the Miami-Bade County Schools Police Department "while being investigated for violating moral character standards." He pleaded guilty to reckless driving in Miami-Dade in the fall of 2002 and shortly after that began working for the Pahokee police.
Love began videotaping Holborow, Peters, and a few others during their shifts, surveillance that quickly grated on the cops. The opening salvo in the war between Love and police came just before
midnight on April 17,2004, when Love began taping Holborow and yelling things like "You're a bad cop!" and "I'm going to get you!" They got into a shoving match at a sandwich shop, and Holborow arrested Love and charged him with battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence, and disorderly conduct.
Love rejected an offer by the State Attorney's Office to drop the charges against his brother if Love would plead guilty to disorderly conduct - an offer that just reinforced his belief that his half-brother had been used by the police as a pawn. "I ain't pleading guilty to a damned thing I ain't done," Love says. "I don't give a damn if my brother don't get off." (Simmons eventually pleaded guilty to resisting with violence and possession of cocaine.) Love resumed his campaign while out on bail, showing up once with his video camera while Holborow interviewed a ly-year-old girl. By August, Love had managed to get himself arrested several times and faced more than a dozen charges, ranging from assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon ~ Peters says Love tried to hit him with his pickup — to stalking. In February, however, Robert Shepherd, an assistant state attorney in Belle Glade, dropped all the charges, though he retained the right to refile them within six months. The move came after numerous discussions between Shepherd and Duran, Sasser, the public defender, and others. "We were attempting to keep peace in the valley ~ that's how I'd describe it," Shepherd says. "I didn't want to see
a long, hot summer with constant problems of bottle-throwing and everything else in Pahokee. Naive as I may have been, I thought we might have been able to work this out."
Part of Shepherd's reluctance to prosecute, though, was a practical matter. Holborow, always the crux of Love's complaints, had been suspended indefinitely in November 2004 while he was being investigated for sexual misconduct and theft. (The inquiry is still open.) Duran directed his officers to leave Love alone, to not escalate the animosity between them. To Love, though, the dismissal of all charges against him and the investigation of Holborow could mean only one thing: He was right about police corruption and abuse of power in Pahokee. It was a conclusion declared vociferously by Love during commission meetings, and Love's targets were well-aware of his public assertions. The city had to step in, Love told the commission in ominous
terms during a meeting on February 22 ~ or else. "I'm telling you, there's going to be some killing and there's going to be some shooting, 'cause these polices, they are nothing but thugs, and you all know it," he told them. "And you all still sending them down there and messing with people's children." Fed up with the turmoil, Sasser declared that something had to be done about the Police Department or "we'll be looking for another city manager." Three days later, a rookie cop pulled Love over for driving without headlights. On that fateful February night, Love jumped out of his truck and met face-to-face with Dominick Hachigian, a new hire who didn't recognize Love. By both men's accounts, it began as an almost friendly encounter. After handing him his license, according to Hachigian, who is white, Love said, "I give you this much credit: You have more respect than the rest of them. I don't know where we can go from that, but the problem is when people give you no respect."
Indeed, Hachigian was simply going to give him a citation for a suspended license, then let Love walk home or telephone his girlfriend to drive the truck home. The matter likely would have ended there, but the rookie cop had called for backup, which turned out to be James Levey -- an officer that Duran had specifically directed to lay off Love.
Levey, however, seemed to be spoiling for trouble; he told Love he was arresting him, despite what his fellow officer had said. From this point, Love and the cops' versions of what happened diverge. Love describes an intentional, anger-driven beating, which began when Levey sucker-punched him with a whack to the shin with a collapsible baton, and he fell face forward. Hachigian then jumped on him and clamped down with a chokehold. Love struggled for breath through his windpipe, tugging at Hachigian's arms. As he tried to crawl under the squad car, Levey pounded him on the side of the face with the butt end of the baton. Levey, on the other hand, depicts a berserk man who dragged Hachigian 20 feet before the cop brought the wildly resisting Love down to the cement — a fall that smashed Love's face. They found a Baggie of marijuana in his SUV.
As the Fire Department and EMS vehicles arrived at the scene, parishioners from the nearby storefront Pentecostal Miracle Revival Center began gathering to watch. As it happened, Latimore and Allie Biggs, then the vice mayor, passed by the scene after eating dinner. Biggs recognized Love's car and called the mayor, who didn't answer.
Alarmed, Latimore got out of the driver's seat and approached a sheriffs deputy at the perimeter of the scene. "I'm Lillie Latimore, city manager of Pahokee," she told him. "What's going on?" He reacted "like I said a bad word," she recalls. He ordered her back to her car. "You don't understand," she said, "I'm the city manager, and I have a responsibility." That's when the deputy beckoned for another officer and as Latimore recalls, he told him to arrest her. The second deputy tilted "a very large gun" at her, and she almost stumbled back to her car. Latimore learned later that it was a pepper-ball gun, but at the time, she believed a real firearm had been pointed at her. (The actions of the two deputies are under investigation by the Sheriffs Office, which would not comment on the case.) Sasser soon arrived, awakened at home by Latimore and Biggs. "When the mayor approached the same
officer that had been so rude to me and was going to order me arrested, he reached out and shook the mayor's hand," Latimore recalls. "I had a gun pointed at me and the mayor gets graciously received by the county officers?"
However he was received, Sasser wore out his welcome quickly. He saw Love in the back seat, head bloody and swollen like a basketball. Sick with a bad cold and already fed up with the ongoing feud, he approached Officer Peters and asked who'd stopped Love. "It was a routine traffic stop," he replied. "Bullshit!" Sasser bellowed. (In his report, Peters says that Sasser smelled of alcohol and that he would have arrested him but feared "repercussions"; Sasser says he'd taken Nyquil.) Peters told him he didn't feel comfortable talking to him without the chief there. No problem, the mayor said, dialing Duran, who was at home watching TV with his son, who was also ill. "You need to get your ****in' ass over here right now!" Sasser yelled. "Heads are going to roll!" Indeed, four days later, Latimore asked for Duran's resignation in lieu of being fired. Levey resigned the same day and has applied for a job with the Sheriffs Office, where he had been hired several years ago but failed to complete training. Duran says Levey told him he was leaving Pahokee because "they
might damage my reputation and keep me from going to the Sheriffs Office."
Sounding more disappointed than bitter, Duran says his own dismissal was a step backward for law enforcement in Pahokee. "They gave Robert Love the right to brag that he was able to get rid of the chief," he says. "If you go to Pahokee now, every time they go to make an arrest, they get rocks and bottles thrown at them." (Peters recently had his wrist broken by a bottle hurled at him.) "From my perspective, it hurts, because this was a community I grew up in. I came to that community to really try
to make a change." Assistant State Attorney Shepherd has refiled a few of the old charges against Love and, along with those stemming from the Friday-night beating, sent it all to the main courthouse in West Palm Beach. Love's response is typically hyperbolic. "You should have charged me for shooting the president if you wanted to just charge me with something!" he shouts. "But nothing sticks to the wall. You had nine months to make this stick, and you couldn't."
The way he sees it, going to trial (his next court appearance is scheduled for this week) will actually vindicate him. "Now the pot is full, and it's boiling over," he contends. "You know you got some bad polices on your hands!"

