AN EDITORIAL:
The decent, law-abiding citizens of Tampa have been placed under siege by their own police force. Among other offenses, local cops are known to have concealed citizen complaints filed against fellow officers; falsified official police records; negligently discharged firearms (causing serious injury to innocent bystanders); engaged in sex with prostitutes while on duty; committed perjury, etc., etc., etc..
But that's not the worst of it. In addition to such run-of-the-mill misconduct, malfeasance, and incompetence, the Tampa PD, in cahoots with Tampa's arrogant political establishment, is enforcing a city ordinance that has been ruled unconstitutional. Evidently, the City Council and the Police Department simply have no regard for the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the 1st Amendment.
Uphold the Law of the Land and Defend the Constitution? Forget about it-- if any Tampa cops ever swore such an oath, it seems that they've long since broken their word. Their primary function now is to enforce every idle whim of the city council. It's "Sieg Heil", as they march off to fulfill their orders.
The targets of this unconstitutional pogrom are among the most powerless, marginalized, and defenseless members of society. Who better for publicity-seeking politicians to pick on than topless dancers? The tactic is guaranteed to garner widespread media attention, and gain the politicians increased name-familiarity among the electorate. It's a very sordid and coldly calculating scheme.
If, after reading the stories below, you would like to express your concern regarding the deplorable condition of law-enforcement in the city of Tampa, visit the website of Bob Buckhorn, the Tampa City Councilman who is spearheading this oppressive campaign.
If you receive any response, or if you would like to discuss this issue with other members of Copwatch.com, visit our discussion section devoted to this topic.
Here's a few real-life vignettes depicting the situation in Tampa:
- TAMPA'S ADULT-ENTERTAINMENT ORDINANCE RULED UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
- TAMPA CITY COUNCIL AND TAMPA MAYOR IGNORE JUDGE'S DETERMINATION THAT ADULT-ENTERTAINMENT ORDINANCE IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. COPS CONTINUE TO MAKE HUNDREDS OF ARRESTS UNDER COLOR OF THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAW.
- EDITORIAL FROM THE "ST. PETERSBURG TIMES" REGARDING TAMPA'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL ADULT-ENTERTAINMENT ORDINANCE.
- PUBLIC DEFENDER SUES THE TAMPA PD FOR REFUSING TO RELEASE "INTERNAL AFFAIRS" RECORDS REGARDING POLICE MISCONDUCT.
- TAMPA PD CONCEALS INTERNAL AFFAIRS DOCUMENTS: CITIZENS' COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS ARE PLACED IN A SECRET FILE THAT IS VIRTUALLY INACCESIBLE.
- DEFENSE ATTORNEY AGREES NOT TO PURSUE SANCTIONS AGAINST TAMPA PD FOR IMPROPERLY WITHHOLDING INTERNAL AFFAIRS RECORDS, SO LONG AS RECORDS ARE TURNED OVER.
- CITIZENRY AGHAST TO LEARN THAT THE TAMPA POLICE DEPARTMENT HABITUALLY CONCEALS COMPLAINTS LODGED AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS.
- INNOCENT MAN, WATCHING TV IN HIS HOUSE WITH HIS 2-YEAR-OLD SON, IS "ACCIDENTALLY" SHOT IN THE BACK BY TAMPA COPS. SETTLES SUIT AGAINST CITY OF TAMPA FOR $30,000.00. This was not an “accident”- the cops INTENTIONALLY fired their guns at his house. This is inexcusable negligence and incompetence.
- TAMPA COP ALLEGEDLY FALSIFIES REPORT; TAKES THE 5TH IN MURDER INVESTIGATION, THEREBY ALLOWING MURDER SUSPECT TO AVOID CONVICTION.
- TAMPA COP RESIGNS AFTER ADMITTING HE HAD SEX WITH A PROSTITUTE WHILE ON DUTY. DA claims there’s insufficient evidence to prosecute, EVEN THOUGH the cop ADMITTED to the illicit conduct, and the prostitute, a POLICE INFORMANT, whose testimony is presumably adequate to convict any other john, stated that the cop purchased her sexual services. Why wasn’t the cop prosecuted? It’s merely yet another example of prosecutorial bias in favor of cops. Typically, such decisions are a proactive quid pro quo arrangement-- the DA helps out the cops by granting them virtual immunity from prosecution, and the cops help out the DA by providing “helpful” testimony (i.e. perjury) throughout their careers. (See our Crucial Reforms section for further details on this all-too-common problem).
- TAMPA COP RESIGNS AND IS CHARGED WITH PERJURY AND PETTY THEFT. FORMER COLLEAGUES ON THE POLICE FORCE SHIELD HER FROM ADVERSE PUBLICITY, PERHAPS BECAUSE SHE USED TO BE MARRIED TO CHIEF’S MAIN SGT.
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”Less than a week after two dancers were convicted of violating the city's lap dance ban, a Hillsborough County Court judge ruled the ordinance unconstitutional.
”The ruling is a stinging defeat for the city in its continuing fight to curb Tampa's adult entertainment industry. Industry folks, however, had always maintained the ordinance was illegal.
