Ticket Blitz Faces Drivers Today

Ripped from the Headlines The Sheriff's Office is letting us know they are going to try to track you down!!!!!

By Macollvie Jean-Francois South Florida Sun-Sentinel

BROWARD COUNTY - Drivers beware: Starting this morning, Broward Sheriff's Office deputies and state troopers will be out in force, conducting a ticket blitz to stop aggressive driving in western Broward County, a Sheriff's Office spokesman said.

The joint operation to find and stop aggressive motorists, and infractions like failing to "Move Over" or wear seatbelts will go on for four days, Sheriff's Office spokesman Mike Jachles said in a news release. Squads will be on Interstates 75 and 595 and on the Sawgrass Expressway from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Thursday, the officers will patrol those highways from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.The need for such an operation is underscored by a crash Thursday that left Sheriff's Deputy Tony Morales hospitalized, Jachles said. Morales, a member of the Regional Traffic Enforcement Unit, was making a traffic stop on Interstate 95, with his emergency lights on, when driver Jessica Schwartz, 23, plowed into his cruiser.

Officials called the crash a "classic example" of a driver failing to obey the state law requiring motorists to move over one lane when they see emergency vehicles on the side of the road. Morales had participated in a recent event highlighting the need for drivers to give authorities a wide berth on the road.

Also on March 27, the multi-agency anti-aggressive driving taskforce that issued 189 tickets during a these "Blitz on Aggressive Drivers" a few weeks ago in western Broward will again be out in force, Jachles said. This time, "Operation BAD" officers will work on I-95 from Davie Boulevard to Hillsboro Boulevard, using a variety of unmarked cars and motorcycles as well as marked patrol cars.

Drive safely. Don't become a statistic. Respect the roads, your fellow drivers, and the community you are a part of. What if they gave a ticket blitz and no tickets came? What if everyone just obeyed the speed limits all the time? Wouldn't we all be safer and smarter?

Sentinel Reports on South Florida Gang Crackdowns

Good article on gang crackdowns in South Florida in today's Sun-Sentinel.

Maybe we lead sheltered lives in comfortable ghettoes. Don't see much gang activity on East Las Olas. Read that police have documented a hundred arrests in a few months in Broward. I thought Pembroke Pines was a home to one of the fastest growing communities in America not 22 gangs. I thought it was where Uncle Sam lived in a Century Village.

But if you look at the above photo of Broward Sheriff's Sgt. Dan Fitzpatrick who heads BSO's Gang Task Force, this does not look like a smiling matter. It's a stark photo by Sentinel photog Michael Laughlin from today's paper. Here's the article.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-flbgangs0215sbfeb15,0,5082155.story


Remember that operation, 'scared straight,' where teens are taken to jails and courts to see what happens to them when they are apprehended and caught? Thinking that maybe some more of these gangs need to be exposed to that. A day in Judge Paul Backman's courtroom, watching sentences of 20 and 25 years get doled out in 'Rock Court' might sober anyone up. Maybe. If the kids care. If they understand. We just don't live in the world of 'West Side Story,' anymore, do we Maria?

Dunkin Donuts Donates to BSO Crime Programs

Okay, so the picture has nothing to do with the story. But Bo Hitchcock will like it. Maybe he even took it. And here's a shout out to a great guy hoping he is doing well. For those who do not know, local crim defense attorney shoots photos for Playboy, around the world.

Anyway, all of us were shocked by the stunning murders and robberies at Dunkin Donuts in November. Makes you wonder how bad things are getting financially in towns and cities across America. Is this a precursor of things to come? Kids in trucks pulling up to Circuit City chain stores, and using chains to pull down the awnings and bust in? Right on Federal in Broward and Dixie Highway in Dade? Brazen smash and grabs in jewelry stores in the middle of the day, kids armed with automatic weapons? Armed holdups of groups of customers in restaurants? There is nowhere anywhere anyone can ever be safe. It is almost becoming safe to work in a bank or convenience store. You can never guess how or when terror will strike.

So a word of thanks for to the Dunkin' Donuts chain, for making a $15,000 donation to crime prevention programs as a way to thank law enforcement for arresting the men charged with robbing shops in Broward and Palm Beach counties in late November. On the other hand, only 15K from a multi million dollar chain that size?

The chain's Community Foundation will also donate $10,000 to Broward County Crime Stoppers to support the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program operated by the Broward Sheriff's Office Youth Intervention and Enforcement Division.