Funny you mention Pahokee… the present Golden Beach finance director M.C. came from a trailer park across the sugar cane fields in Pahokee when she was an accounts payable clerk under Pembroke Park Interim finance director Bonilyn Wilbanks. Shortly thereafter, Bonilyn was hired as GB town manager and hired Maria to run the GB finance department and Maria didn’t even have a degree. The mayor was aware of this because he is in charge of all hiring and became very close to the tag team… So you see its not only the police department that employs losers. Maria was recently reprimanded at a GB public meeting for writing the GB town manager a $25,000 check without the mayor or council knowledge. The mayor voiced his disappointed and asked how could this happen? Maria’s husband now works here in the public works department. Oh and in case you forgot, Bonilyn was the prior town manager that was fired because of the repercussions of calling her assistant mammy. published 11.27.06 Miami, FL -- A complaint that its town manager used a slavery term to refer to her black assistant has prompted Golden Beach to launch an investigation.

Bonilyn Wilbanks-Free, 57, who is white, called Barbara Tarasenko ''a mammy'' in front of other people last month, according to a memo sent from Councilwoman Camille Colella-Battista to other council members and the town attorney.

In an attempt to apologize, Wilbanks-Free then told her assistant she ''loved Aunt Jemima,'' Tarasenko said.

'As most everyone knows, a `Mammy' (including Aunt Jemima) is a derogatory persona invented by whites to represent the black female servant,'' Colella-Battista wrote. ``The Mammy epitomizes servility with exceptionally natural cheerfulness. For many blacks, this sort of sentiment is as ridiculous and demeaning as any pickaninny.''

Colella-Battista brought the matter up at this week's Town Council meeting, but it was immediately shelved.

''Because this could open the town up to legal implications, it is best that the matter go undiscussed until we know exactly what happened,'' said Town Attorney Stephen Helfman.

Instead, he recommended hiring an outside firm to investigate the complaint. Although he expected to choose an investigator this week, there was no discussion how much that person would be paid or how long the investigation would take.

Tarasenko, 55, told The Miami Herald that she has been working in an ''intimidating environment,'' since she began with the town four months ago. When she heard Wilbanks-Free's comments, it ``felt like someone kicked me in the stomach.''

She went home ''crushed and humiliated,'' thinking of her grandmother who earned money for the family rearing white children.

At Tuesday night's town council meeting, Wilbanks-Free read a statement acknowledging recent criticism against her but said she wanted to continue running the wealthy town of about 350 homes.

''I do wish to commend my staff that has been there for me and for their patient and supportive attitudes at times that I am sure were not the easiest for them,'' said Wilbanks-Free, who will continue working at the town manager while the investigation takes place.

She declined to comment to The Miami Herald, saying she'd explain her side of the story to the outside investigator.

Town manager since 2003, Wilbanks-Free also has been filling in as town clerk for about nine months. Council members fired clerk town clerk Cathy Szabo in March after Wilbanks-Free complained about her.

Two weeks ago, council members chose a new clerk, but that person refused to take the job after Wilbanks-Free failed to remove the woman's Social Security number from a council meeting agenda.

Before coming to Golden Beach, Wilbanks-Free had worked as the city manager of Clewiston. She has also worked as city manager of Oakland Park, interim finance director of Pembroke Pines, Virginia Gardens police chief and in the gang unit of the Broward Sheriff's Office.

Her comment to Tarasenko happened last month as the assistant was inserting a videotape into a VCR, according to Colella-Battista, who said Tarasenko cried when recounting the story to her.

'Ms. Tarasenko, who is a black woman, told me that she tried to make light of it, but was shocked and terribly hurt being referred to as `a Mammy,' '' the councilwoman wrote in her complaint.

Sounds like were back in Pahokee yall!

Mayor, great selection for Interim Chief. A Interim Chief with a criminal background to supervise other corrupt officers within the ranks. …sounds like a nice recipe for disaster, and embarrasment. Lets hire Robert Barrios back to complete the mob squad since Golden Beach Police is providing felons with a full-time job. Lets just recruit Felons from Dade County jail to work as police officers.

Have fun reading the transcripts of the wire tap

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1998-06-11 ... he-script/ (http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1998-06-11/news/tales-from-the-script/)

Tales from the Script

AAAComments (0) By Jim DeFede Thursday, Jun 11 1998

Poring over the transcripts of the secret tape recordings compiled by the Dade State Attorney's Office as part of its criminal case against former Miami city commissioner Humberto Hernandez, three things became clear:

First, Hernandez's former chief of staff, Jorge De Goti, has a vivid, albeit limited, vocabulary. Second, Evelyn Herbello deserves an Oscar for her performance as the government's undercover agent. And third, these tapes are far less incriminating for Hernandez than the public has been led to believe. A close reading of the transcripts reveals that they are probably not the smoking gun prosecutors need to guarantee a conviction in the vote fraud case.

First things first.

JORGE DE GOTI: MIAMI'S POET LAUREATE
Who knew that the commissioner's right-hand man possessed such an evocative speaking style? In this passage from a January 22 conversation between Herbello and De Goti, Herbello explains that she is worried because agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) are threatening to arrest more people in the vote fraud scandal. "Oh, please," De Goti says dismissively. He tells her he knows exactly what he is going to say when FDLE agents come knocking on his door:

"'Why don't you suck my left nut?' Shit, I'd tell them, 'Why don't you suck my left nut and prove it? Okay, ****sucker?' I'll tell them just like that."

Other memorable De Goti quotes culled from the tapes:
*"I have nothing to hide. I can shit on his mom, and on anyone's mom, because I've got nothing to hide."

*"They can charge me right now for being, ah ... for putting my **** out in the corner and [they can say] that I put my **** in the corner and I didn't! They can arrest me for anything!"

