Given the internal row that currently afflicts the Miami-Dade PBA, approaching this highly contested election for control of the bargaining unit, one must begin to question whether or not fissures have formed within the leadership over management strategies and priorities.

For example, have members ever deigned to question the PBA's use of their legal defense fund? This money comes from members' dues that go to fund the overall budgetary needs of the organization. I wonder how many members know that hundreds of thousands of those dollars are going to Hartman & Cornely, PA, to defend a group of rogue cops who for a very long period of time engaged in a frolic of their own, participating in a years-long pattern of organized criminal activity using official authority to perpetrate their crimes and enrich themselves in so doing. They are charged with Racketeering for God's sake!

These are not cops who in a lapse of judgment made a tactical error and are now being targeted as political scapegoats; these are criminals dressed as police officers who clearly entered the profession with the singular goal of profiteering from it. And the PBA is spending large sums of your dues money to defend these men who have forever stained the badge. Think about it. Is this what you want from your PBA? Demand accountability, and you shall see for yourself the gross misuse of your dues.