And hopefully they will do something for the families of the wounded and slain employees, scholarships, something...That is the kind of partnerships CEO's should forge, not ones on private jets....

The formal presentation will be Monday at a shop in Wilton Manors, near Fort Lauderdale. To make back their money, all Donuts will be five hundred dollars each that day. No problem, Rothstein is buying.

Strong Thoughts on Pre Trial Services

'We should not put a contingency fee on freedom'

By Norm Kent

I said this site would be straightforward about the issues impacting justice in the courthouse. This is about the many issues generated by the pre trial services controversy.

We have too many people in our jail. Many of these are Broward County citizens awaiting trial who simply cannot afford bail. Either they do not have the premium for the bondsman, or they cannot access sufficient collateral to facilitate their release. Thus, they sit in jail not for their crimes but for their lack of money. That, my friends, is a crime in itself.

If we want to live by the principle of ‘equal justice for all,’ we should not put a contingency fee on freedom. To our credit, a coalition of concerned courthouse personnel, from the sheriff to the public defender and from the courts to the state attorney’s office, have established a process which enables poor people to get out of jail, too.

We call that process the pre trial services division. The Sheriff operates and the county underwrites this supervisory program to monitor indigent inmates released from custody pending trial. Their duty is to ensure that court ordered special requirements of their release are satisfied. It might mean electronic monitoring, drug testing, or counseling, but whatever it is, the plan satisfies the conscience of the court that the freed person is not presenting a further threat to the community. It is individually tailored and stringently managed.

On one hand, it is a costly pain in the ass. The county spends $6 million a year on the program. It is much easier and cheaper for taxpayers to just have inmates bond out and pay bondsmen a fee. But as I have just noted, not everyone can afford to do that.

So what does the county get out of that $6 million, then? First, it delivers a get out of jail card to the poor as well as the wealthy. Second, it lowers the populations in an already overcrowded jail. Third, it makes those jails more manageable and safer. Fourth, by enabling thousands to leave the jail and enter pre trial, it saves the county no less than $44 million a year in the costs of incarceration, which is ten times the cost of pretrial.

Bondsmen do an admirable job of getting defendants to the courthouse on time. They make a decent living. There are even methods that the county could employ to use them to help reduce the jail populations by allowing the county to collateralize and insure shaky bonds. However, the thought of denying inmates access to freedom to enhance that prosperity is abominable and shocking. The thought of allowing them to lobby county commissioners to endorse a proposal which restricts a pretrial services program can only be viewed as self serving.

The county commissioners heard from a lobbyist for the bondsmen this week, and altered the program to make it more palatable for them, while attempting not to restrict the rights of inmates. Nevertheless, the revelations that the lobbyist for the bondsmen is also the very same lobbyist the county commission uses and retains for its own work is a transparent conflict of interest. The county commission should have previously enacted regulations barring anyone that they employ separately on other projects from soliciting or lobbying them on new ones. Their laxity created an inexcusable conflict of interest. They should have refused the lobbyist the opportunity to lobby.

Absent that, in an abundance of caution, and in effort to avoid the appearance of impropriety, they should have refused to endorse the proposals of that lobbyist. They should have explored alternatives which professionals in the criminal justice system have been proposing for months, some of which still can protect and enrich bondsmen while preserving the rights of inmates to access pre trial release.

In summary, even if the bondsmen had a valid argument, it is impaired by the unclean hands their lobbyist brought to the table. Even if the county had a legitimate reason for altering the rules for the pre trial supervision, it is impaired by the unclean hands their votes cast upon the presentation of a lobbyist they separately employed.

The end result of all this is that the county commission comes out of it looking tainted, the bondsmen greedy, the sheriff supplicant, and the system of pre trial release compromised by political chicanery. There is no other way to see it. It is embarrassing and inappropriate.

Welcome to Broward County.

Congratulations to those columnists and journalists in the local media who have pushed this story from the back pages to the limelight, including Mike Mayo, Dan Christensen, and Bob Norman.

Judge Lebow's Ruling Must Be Affirmed

Appellate Courts Should Back Judge Lebow’s Ruling
By Norm Kent

In an emergency relief motion filed late last week, the Florida Attorney General's Office claims Circuit Judge Susan Lebow overstepped her bounds when she punished two prosecutors for listening to taped phone conversations between murder defendant Luis O. Martinez and his attorney. How did this day come about?