*"Where's that faggot brother of mine, shit, what a faggot! My brother is such a faggot."
*"I was on the line with the, with city hall, they say the news [media] are all [there], all the f*cking news, ****ing dumb mother****ers."

*F*ck you, you know, you know what I mean?"
*"These guys are f*cking scumbags."
*"Stupid f*cks! Hello?"
*"F*cking losers!"
*"F*ck!"

Not since Tony Montoya (Al Pacino's character in Scarface) has a Cuban-American been recorded using the f-word so many times. On one tape Herbello finally asks De Goti if his mother ever smacked him for cursing so often. "A whole shitload of times," he replies.
The most poetically profane passage (think haiku) is the outburst below, which comes as De Goti drives Herbello to her office. Without provocation, De Goti exclaims, "Oh, man, what an asshole, shit, motherf*cker."

EVELYN HERBELLO: A STAR IS BORN

On December 9 the Miami Herald reported that dozens of fraudulent absentee ballots may have been cast in November's city election. Many of those ballots, the newspaper noted, were linked to associates of Humberto Hernandez. Two examples cited by the Herald were the ballots of Evelyn and Rudy Herbello. Evelyn Herbello worked for the City of Miami and was once Hernandez's secretary. Rudy Herbello is a sergeant with the Miami Police Department. Although they own a house in West Dade, they both voted in the City of Miami through absentee ballots.

"There's no discrepancy," Rudy Herbello told the Herald at the time. "Does that mean I can't have more than one house? Some information you have is not accurate."
Evelyn Herbello was more curt, refusing to answer the Herald's questions. "You guys write whatever the hell you want anyway," she was quoted as saying.

Herbello's bravado was short-lived, however; soon she contacted the Dade State Attorney's Office and offered to cooperate. She claimed that her husband knew nothing about fraudulent votes and that the person who helped her register illegally in Miami was Jorge De Goti's father Jose.

"When I first met with her," recalls Joe Centorino, head of the state attorney's public corruption unit, "she was very vulnerable, very emotional. She was in tears. She came in to see me with her priest."

Centorino asked her if she would be willing to wear a wire. "I think she was very conflicted about that at the outset because she still considered these people to be her friends," he says. "But she agreed, and once she got into it she was more comfortable with it. She did a superb job, there is no doubt about it."

Centorino says even he was amazed at Herbello's ingenuity during her meetings with Jorge De Goti and Hernandez. "No amount of coaching could make her as good as she was," he marvels.

One series of meetings was particularly tricky. Prosecutors asked Herbello to meet with another city employee, Rene Alfonso, who they believed had also voted illegally. FDLE agents had confronted him once, and now they wanted to see what he would tell Herbello.
While Herbello pumped Alfonso for information, she also tried to turn him against Hernandez and De Goti. During their January 20 meeting, she told Alfonso that Hernandez and De Goti would try to lay the blame for the vote fraud scandal on underlings like them.
HERBELLO: I mean, who's going to pay for it? You and me. You think they're going to stand up for us? They are not going to do anything for us. They're just going to turn their backs. It doesn't matter, you cooperate with FDLE and with the state. And no matter what they say, what they call you after this ... Rene, let me ask you a question. If, uh ... because I'm waiting any moment for [FDLE] to knock on my door. If you sit down with Centorino, with the agents, and they ask you to cooperate.

ALFONSO: I'm going to tell the truth.
HERBELLO: You know, I understand, but...you're going to say the truth, fine. But I'm saying, cooperating, as uh ... what about if they ask you to tape conversations, would you, to clean yourself?
ALFONSO: To tape conversations?
HERBELLO: In other words, uh, you know, to try to cooperate with them, to try to get more evidence, more stuff.
...
ALFONSO: I would do what it takes to clean myself.
HERBELLO: And that's what you got to keep in your head.
...
HERBELLO: You tell your lawyer, "I want to talk to the state, I want to talk to FDLE --"
ALFONSO: Who's FDLE?
HERBELLO: "-- and I want to cooperate."
ALFONSO: No, no, I don't want to talk to them.
HERBELLO: Okay, "I want to --"
ALFONSO: Let's see what's coming up [unintelligible] with this case.
HERBELLO: "-- I want to cooperate with them a hundred percent, no matter what it might mean." Even though your attorney might be against it. Okay?
ALFONSO: Uh-hum.
Two days later, Herbello met with De Goti.
HERBELLO: Jorge, be careful, man. Don't move. Let me tell you something. You are talking too much to Rene.
DE GOTI: No, but I don't talk to him [unintelligible].
HERBELLO: Okay, listen. When he comes by, you make excuses, you tell him, "Listen, I can't talk to you." Because you know what he told me [unintelligible]? He said, "I'll do whatever I have to do."
That same day Herbello talked to Hernandez.
HERBELLO: I'm telling you right now and I told Jorge, don't trust Rene.
HERNANDEZ: No, I don't talk to him....
HERBELLO: Wait, his words to me were, "I will do whatever it takes [unintelligible] even if it means cooperating with the cops"

Centorino says prosecutors had a feeling Hernandez and De Goti did not trust Alfonso. By having Herbello accuse Alfonso of being a traitor, prosecutors hoped Hernandez and De Goti would come to trust her even more than they already did. "We were able to turn things to our advantage," Centorino explains, "by having her point a finger at him."

HUMBERTO HERNANDEZ: 30 HOURS FOR 30 SECONDS
Set aside for a moment De Goti's colorful use of language and Herbello's knack for undercover work. Are the tapes legally sufficient to convict Hernandez? With little doubt, the answer is no. "The tapes are what they are," says Centorino, "and we have significant evidence outside of the tapes. The tapes are a part of this case, but we will not be relying on them."

Hernandez is accused of taking part in a plan to conceal the vote fraud by creating documents -- lease agreements, rental receipts -- "proving" that people such as Herbello lived within the city when they voted last November.

In the case of Herbello, all that material was given to her before she began cooperating and wearing a recording device. In the months after, she tried to get Hernandez to admit he knew she had been given phony documents. But she never elicits a clear admission on tape.

Instead she receives lawyerly advice: She should not cooperate with investigators; if she is arrested, keep her mouth shut; if trouble looms, contact her own attorney immediately.
Hernandez's tone may sound disrespectful, especially when he tells Herbello that getting arrested is "no big deal," but it is hardly criminal, according to Hernandez's attorney, Jose Quinon.

The greatest value of the tapes seems to be as a propaganda tool for prosecutors. Given 30 hours of secret recordings, the public might naturally conclude that the vast majority of conversations involve Hernandez. They don't. The public might also assume that the principal subjects of discussion are ways to commit vote fraud or ways to cover it up.
They're not.

