I'm beginning to think that the folks over at the City of South Miami don't wan't to cooperate with me.

Is it just me or do the people over at the City of South Miami's clerk office not want to cooperate with me? I've sent over a few public information requests to the city clerk, the first few were ignored and most recently I got this response when I requested any and all email communications between City of Miami director of human resources Latasha Nickle and the police chief's wife, Ileana Martinez de Castro or any representatives of Airways Auto Tag Agency...

Regarding the Public Records request below for any and all emails between Latasha Nickle and Iliana Martinez de Castro there are no messages that come up on a search with that criteria. The PRR also requests that any emails from employees of the agency be included however without specific names that search cannot be performed. I have no information on the agency or it’s employees.

Thank you
Emily

That's strange, either I was vague about the scope of my public information request or there are no emails between the parties that I identified in my request or worse, the emails that I requested do exist and someone over at the City of South Miami is trying to keep anyone from seeing them.

So what's the big deal you ask about some possible emails between a human resources director and the police chief or his wife?  A quick search reveals a very interesting fact about Ms. Nickle, it seems that in addition to her job as a Human Resources director over at the city, Ms. Nickle is also an attorney who's office address is listed as the City of South Miami's city hall...

Now there certainly is nothing wrong with a lawyer being the director of Human Resources although I'm sure this isn't the job Ms. Nickle had in mind when she graduated from law school.  So what's the point of all this?  I'm guessing with a lawyer on staff over at the city, especially one that's in such close proximity to the police chief, Orlando Martinez de Castro, that there's a pretty good chance that the chief may use Ms. Nickle to do legal work that has nothing to do with the city or any city business.  After all, imagine the convenience of having a lawyer at your beck and call just a few steps away from you free of charge to you?  It's certainly a possibility.   What remains to be seen though is whether or not the chief actually had Ms. Nickle do any legal work for him and if he did so whether or not there were any email correspondences between them, if indeed there were then these emails would be subject to a public information request under Public Records Act, Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes.


We'll give the public information request another shot, perhaps this time we'll word it a bit differently and maybe we'll get lucky, if we do though then things are going to get a lot worse for the police chief...