About two years ago, local papers ran a story that law enforcement, with all its spare time, wanted to have its staff spend their evenings listen to phone calls from inmates at the county jail. Apparently, COPS and Larry King were not enough for them. Notices were dutifully posted and the cruel process of intervention and invasion into the sanctity of attorney client privilege was commenced under lawful pretenses.

The right column sidebar of this blog features an eye-popping video of Andy Griffith and Opie. Let me tell you why it is there. The episode was about a bank robbery in Mayberry. The suspect was in custody. Opie tried to help out Andy. Thus, before the defendant’s attorney met with his client in the jail, Opie secretly placed a tape recorder to listen in on the conversation. After the lawyer left, Opie retrieved the tape recorder to play it for Andy. Watch what happens when this Sheriff is presented with that evidence.

Ladies and gentlemen of the law, of this courthouse, there are few things as sacred as the nature of the attorney client privilege. When I showed this tape to Chris Grillo, the defense attorney in this case, he remarked that he wished he had it to display for Judge Lebow during his closing arguments on this sorry episode.

We are talking about a fundamental right of jurisprudence, an essential ingredient of the adversary system, a cornerstone of justice. Too many years of Ronald Reagans and forfeiture acts have jaded us. We need to return to the Zen of truth.

Martinez, 43, is on trial for the slaying of a Lighthouse Pointe man in 2003. The trial was near completion when the judge halted it in October. She acted after Grillo claimed state attorneys had listened to privileged conversations mistakenly taped at the Broward jail during the trial. The conversations were between Grillo and Martinez.

The defense sought a dismissal, the most serious sanction. Judge Lebow said no, that is too much. Instead, she chastised the prosecutors for inappropriate conduct and disqualified the entire State Attorney's Office from trying the case. It is nicer than I would have been. I would have flogged the prosecutors and one used to share space with me in my law office.

I have not followed the case so closely as to understand whether the discovered evidence was consequential or immaterial. While that is relevant in fashioning an appropriate judicial remedy, I am more concerned in those procedures which set into motion the techniques that now 'inadvertently' but invariably invade the privacy of inmates and their attorneys. Think about it. There must already be some probable cause and proof of guilt to detain them; some credible evidence which warranted their incarceration. Otherwise, theoretically, they would not be in jail

Let the State of Florida then prove their case with the evidence which warranted that detention in the first place. You see, the incarceration is already a penalty that is being exacted by the State. Seek not to enrich your prosecution by using the tools of chicanery and deception. Seek to find ways instead to protect the integrity of those first ten amendments we call the Bill of Rights.

If I were on the appellate court that would be the message I would send to the State Attorney, the Sheriff, and law enforcement. In doing so, I would affirm Judge Lebow’s ruling, which is the least innocuous penalty that should be exacted for ‘inadvertently’ trespassing on the Constitution of the United States of America.

Protestors Win Case Against GOP

A Ramsey County, Minnesota trial judge has now entered an order and dismissed a prosecution for insufficient evidence against protestors who demonstrated during the 2008 Republican National Convention. The defendants were charged with obstructing the legal process, disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly and blocking traffic. Over 300 were arrested, their personal properties and protest pamphlets seized, and their civil liberties denied.

The LaCrosse, Minnesota Tribune reports that St. Paul City Attorney John Choi asserted that "by wearing masks and working together, the protesters presented some evidentiary problems for prosecutors." Representing the defendants, lawyer Jordan Kushner, who has lectured at the National Criminal Defense College Trial Practice Institute -- said the case "'showcased how police had no basis for the vast majority of arrests made during the RNC.'”

It does not matter whether it is Seattle for the WHO protests, Minnesota for the RNC, or Chicago 1968 at the Democratic convention. Yes, Mayor Daley we remember you and your police riot. Great new animated video out about it available on amazon.com, entitled 'The Chicago Ten.'

Cities and governments, and mostly police departments, locally or in Dade, fail to grasp that protesting is an American entitlement to be protected, not a privilege to be granted.

Protesting is a civil right; a fundamental, sacred, constitutionally protected right, which is the essence of a free America. Protesters should not need protection from the police. They should be protected by them.

Here is a hometown example of a case where law enforcement may not have only abused a citizen's rights, but laughed about it afterwards. Attorney Elizabeth Ritter was the victim. :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxRj4icrSww