Many of the conversations captured by Herbello are irrelevant and will be useless in court. For instance, one of the tapes includes a section in which De Goti explains to Herbello why he doesn't like to swim in the ocean and the terror he felt after seeing the movie Jaws.
Before the transcripts were released, members of the local media, myself included, relied upon snippets of conversations contained in Hernandez's arrest affidavit and in material provided by prosecutors and investigators during a press conference immediately after Hernandez and others were taken into custody.

Last week I made the mistake of reporting that Hernandez referred to Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle as a "*****" and a "whore," and to the investigators in general as "****ing scumbags." What Hernandez actually said, according to the transcripts, was that callers on Spanish-language radio were branding Rundle a "*****" and a "whore." While he certainly didn't distance himself from those remarks, it is unfair to say Hernandez himself used those terms. As for the "****ing scumbag" comment -- that was uttered by De Goti. Other such examples are contained in the tapes.

On May 28 the Miami Herald reported, "Humberto Hernandez and Jorge De Goti joked about taking the '21/2' -- half of their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination -- if called to testify during the civil trial brought by former Mayor Joe Carollo. Tell half the truth, Hernandez joked."

In the transcripts released by prosecutors last week, Hernandez does not advise anyone to take the 21/2. Attorney Quinon says the comment was made on one of the tapes prosecutors were still transcribing. He reviewed a copy and provided his own transcript of the conversation. According to Quinon, it wasn't Hernandez who introduced the phrase "taking the 21/2." It was Herbello. "Nowhere in any of the tapes did Mr. Hernandez use the phrase '21/2' or approve anyone else using it," Quinon contends. "The phrase occurs three times in the tapes and all three times it is the state's informant, Ms. Herbello, who uses it."

According to a transcript prepared by Quinon, the comment first surfaced on February 18 in a conversation between Herbello and De Goti at city hall. Hernandez was not present. Herbello asked De Goti if she should testify in the vote fraud lawsuit brought by Carollo. She and De Goti had been called to testify at trial. Both had refused, citing their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. But now Herbello was wondering if she should "unplead" the Fifth and take the stand.

HERBELLO: You guys let me know what you want me to do then. If you're going to go and then say, "Well listen, I changed my mind now. Can we plead the 21/2?" [Laughs] It's like half the truth. [Laughs] Can I go and say, "Okay, listen, I did live here and look, here's the proof." Show 'em the lease, show 'em the papers, show 'em the receipts. You know what I'm saying?

De Goti and Herbello were then joined by Hernandez. After some small talk, according to Quinon, the following conversation took place.

HERBELLO: Are you going to let me talk? [Unintelligible] I will tell him you told me to unplead the Fifth. He said unplead the Fifth.
DE GOTI: "I'll take the 21/2," she said.
HERBELLO: [Laughs] I said I'll go with you and plead the 21/2. [Laughs]
HERNANDEZ: I'm going to my office.

Quinon says he suspects one of the investigators in the case told Herbello to talk about "taking the 21/2" in hopes of getting Hernandez or De Goti to repeat it themselves. "They knew that a phrase like that would be inflammatory," says Quinon, who has been unable to question Herbello directly because apparently she is in hiding. "I've had process servers looking for her for more than a week without any success."
Quinon says the way prosecutors manipulated "taking the 21/2" is indicative of how they have taken a great deal in this case out of context. In addition, the attorney claims there are other examples of what he calls prosecutorial misconduct involving Herbello. In court papers filed last week, he questioned the ethics of using Herbello to persuade Rene Alfonso to cooperate with prosecutors. "At one point," Quinon notes, "she goes so far as to tell Mr. Alfonso to insist on cooperating 'even though your attorney might be against it. Okay?'"

Over the many hours of taped conversations, perhaps just 30 seconds of discourse could doom Hernandez's defense. On February 5 Hernandez, his father, and Herbello discuss what might happen if she is arrested. Hernandez advises her to go by the house where she was registered to vote in the City of Miami and see the woman who is providing her with an alibi.

HERBELLO: So she remembers?
HERNANDEZ: You've got to go to see as well.
HERBELLO: To the house to see, and I'll decide.
HERNANDEZ: [unintelligible] because they're going to ask you --
HERBELLO: Yeah, inside.
HERNANDEZ: Remember, you don't have to talk, but they're going to tell you, "What's the color of the house?"
HERNANDEZ, SR.: Uh-huh, and, and, "How does the room look inside [unintelligible]?"
HERBELLO: Okay

Prosecutors believe there is only one reason Hernandez would tell Herbello to visit the house and study its color and design: He was part of the coverup and knew Herbello had voted illegally.

Mr. Mayor,

Corruption breeds more corruption. You really do think the public is stupid, don't you? You are all in for some more surpises and claiming ignorance will not make you immune because as the CEO of the Town of Golden Beach, you should have known, it's your job! There is more to come and the upcoming week shall prove to be a interesting one.

Acting Chief Herbello and Captain Barasoain,

No matter how hard you try to silence the few decent officers that remain in this department with idle threats of termination and discipline, we will NOT be silenced. You can either step aside or you too shall be steamrolled Chief. This is not your fight, stay out of it or it may very well be your last fight as a law enforcement officer.
Captain Barasoain your opportunities to do the right thing are running out. You have already lost your home and your health is visually diminshing. Do the right thing if not out of self respect for yourself, do it for your children will grow up without a father when you are in prisoned for most of their childhood.

Veni, Vidi, Vici

I came, I saw, I conquered.........................

The Anti-Mafia Federation Award Ceremony was a success. We thank all of you for your support. We are proud to announce the Golden Beach Mayor was awarded with the Dumbass Certificate of the year. Congrats are in order to the Mayor for supporting criminals within the Golden Beach town limits.

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r38/Garfield512/DumbassAward.jpg

This place will never hire a real police chief with cojones because then they wouldn't be able to control them like a puppet. :wink: :wink:

What's wrong Glen Zingado...stop pouting and being a cry baby
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj33/darvocetz/Baby-Cry.gif

Have you figured out that you will never find out who's the Mongoose, and it dont matter how much money you have.