”Hillsborough County Judge Elvin Martinez said the so-called 6-foot rule is unconstitutional ‘on the grounds that it is over broad, and on the grounds that the city's stated purpose for enacting the ordinance is not furthered by the ordinance.’"
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”Hillsborough County Judge Elvin Martinez dismissed all lap dancing cases that were pending in his court. The cases involved defendants with last names beginning with the letters C, I, K, R and T, which is how cases are assigned to his courtroom.
”In an order signed Tuesday, Martinez declared the ordinance unconstitutional and ‘unpractical,’ saying it is too broad and allows selective enforcement. He also said lap dancing does not put public health or safety at risk.
”‘Statutes or ordinances cannot be so overbroad that they prohibit constitutionally protected conduct as well as unprotected conduct,’ wrote Martinez, a former longtime legislator. ‘They also cannot be so overbroad they make common conduct criminal and provide the police with unfettered discretion to arrest.’ ***
”The four-page opinion adds further confusion to the lap dance issue. Prosecutors say they will appeal the ruling to Hillsborough Circuit Court. Meanwhile, appeals already are under way incases in which other judges ruled the ordinance constitutional. And two dancers convicted last week are expected to appeal. Tampa police say they will continue to make arrests.
”Martinez found that the ordinance results in arbitrary enforcement because the city acknowledges that an innocent bystander, such as a soda vendor making a delivery, would not be guilty if he or she got within 6 feet of a nude dancer.
”The judge also found practical problems with the ordinance, ‘considering the realities of movement’ inside a strip club. For example, someone could be guilty for passing by an unclothed person on the way to the restroom.
”Furthermore, he said, the city failed to prove that the ordinance ‘furthers a substantial government interest.’
”The city's evidence does not show that the use of adult establishments in Tampa causes an increase in criminal activity or poses a health risk, Martinez found.
”Prosecutors, however, believe the ordinance is sound.
”’Lap dancing has never been a constitutionally protected act - it's as simple as that,’ said Assistant State Attorney Richard Leal, chief of the misdemeanor division. ‘It doesn't involve speech.’
”But if defense attorneys have their druthers, three other misdemeanor judges who handle cases involving defendants whose names begin with other letters will follow suit.
”Lawyer Mark Rodriguez, one of six attorneys who filed the original motion to dismiss the charges against their clients, said he plans to file another motion this week, asking the other judges to issue stays in their cases until Martinez's order is appealed.
”The move is needed so that ‘no more women and customers are wrongly convicted,’ he said.
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”The fog has begun to lift in Tampa's lap dancing war. In customarily blunt fashion, Hillsborough County Judge Elvin Martinez has dismissed all lap dancing cases pending in his court, finding the ban unconstitutional and a recipe for government abuse. The city should halt any further enforcement until higher courts clarify the matter.
”No other official in Tampa has had the guts to call the six-foot ban between dancers and clients what it is: a cheap political ploy that tramples the rights of consenting adults under the masquerade of public safety.
”Martinez pointed out that the law makes a criminal of anyone within six feet of a naked person in a dance club. Patrons walking to the restroom, or vendors delivering soft drinks to a club, are subject to arrest. The judge was not comforted by the city's argument that it targets only dancers and patrons.
”’This selective enforcement,’ he wrote, in a four-page ruling, ‘provides the police with unfettered discretion to arrest.’ The local law is so broad, the judge found, it threatens to punish "dancers and patrons who are engaging in otherwise constitutionally protected First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association.’
”Tampa Mayor Dick Greco and the city council pooh-poohed those concerns when they sought to make headlines in 1999. So transparent were their motives, the city didn't even bother to prove that lap dancing caused harm to society by spreading disease or increasing prostitution. "The findings," Martinez wrote, "must not be based upon evidence that simply allows the government to speculate that secondary effects exist."
”Martinez dismissed charges for nearly three dozen defendants who were lucky enough to have their cases assigned to his court. But hundreds more in Hillsborough are awaiting trial. [Isn’t there a huge “Equal Protection” issue here?] Given the constitutional issues involved, and the disparate way the various judges are handling the same types of cases, the city, in all fairness, should refrain from making further arrests. It would show bad faith with Martinez's ruling, and could increase the city's liability should the ban be rejected by the higher courts. Tampa police, after all, have plenty to do. This isn't Mayberry. Society won't collapse if cops leave the nude bars and patrol our streets.”
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“…people who ask the Tampa police Internal Affairs unit for investigation files on a particular officer are not shown the A-File unless they know to ask for it by name.
“Some defense attorneys and advocates for open government are calling the A-File an easy way for the Tampa Police Department to hide dirty laundry. Critics say the fact that so few people have seen the file, which is kept separately in the Internal Affairs unit, because they didn't know to ask for it calls into question whether the agency can be trusted to police itself.
“Attorney Frederick Mann said he asked for all Internal Affairs investigations on a former officer who shot his client's son to death. The city gave him 19 cases, Mann said. However, Mann said he later learned that he never saw a case in which the same officer was investigated for hitting a prostitution suspect so severely that she ended up in a hospital emergency room. That case was kept in the A-File.
