MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

EDITORIAL

MIAMI BEACH CITY DEPARTMENTS SAID TO BE RICO OPERATIONS

Fired Fire Inspector David Weston Refers to Racketeer Arrests March 6, 2013 Fired Miami Beach fire inspector David Weston said he believes he was terminated two days after several arrests of corrupt building department employees in March of 2008 simply to render him guilty by spurious association. He thinks the reason he was fired was because he had refused to shut up about millions of dollars of missing monies due to the undervaluation of construction projects and reduction in permitting fees by the citys Building Department. He characterized the Building Department and its Code Division as well as the Fire Department as racketeer influence corrupt organizations, referring us to several arrest warrants and affidavits signed by state and federal law enforcement agents. Numerous city employees have been arrested over the past few years and charged with such state felonies as unlawful compensation, bribery, money laundering, and racketeering. Federal criminal complaints lodged in April of this year against city employees were for extortion and narcotics trafficking and not for violations of 18 USC Chapter 96, the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. However, RICO, designed to conveniently prosecute racketeering leaders for a pattern of behavior, might indeed be relevant if it can be shown that officials, such as the department and division heads, or for that matter the city manager, city
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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

attorney, or city commissioners and the like, are controlling, running, or using city departments and divisions or the city itself as criminal enterprises or devices. We have no doubt that the very city officials who urged anyone having information about public corruption to contact the F.B.I. after the most recent arrests are themselves persons the feds would naturally be interested in given the fact that the great bulk of the nations corruption occurs at the top levels of organizations in the private and public sectors. Furthermore, an examination of the history of public corruption in Florida would show that the bulk of apprehended miscreants were mature individuals who had been in public service for some time and took advantage of the trust they had accumulated during their tenure to eventually rob the unsuspecting public. During a recent investigation of a magistrates fine that was dismissed by the city attorneys office, City Attorney Jose Smith offered to walk freelance journalist David Arthur Walters over to the F.B.I. Walters initially construed Smiths suggestion as a threat to retaliate against him for wondering out loud exactly what law empowers a city prosecutor to dismiss a city magistrates judgment in favor of the city, the prosecutors client, and why any city prosecutor would want to do so in the first place. Smith soon changed his tune: He cited an ordinance that he himself had drafted for the commission to pass, allowing the city manager and city commission to write off or reduce fines imposed by the magistrates, and said the city manager had settled for a small sum, on advice of the city attorney that the notice to the defendant had been defective, after the defendant threatened to appeal to the circuit court. It appeared that the appeal, however, had not been filed within the time period allotted by court procedures, so it would have stood in absence of judicial review. Smith also took care to contact the editor of the SunPost, one of the publications that Walters submits articles to, to derogate and impugn him, although Walters had no intention of submitting a related story to the SunPost at the time. Unfortunately, retaliation against whistleblowers, complainers, activists, self-appointed inquisitors and independent journalists had been virtually the modus operandi of City Manager Jose Boss Gonzalez longstanding administration. The City of Miami Beach has a weak mayor, part-time commission, virtually medieval system. The unelected city manager, accorded with broad discretion by the city charter, is the strongman or kingpin who rules the city along with his Ring who controls the departmental fiefdoms. The city boss, posing as an apolitical professional, is subservient only to the will of the majority of the commission that has the power to remove him. The commission itself is dominated by rotating representatives of the vested interests. Gonzalez was retired after a dozen years by a pseudo-opposition on the commission after residents outraged by F.B.I. proceeded with demonstrations in front of city hall organized by retired lawyer Frank Del Vecchio, a distinguished South Beach personality who during his flight school days at Pensacola had the pleasure of flying jet fighters with Donald Rumsfeld. An interim city manager considered to be part of the old administration problem as budget director is expected to be replaced by an insider,
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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

the outsider candidates named by the recruiting firm having been immediately rejected by the commission. Walters did not accept Smiths invitation to be walked over to the F.B.I. because it is a very long walk from city hall to the F.B.I. office. Furthermore, one would have to stand in line for quite awhile after arriving. But Walters did take advantage of the fleet-footed Apollonian Internet to contact the feds, because Smith told him during the Weston inquiry that he, the fearsome city attorney, was not playing games, and on two occasions implied that Walters, who has lived in South Beach on and off since 1970 and continuously since 2004, would be soon be long gone from Miami Beach, to parts unknown, perchance to write novels. Perhaps only a moron would believe the city attorney was going to have Walters disappear according to the practice in certain Latin American countries and Americano locales such as Calumet City, but one never knows given Miami Beachs nefariously romantic history. Smith, incidentally, called Walters a moron for proposing that reductions in fines and fees be accounted for and regularly reported to the public. Walters may very well be of diminished mental capacity or a complete fool (morus) for believing that the city would accept generally accepted accounting principles and immediately proceed to account for and regularly report the reductions right away, not only of fines but the amounts Weston has referred to as missing monies. ##

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