Keep up with the crying...only house you will have is a two story trailor park home.
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h255/crazymommajomma/trailor.jpg

Love & Loathing
A routine traffic stop led to
Pahokeefs own Rodney King
incident. Too bad there was no
videotape.
By Wyatt Olson
published: May 05, 2005
Now
Hiring...
ADMISSIONS
REPRESENTATIVES
Call 954.237.2295
Pam Shavalier
Robert Love felt his heart race and palms sweat onthe steering wheel of his 1993 Ford Explorer as hereached downtown Pahokee just before 9:30 p.m. on February 25. The police squad car behind him, driven by a rookie cop unaware of who it was driving without his headlights on, had just flicked on its cherries. Love, a 48-year-old black man and former drug dealercum- political activist, knew that this could be it. This could be the confrontation in an ongoing feud that would lead to his demise — or the death of a small-town cop. Love's peculiar mixture of street savvy and religion led him to believe that the devil and God were struggling for control over his next move. The devil was pushing him to keep driving, to take the easy way out, to coast just far enough to get to the Rardin neighborhood a few blocks away, the safety of black downtown. "Come on downtown, Robert Love; let 'em shine the lights on you," the devil called. "C'mon downtown. Then when you get out, they ain't gonna do nothin'." Down in the 'hood, the cops wouldn't dare go too far. There had been too many times when the bottles and rocks had flown at them from the midst of a crowd. But Love's good side prevailed. He stopped on the deserted main street, beside an old storefront festooned with weathered planks nailed over the
windows. Here's where God would see to it that "everything'll get done," he believed. Ten minutes later, Love was facedown on the concrete, with one cop's arm wrapped around his neck and another officer raining down a flurry of blows. Even by the officers' own accounts, it was a brutal encounter.