“‘If you're Joe Citizen, and you've been beaten or man-handled by a policeman and you want to find out what kind of record he has, you want to get everything,’ Mann said.
“‘I assumed I got everything’ from Tampa police, said Brian Donerly, a criminal defense attorney and a former assistant public defender in Hillsborough County for 14 years. ‘I didn't know there was something they automatically hold back.’”
- ”In preparing for trial, [Attorney] Mann said, he asked the Police Department for all Internal Affairs investigations on [Officer] Slatton. However, he said he was never given records that showed Slatton was accused of severely beating and injuring a prostitution suspect three years before he [fatally shot Mann’s client’s son] Sexton.
”That record was in a little-known drawer called the A-File, where the department's Internal Affairs bureau keeps some residents' complaints against officers. A Times report last week revealed that people are not shown the A-File, which is a public record under Florida law, unless they know to ask for it by name.”
- ”The disclosure that Tampa police maintain a trap-door file on citizen complaints is even more alarming. Complaints in the A-File, as the list is called, are kept separate from Internal Affairs files on particular officers. That creates a black hole for abusive and unprofessional cops. It is also a sneaky way to undercut public control.
“The ramifications go far beyond a single meeting, or a single file. Commissioner Ed Turanchik said the closed meetings helped prevent him from saying something stupid in public. Police Chief Bennie Holder offered a similarly lame excuse. ‘I'm not stupid,’ the chief told Times reporter Katherine Shaver. ‘If I wanted to skirt the public records law, I wouldn't put things in writing.’ Good Lord.”
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“Gordon, a career U.S. Army sergeant, was in the living room of his Gandy Gardens home on June 9, 1998, when a hail of bullets was fired by police at Michael Lentz, a teenager who armed himself after suffering a mental breakdown and fleeing to Gordon's south Tampa neighborhood.
“Eight officers fired a total of 53 rounds at Lentz as he brandished a gun behind Gordon's home at 4701 W Wyoming Avenue, reports show. The 17-year-old, reported to be suicidal after being released from Charter Manatee Palms Hospital, was struck seven times.
“As the gunfire started, Gordon, now 41, covered his son, Cameron, with his own body to keep the toddler from being hit. A total of 13 rounds fired by police hit Gordon's home, including one which lodged in his back.
“Gordon was treated at Tampa General Hospital and released a day later. Wardell said Gordon escaped a crippling injury by a half-inch, the distance the bullet that ripped into him missed his spinal cord.”
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”[Officer] Delgado is accused of falsifying the report after the police cruiser she was driving July 1 collided with a suspect's car. She claimed the suspect had backed into her cruiser. Several Tampa police officers, including Delgado's partner, claimed Delgado had slid the cruiser into the suspect's car.
”No one was seriously hurt, but the fender-bender triggered a controversy that derailed Delgado's 10-year police career and helped undermine an unrelated first-degree murder trial.
”Because of a pending internal affairs investigation surrounding the crash, Delgado claimed her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination last year and refused to testify during the murder trial. The decision caused a mistrial.”
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"’If he hadn't resigned, he was looking at discipline ranging from a reprimand up to dismissal,’ said Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin.
“In November 1999, a woman who is a convicted prostitute and an informer for Tampa police told investigators that Reagan met her while on patrol at Tampa Presbyterian Village. [Officer] Reagan, 32, worked an extra-duty patrol in full uniform and marked patrol car at the complex, near downtown. The woman said Reagan gave her $20 to give him oral sex, which she later did at her home on E 28th Avenue.
“As soon as the allegations came to light, an Internal Affairs investigation began, Durkin said. The investigation continued into this year. Meanwhile, Reagan continued to train other officers and receive favorable evaluations for his work.
“On Aug. 29, Reagan admitted having sex with the woman and resigned a few days later.
”The case was turned over to the State Attorney's Office, which did not find enough evidence to charge Reagan or the prostitute criminally.”
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”[TPD Spokesman] Hughes said [disgraced ex-officer] Gary, who had been an officer in the District I office, resigned quietly in December in the midst of an internal affairs investigation. That investigation is still under way, and Hughes won't talk about it.
"’Even when an officer resigns, they are still required to complete the administrative investigation,’ Hughes said. (By the way, didn't police Chief Bennie Holder defend dropping the investigation into former Deputy Chief Ken Taylor because he retired? Just wondering.)
“So why didn't TPD say anything about the arrest? (The St. Petersburg Times got an anonymous tip.).
"’As far as we are concerned, she is a citizen,’ Hughes said. ‘There's no reason for us to publicize the minor arrest of a citizen. [Oh really? Then why do so many PD’s issue press releases with the names and photographs of accused johns?] If she was active duty, we would have written something about it.’
“Surely TPD's silence had nothing to do with the fact Gary used to be married to Sgt. John Bennett, executive officer and right-hand man to Chief Bennie Holder.”
Do you know of any other problems with the Tampa Police Department or the Tampa political establishment? If so, we'd love to hear from you. Please submit your stories HERE.
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