Category: Florida Justice

The Curious Case of the Unarrested Councilman

Imagine how you would feel if you got a get out of jail free card you could use in real life. However that would make you feel, it must be similar to how Riviera Beach councilman Doug Lawson feels.

Lawson and his fiance recently visited the Marina Grande, where security footage apparently caught them in what’s been described as a “shoving match.” When the fiance was questioned about it she said there wasn’t really any shoving per se, she had simply had too much to drink and Lawson was preventing her from getting behind the wheel. Perhaps she had a sudden, uncontrollable urge to drive.

Another bit of security footage from the building’s elevator showed the Councilman wrapping both arms around his fiance’s legs and pinning her to the elevator wall. This particular example could be domestic violence or it frankly could be something else.

The officer who arrested Lawson on domestic violence charges was then fired. And then he was reinstated. The city manager tried to explain this away by saying that the officer never told him if he filed paperwork with the state attorney, and if the officer had, they never would have initially fired him. Because as we all know officers are normally required to keep city managers informed of every detail of every arrest.

But this only gets weirder and shadier as it goes on. The councilman was later ordered to be…unarrested. Which, as most of us know, isn’t a thing.

Then the fiance holds a press conference where she announces to the world that on the day in question she was very drunk and the Councilman was just doing what was necessary to stop her from driving. In the elevator.

Then, the police union rep tells the press that the officer who filed the arrest report was fired for blowing the whistle on how unusual it was for a councilman to be “un-arrested.” But it’s OK now because the officer has been reinstated?

But don’t worry, Riviera Beach is on it. They’ve already hired a consulting firm to investigate all this. Who wants to bet that the consulting firm magically finds no one did anything wrong?

In Tampa, You Could be Homeless Even if You’re Not Guilty

“Criminality is not a protected class.” That is the seemingly sensible statement made by Tampa mayor Jane Castor in an article published by the (admittedly lefty) Tampa Bay Times about a police program that is designed to promote crime free apartment complexes, or something. It’s very efficient and a great deal for landlords. The police arrest someone, notify the suspect’s landlord of the arrest, and if the landlord evicts all these people from their building their apartments get to be labeled as certified “crime free.” Maybe they also get a sticker or something.

Of course, there’s the minor issue of the FHA and fair housing. You know, that whole civil rights thing, and the whole “innocent until proven guilty” and just the judicial branch in general. But minor details, really. What’s important is that you get that certified crime free designation (which is probably also a fair housing violation)!

I’m being a little melodramatic, but I feel it’s appropriate here in order for the reader to understand the voices of those who, though they are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime, find themselves in danger of eviction over it.

Not only that, but the FHA guidelines for prospective tenants with a criminal history are pretty clear, and that’s for people with a criminal history. In other words, people who’ve had their day in court and been convicted. Certainly people who haven’t even had their day in court yet and have just been picked up by Tampa police have at least the same rights. But currently, the city of Tampa clearly considers them guilty until proven innocent.

This policy of notifying landlords when their tenants are arrested is likely a violation of fair housing, and publicly advertising apartment buildings as “crime free” certainly is. For those unfamiliar, there is a concept in fair housing law called “steering.” Steering is when a prospective tenant or buyer or a home is told or given strong signals about where to live based on what kind of people live there. It’s redlining without the marker and the map. You just tell people that they really don’t want to live in that neighborhood over there because that’s where all the crime is and you know what kind of people commit all the crimes around here and really you should buy in this neighborhood instead.

So the long term effect of this is to artificially label places as “crime free” by evicting people who commit crimes, even before they get to stand before a judge. If you want to go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole or just look at the demographics of who gets arrested and convicted over minor crimes in Florida, you could argue that the program is actually a method of targeting and removing certain ethnicities from certain neighborhoods. Even if that’s not the intent (it almost certainly isn’t), that’s the likely result.

By following this policy, Tampa is violating the spirit of fair housing laws and it should stop doing so immediately. Deciding who is a criminal is a job for the courts, not for a landlord. If someone is found guilty of an offense serious enough that they can be said to pose a danger to the community, that’s what jail is for. Making a defendant homeless before they see their day in court is inhumane, stupid, and probably a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Criminality is not a protected class, but being an American citizen means being given due process. Jane Castor never struck me as someone who would forget about the rights of the individual, but her endorsement of this program clearly shows she has forgotten about them here.