Officer James Levey, a plump-faced 27-year-old, who is white, slammed his
retractable baton into Love's torso over and over. When the baton collapsed,
he punched Love in the ribs with his fist several times. Fearing that Love was
going to break his fellow officer's arm, Levey moved up and began punching
Love on the side of his head. Finally, Levey cuffed the stunned Love and
dumped him into a squad car. His head swollen like a macabre melon and the bone around his eye a shattered mess, Love moaned for medical attention from the back seat of the car. Colby Katz Robert Love stands beside the street where he was beaten by Pahokee
police this winter, the climax of a yearlong feud.Sharon Love Kinsler An encounter with police left Love bruised, swollen, and broken. He requires surgery to repair a shattered bone around his eye. Colby Katz Love, however, who requires reconstructive bone surgery on his face, was not the only casualty of the night. The incident had rapidly escalated from routine traffic stop to violent arrest to ham-handed police action, threatening to spill over into the city's troubled civic life. Police came within inches of throwing several city officials, including the mayor, into the slammer for asking questions. The city
manager, long a critic of the police, stumbled back into her car when a
deputy raised what she thought was a real gun at her — an incident for which
the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office is now investigating two of its
deputies. Within days, Levey had resigned. Rafael Duran, the native son
who'd returned home to run the Police Department, stepped down in lieu of
termination after a rocky, i6-month ride. At its most basic level, the bloody confrontation was the inexorable climax of a personal feud that consumed a handful of men. For more than a year, Love had been warring with the Police Department, claiming certain officers were corrupt and out of control. Love's confrontations with the cops had escalated,
and they'd arrested him several times for everything from disorderly conduct
to stalking. In a greater sense, though, the dispute — like a small-scale Rodney King
incident — was part of a struggle for control of the city, a clash of wills over
what the volatile town can and should be. Faced with numerous complaints about the city's police, Pahokee Mayor J.P. Sasser pressed the city manager to intervene, and the police
chief lost his job. There's something soothingly predictable about Pahokee. Trapped by
thousands of acres of sugar cane to the east and pinned against Lake
Okeechobee to the west, the town of 6,500 souls is so remote, it provides few
diversions. So its residents have a knack for providing their own
entertainment — particularly in Rardin, the black neighborhood east of
downtown named for the avenue that runs through its heart.
On a Thursday evening early in April, everyone's getting a jump on the
weekend, buoyed by the extra sunlight brought by the sudden switch to daylight-saving time. The blocks of Rardin are alive, as though a festival has commenced. Middle-aged men sip bottles of Corona and set up homemade barbeque grills on the curb. Other would-be merchants splay their wares on the sidewalks and empty lots: baseball cards, clothes, snacks. Old men play dominoes. Teens and young men and women - pegged by locals as "jitterbugs" for their constant motion — bop up and down the
sidewalks and around the handful of convenience stores on the main highway leading into town. Some sell drugs; some harbor grudges; quarrels are not infrequent.
Regardless of age, though, there's uneasiness between the inhabitants of Rardin and the police. A dozen so-something black men are drinking bottles of beer, talking and joking on a patch of vacant land on Rardin Avenue, a lot still littered with the remains of several mobile homes destroyed by hurricanes last fall. Parked on it are a van and a freshly washed and waxed Dodge Ram pickup, whose owner is barbecuing whole chickens and keyboard-sized racks of ribs on a smoke-billowing grill. In another hour, around 9, he'll sell baskets of either for $6 each. "The Pahokee Police Department is full of rejects," declares Ulrik Williams, a so-year-old who sports a red Nike skullcap and flashes several gold teeth as he speaks. Williams' assessment is not idle criticism but an observation that even police brass have acknowledged. "They get tossed from five other places and then come here," Williams says. A supervisor with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, Williams is still stinging from a run-in with the cops last fall, when he was on the way home from work in his white car. Unfortunately for Williams, the police were looking for the same color car involved in a shooting when they stopped him north of town.
One of the cops told Williams he was going to take him to jail because his "mouth is too smart," Williams says. "You mean to tell me, I'm 30 years old and you're going to disrespect me, and I'm supposed to say, "Yes, sir' and 'No, sir'?"
"No," interjects Adrian Walker, who's sitting nearby. "We ain't in the segregation days no more."Pahokee's police force has indeed long been a troubled one, partly because it's not a department that draws the cream of the crop. In June 2000, the city hired Gary Frechette as police chief, despite the fact that he'd been fired as a captain with the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office over allegations that he'd had an affair with a subordinate officer.
Two and a half years later, Frechette quit after accusing his top officer, Capt. Timothy Kenney, of selling department weapons for personal profit and using charity-drive money as a "slush fund" for officers. Kenney claimed that Frechette had misused a $13,000 federal grant. No criminal charges were filed against either, but the imbroglio left the Pahokee Police Department leaderless for months. Adding to the town's administrative disarray, Pahokee City Manager Jim Smith quit in February 2003
after less than three months on the job. His replacement, Vincent Finizio, recommended that the City Commission hire the Sheriffs Office to police the city. That idea went nowhere, but Finizio did: Under a hail of public criticism over his aggressive approach to code enforcement, he also left the job after only three months.
In the wake of these events, Rafael Duran, then a youngish 50, returned to his hometown to become police chief in August 2003. Lantern-jawed, with finely coifed graying hair, speaking softly in a coffee shop in the rough-and-tumble Westgate neighborhood of West Palm Beach where he started his career as a patrolman, Duran recalls his rise and fall as Pahokee's top cop. He worked for years with the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office, as everything from detective to hostage negotiator. He resigned in 2000 for an unsuccessful run for sheriff, after which he figured his time as a cop was over. Pahokee had always held a special place in his heart. He and his family had arrived there on
Thanksgiving Day in 1960, ten days after fleeing Cuba. His father had been in the sugar business in Cuba, so the move out west to the cane fields was a natural. Pahokee then, Duran recalls, was straight out of a scene from American Graffiti, busy streets and a citizenry that thrived on the agricultural jobs of those premachinery days.
But that era was long gone when Duran took on the top job with Pahokee's Police Department. Unemployment in town is a chronic plague, usually hanging around 20 percent. The rate of HIV/AIDS infection is among the highest in the state, and the town's major employer during the early 19905, the Everglades Regional Medical Center, closed in 1998. "I knew about all the trials and tribulations of Pahokee," Duran says. "Pahokee has been one of those communities where things are different. It does its own thing." Becoming chief, he felt, was a way of giving back to the town that gave him and his family a chance for a new life many years ago. What he found was not promising. "I came into a department that, really, had been decapitated: sergeants, lieutenants, and chief, literally gone. There was no morale. They had no sense of value."
Duran began rebuilding, instituting new operating procedures, bringing the department up to the standards of the Sheriffs Office. "It was a struggle from day one," he recalls. "Lack of funds, trying to recruit officers. As much as I hate to say it" — he sighs, carefully choosing his words — "the majority of officers there all had some sort of
blemish on their records — a bad driving record or been cut loose by another agency because they didn't meet the standards. I interviewed each person, and I'd give them a chance. I'd tell them, 'If you don't make it in Pahokee, you won't make it anywhere. This is your last-ditch effort. You've got to change who you are. You've got to see that something in your background made you go askew. Now it's time to change.'"
Duran's view of the city was analogous: It had gone astray, but with some serious attention, it could get back on the right path. "I always said that one of the solutions for Pahokee is to clean up certain areas," he says. "You can't keep this area clean and let this one go to hell. If you've ever been through what I call the 'night life' there, well, it's everything from drug-dealing to prostitution to stolen merchandise.
It's incredible what goes on in just a three-, four-block area, the Rardin Avenue area. The majority of calls in Pahokee were there — a good 75, 80 percent were from the Rardin area, the black community." Duran's policing philosophy would soon put him on a collision course with Robert Love. The irony of Duran and Love is that they grew up together decades ago in a Pahokee that was vibrant, even idyllic. Even then, though, a chasm existed between them because of their four-year age difference; Duran says he knew of Love only by reputation, while Love professes no recollection of the
future chief. With the approach of the new millennium, both swore they wanted to do their part to rebuild the town, to give back to the place of their childhood. The paths that led them to those proclamations of beneficence, however, couldn't be more different.
Sitting on a love seat at his girlfriend's apartment, which is filled with a bunch of framed portraits and is heavy on the zebra-stripe motif, Love talks about his life and the town he loves. In truth, Love doesn't actually talk; his voice is usually in the decibel range between a fundamentalist preacher in the pulpit and a Marine drill sergeant. He jumps up often to punctuate points and peppers his storytelling with frequent inquiries of, 'You know what I'm sayin'? Know what I'm talkin' about?" He's six feet tall, around 250 pounds, and although he has a bit of a paunch, his athletic build keeps him from looking heavy. (His son, Robert Jr., is a championship quarterback at the high school and enters his senior year this fall.) He's wearing a T-shirt that reads, "Got sum tail at Grumpy Gator" — referring to the lakeside eatery where he earns $400 a week as a cook. He comes from a family of farmworkers who harvested fruit and vegetables on the East Coast and returned home to Pahokee in between. Love gave up the fruit-picking life in 1976 at age 20 and moved to a much more lucrative line of work: selling drugs. He did well at the trade, helped by all the travel
and connections he'd made. "A lot of the children around here now be breaking into homes and going to jail," he says of modernday Pahokee. "They're crack babies. I know because I sold crack to their mommas. It ain't like I went across country and didn't know what I was doing. I was the one who started crack cocaine here because back in '79,1 was one of those young geniuses who knew how to cook up cocaine. "When I was selling drugs, I thought I was doing something positive. I thought, 'Somebody's gotta do something for them peoples who need it. Somebody gotta stay here to keep the town.'" He pounds on the glass-topped coffee table to emphasize his account, which is an odd mixture of confession, boast, and regret. "I know where I come from. It not like a damned rap star who write about what he ain't done."
By his mid-sos, he had been charged with everything from gambling to attempted first-degree murder before he was sent to federal prison in 1990 for trafficking drugs. "Did four years, two months, seven days, eight hours, and 37 minutes in federal prison," he sums up. "I promised the Lord and all his angels that I'd do more for my community after I got out than I did when I was selling drugs."
Love was a bit of a lost man when he was released, looking for direction. After police Maced a man during an overzealous effort to clear a Rardin street corner in 1996, Love says, he and other residents went to a City Commission meeting to complain. "There was a black mayor, but they didn't give a damn what was going on up here," he recalls. "The mayor can't even read the damned agenda!" Then the city barricaded a busy street block in Rardin, apparently in an attempt to stop loitering and traffic congestion.
Thoroughly irked, Love rounded up a couple of hundred signatures from residents saying they wanted the road reopened. "They said, 'Well, we could get more names than that saying it should stay closed,'" Love recalls. "It stayed blocked four months. I worked with the police and got a proposal to turn it into a one-way street, no parking. Since then, there hasn't been a problem."After that, Love started asking questions about how the city was being run, and he became a regular at commission meetings. "We had $113,000 in unpaid water bills!" he shouts. "Every day, I was checking this, checking that."
It was during those meetings that Love met J.P. Sasser, the current mayor, who back then was just a lifelong resident pissed off about his hometown.
"We both thought the city was dying," Sasser says. On the cusp of 50, Sasser is tanned and trim with a mostly gray crewcut. His heavy drawl is the kind no longer common to Floridians living south of Orlando. His parents moved to Pahokee in the 19303 and opened a tire shop, then a number of Shell gas stations, and, finally, auto parts stores. Sasser and his sisters took them over eventually, then sold the businesses in the 19905. He still owns rental properties in Pahokee and helps a friend run an auto body store in Belle Glade. He's fond of telling people that he's well off enough now to live anywhere he wants, and he does: Pahokee.
Sasser and Love were part of a citizens group that went out and found candidates to run against the sitting commission. Sasser ran and narrowly lost a commission race in 2001 and was preparing to do so again in 2002 when the group's candidate for mayor dropped out of the race for health reasons. Love insisted that Sasser run, and with both of them rounding up voters from their own neighborhoods, he won.
"The good ol' boy network was very upset," Sasser maintains. "That's the group that basically was pushing their own personal agenda and profiting by it at the expense of the city and the rest of the citizens. We turned the financial situation around by putting the money in the bank instead of in people's pockets."
It was not an easy transition for many, regardless of race. (The current commission consists of two white men, two black men, and one black woman.) "When change started coming, they screamed," Love says of the faction he calls "black panthers."
"They said the white folks gonna take this, take that. I said, yeah, Sasser's a white mayor, but what do I need a black mayor who's not doing the city any good?" When they attacked him for "working for a white man," he'd answer, "No, I'm working for the right man." Love's political influence isn't limited to Pahokee; he convinced County Commissioner Tony Masilotti to pony up $250,000 in county funds to build a children's water park in Pahokee. The city will name the park after Love.
Duran came on board as chief in August 2003, shortly before the City Commission hired Lillie Latimore to replace Finizio as city manager. A 58-year-old business consultant and former assistant to the city manager in Miami, Latimore was the first black and first woman to be hired for the position. Capable of a steely stare from behind her gold-rimmed glasses, she had a no-nonsense reputation.
Duran reported directly to Latimore, and the two immediately clashed. "In Pahokee's form of government, a police chief is a department head," Latimore explains in her understated manner. "Chief Duran came from an elected department, the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office, and they did things
differently." Part of their conflict arose from Duran's directive to officers to crack down on petty crimes. "I told my officers that if you see people gambling out there, you need to do something about it," Duran says. "If you see them drinking, open container, you need to do something about it. If you see them selling drugs, you need to do something about it."
As the police presence grew, so did citizen complaints of harassment. Latimore intervened in some cases. Duran got the message to cool it from commissioners and other townspeople in subtle ways, he says. "'Pahokee's always been like this,1" they'd say. 'It's a way of life. So what's wrong if we mosey around the streets with an open container?'"
In the wake of such hyperpolicing, it didn't take long for law enforcement to snag Robert Love. He'd been driving with a suspended license because of unpaid child support in North Carolina -- a delinquency he'd corrected without bothering to inform the Florida DMV. After several warnings to Love about his suspended license, Duran says, he told his officers, "You see him, you nail him."
On Easter weekend in April 2004, Love received several tickets for suspended license from Lyndean Peters, an imposing, 25O-pound, doughy-faced white cop with a thin mustache. He'd left the Belle Glade Police Department in 2003 while being investigated for "violating moral character standards," according to his personnel file. "From that point on, [Love] was against the cops," Duran says. "He'd antagonize you. After football games, he'd see us, lower his window, and give us the finger and yell, '*****-ass cracker mother****ers!'"
Love's jihad against the cops, however, wasn't sparked by narrow self-interest, he insists. A growing number of Rardin residents were getting fed up with the new, aggressive policing. "I had people at my house every week, from girls to 6o-year-old people, sayin' what the police is doing to them," Love says.
"How the police come to their house and show no respect for them. The chief couldn't do nothin' with "em!" Latimore says she cajoled Duran to find a community-relations role for Love involving the Police Department. "He'd been active in the community, and he wanted to remain that way," she says, adding that it was Love's way of "being made whole by being a part of something bigger." Asked about Duran's
reaction to her suggestion, she says, "The chief rarely reacted to anything."
The breaking point for Love came in January 2004, when Sgt. Lawrence Holborow Maced and arrested Love's half-brother, Christopher Simmons, who was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence, possession of cocaine with intent to sell, disorderly conduct, and obstruction of justice. Love contended that the charges against his brother were bogus. Nicknamed "New York" for his frequent boasts of working as a cop in the Big Apple, Holborow possessed the same beefy frame as Peters and, at 40, was one year his senior. Holborow was a holdover
from the Frechette days, and Love considered him to be the root of all evil in the Police Department, a bad cop whose attitude rubbed off on the new hires.
Indeed, Holborow's career has been an unimpressive hodgepodge of short stints at police departments and security firms. According to his personnel file, he was asked to leave the NYC Police Department in 1989 after working two years and resigned from the Miami-Bade County Schools Police Department "while being investigated for violating moral character standards." He pleaded guilty to reckless driving in Miami-Dade in the fall of 2002 and shortly after that began working for the Pahokee police.
Love began videotaping Holborow, Peters, and a few others during their shifts, surveillance that quickly grated on the cops. The opening salvo in the war between Love and police came just before
midnight on April 17,2004, when Love began taping Holborow and yelling things like "You're a bad cop!" and "I'm going to get you!" They got into a shoving match at a sandwich shop, and Holborow arrested Love and charged him with battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence, and disorderly conduct.
Love rejected an offer by the State Attorney's Office to drop the charges against his brother if Love would plead guilty to disorderly conduct - an offer that just reinforced his belief that his half-brother had been used by the police as a pawn. "I ain't pleading guilty to a damned thing I ain't done," Love says. "I don't give a damn if my brother don't get off." (Simmons eventually pleaded guilty to resisting with violence and possession of cocaine.) Love resumed his campaign while out on bail, showing up once with his video camera while Holborow interviewed a ly-year-old girl. By August, Love had managed to get himself arrested several times and faced more than a dozen charges, ranging from assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon ~ Peters says Love tried to hit him with his pickup — to stalking. In February, however, Robert Shepherd, an assistant state attorney in Belle Glade, dropped all the charges, though he retained the right to refile them within six months. The move came after numerous discussions between Shepherd and Duran, Sasser, the public defender, and others. "We were attempting to keep peace in the valley ~ that's how I'd describe it," Shepherd says. "I didn't want to see
a long, hot summer with constant problems of bottle-throwing and everything else in Pahokee. Naive as I may have been, I thought we might have been able to work this out."
Part of Shepherd's reluctance to prosecute, though, was a practical matter. Holborow, always the crux of Love's complaints, had been suspended indefinitely in November 2004 while he was being investigated for sexual misconduct and theft. (The inquiry is still open.) Duran directed his officers to leave Love alone, to not escalate the animosity between them. To Love, though, the dismissal of all charges against him and the investigation of Holborow could mean only one thing: He was right about police corruption and abuse of power in Pahokee. It was a conclusion declared vociferously by Love during commission meetings, and Love's targets were well-aware of his public assertions. The city had to step in, Love told the commission in ominous
terms during a meeting on February 22 ~ or else. "I'm telling you, there's going to be some killing and there's going to be some shooting, 'cause these polices, they are nothing but thugs, and you all know it," he told them. "And you all still sending them down there and messing with people's children." Fed up with the turmoil, Sasser declared that something had to be done about the Police Department or "we'll be looking for another city manager." Three days later, a rookie cop pulled Love over for driving without headlights. On that fateful February night, Love jumped out of his truck and met face-to-face with Dominick Hachigian, a new hire who didn't recognize Love. By both men's accounts, it began as an almost friendly encounter. After handing him his license, according to Hachigian, who is white, Love said, "I give you this much credit: You have more respect than the rest of them. I don't know where we can go from that, but the problem is when people give you no respect."
Indeed, Hachigian was simply going to give him a citation for a suspended license, then let Love walk home or telephone his girlfriend to drive the truck home. The matter likely would have ended there, but the rookie cop had called for backup, which turned out to be James Levey -- an officer that Duran had specifically directed to lay off Love.
Levey, however, seemed to be spoiling for trouble; he told Love he was arresting him, despite what his fellow officer had said. From this point, Love and the cops' versions of what happened diverge. Love describes an intentional, anger-driven beating, which began when Levey sucker-punched him with a whack to the shin with a collapsible baton, and he fell face forward. Hachigian then jumped on him and clamped down with a chokehold. Love struggled for breath through his windpipe, tugging at Hachigian's arms. As he tried to crawl under the squad car, Levey pounded him on the side of the face with the butt end of the baton. Levey, on the other hand, depicts a berserk man who dragged Hachigian 20 feet before the cop brought the wildly resisting Love down to the cement — a fall that smashed Love's face. They found a Baggie of marijuana in his SUV.
As the Fire Department and EMS vehicles arrived at the scene, parishioners from the nearby storefront Pentecostal Miracle Revival Center began gathering to watch. As it happened, Latimore and Allie Biggs, then the vice mayor, passed by the scene after eating dinner. Biggs recognized Love's car and called the mayor, who didn't answer.
Alarmed, Latimore got out of the driver's seat and approached a sheriffs deputy at the perimeter of the scene. "I'm Lillie Latimore, city manager of Pahokee," she told him. "What's going on?" He reacted "like I said a bad word," she recalls. He ordered her back to her car. "You don't understand," she said, "I'm the city manager, and I have a responsibility." That's when the deputy beckoned for another officer and as Latimore recalls, he told him to arrest her. The second deputy tilted "a very large gun" at her, and she almost stumbled back to her car. Latimore learned later that it was a pepper-ball gun, but at the time, she believed a real firearm had been pointed at her. (The actions of the two deputies are under investigation by the Sheriffs Office, which would not comment on the case.) Sasser soon arrived, awakened at home by Latimore and Biggs. "When the mayor approached the same
officer that had been so rude to me and was going to order me arrested, he reached out and shook the mayor's hand," Latimore recalls. "I had a gun pointed at me and the mayor gets graciously received by the county officers?"
However he was received, Sasser wore out his welcome quickly. He saw Love in the back seat, head bloody and swollen like a basketball. Sick with a bad cold and already fed up with the ongoing feud, he approached Officer Peters and asked who'd stopped Love. "It was a routine traffic stop," he replied. "Bullshit!" Sasser bellowed. (In his report, Peters says that Sasser smelled of alcohol and that he would have arrested him but feared "repercussions"; Sasser says he'd taken Nyquil.) Peters told him he didn't feel comfortable talking to him without the chief there. No problem, the mayor said, dialing Duran, who was at home watching TV with his son, who was also ill. "You need to get your ****in' ass over here right now!" Sasser yelled. "Heads are going to roll!" Indeed, four days later, Latimore asked for Duran's resignation in lieu of being fired. Levey resigned the same day and has applied for a job with the Sheriffs Office, where he had been hired several years ago but failed to complete training. Duran says Levey told him he was leaving Pahokee because "they
might damage my reputation and keep me from going to the Sheriffs Office."
Sounding more disappointed than bitter, Duran says his own dismissal was a step backward for law enforcement in Pahokee. "They gave Robert Love the right to brag that he was able to get rid of the chief," he says. "If you go to Pahokee now, every time they go to make an arrest, they get rocks and bottles thrown at them." (Peters recently had his wrist broken by a bottle hurled at him.) "From my perspective, it hurts, because this was a community I grew up in. I came to that community to really try
to make a change." Assistant State Attorney Shepherd has refiled a few of the old charges against Love and, along with those stemming from the Friday-night beating, sent it all to the main courthouse in West Palm Beach. Love's response is typically hyperbolic. "You should have charged me for shooting the president if you wanted to just charge me with something!" he shouts. "But nothing sticks to the wall. You had nine months to make this stick, and you couldn't."
The way he sees it, going to trial (his next court appearance is scheduled for this week) will actually vindicate him. "Now the pot is full, and it's boiling over," he contends. "You know you got some bad polices on your hands!"
This article is worth the public reading, pay special attention to the information contained about LP and his past practices at Belle Glade and Pahokee and just a reminder this outstanding Officer (LP) sits and awaits for his day in court for a long list of charges at GBPD along with his cronies. I have one burning question.....Where and why is JB hiding

[Stacey]

[QUOTE=;1647098] I am from New Zealand and I simply can not fathom how your city Mayor even remotely has any involvement with a person who is or has been associated with the criminal justice system, regardless of their standing now. From all I have read, the suspect was so overtly and clearly anti Police. Anyone who is anti Police is someone that needs to be on the radar. The Police are there to serve and protect the community. The Mayor and Council are there to listen and do what's best for the community. There should be a working relationship between the two establishments but it sounds to me like the Mayors 'friendship' has put a wedge between how the departments should work and there is clearly an intimidation factor happening here as the suspect has used their friendship with the Mayor over the heads of the Police Department and the fact the Mayor has allowed this to happen is insanity to me.
One term comes to mind when I think of the relationship the Mayor has with the suspect.......getting got!
The Mayor needs to be reminded of their position within the community and siding with a criminal over the Police Department is a vote of no confidence in my mind. How can you trust a person who would choose a criminal over the city's Police Department.

[Unregistered]

"he who snorts lines together, stay together."