The Miami Dade Commission on Ethics and Public trust fines City of South Miami Vice-Mayor Josh Liebman.

Back in October we wrote about City of South Miami Vice-Mayor, Josh Liebman, campaigning for one of his friends while on the dias.  You can see him babbling on here in this video endorsing his friend Donna Shelley...

Mr. Liebman's plug for his friend clearly violated several different laws and last week, the Ethics Commission saw it fit to punish Mr. Liebman for his actions.  From their press release...

South Miami Vice Mayor Josh Liebman agreed that there is Probable Cause he violated the “use of public property” section of his city’s Conflict of Interest and Code of Ethics Ordinance when he endorsed a candidate for office in his official capacity during a televised and web-streamed city commission meeting. To avoid the time and expense of litigation, Liebman reached a settlement to the complaint (C 13-41), by entering a plea of No Contest and paying a fine of $250 and investigative costs of $500, which was approved today by the COE. His support for candidate Donna Shelley in last month’s election came during the “commissioner’s comments” portion of the October 15, 2013, city commission meeting. The Code prohibits the use of publicly-supported property to the advantage of the official or any other person.  Vice Mayor Liebman was speaking from the dais in a meeting that was broadcast throughout the city and is maintained on the city’s website, which is considered a public resource.

I suppose the punishment fits the crime in this instance, no children or animals were hurt, so I slap on the wrist and $750 in fines and costs seems more than appropriate.  

It's refreshing to see the Ethics Commission get something right for once after years of disappointments and free passes for the politically connected.  With that said, back to our regular programming tomorrow...

It's a matter of perspective.

Really, it is a matter of perspective.  Two different people can view the same situation in two completely different ways.  Let's cut to the chase today and compare the two accounts of what happened that fateful night back in 1986 at 2:26 am when a future detective gets pulled over by a sworn officer for having an improper exhaust and see just how different their accounts of what happened really are.

We'll start with what the suspect claims had happened in a letter that he sent in as part of his job application to the City of South Miami PD.  I'm going to skip the part about why and where he got pulled over as there's no dispute about that, here we go...

"While reaching for my driver's license and registration, I realized I had left my wallet at my friends car earlier that day, so I turned around and told the officer I did not have my drivers license with me but I did have my registration and handed it to him."

The cop said..

"...he stated that he didn't have his license with him and began looking for the registration and began looking for the registration in a black zipper bag." 

Ok,  so the subject said he left his wallet at his friends house but then after arresting the subject, the officer finds of all things, THE SUBJECTS WALLET...

"Search of wallet produced a Florida restricted drivers license #____________ which was altered by changing the expiration date with D's year of birth from 67 to 63."

HOLY SHIT!

Not only did the police officer find the subjects wallet that was allegedly left in a friends car, but he also managed to find the subjects drivers license as well!

Let's keep going, in his letter the subject goes on to say...

"The officer then lit the inside of the vehicle with his flashlight and noticed there were three passengers in the vehicle and also noticed a small empty vile (sic) lying inside the vehicle.  The officer pointed to it and asked me to get it for him.  As I handed it to him, I informed the officer that the vile (sic) did not belong to me and that I had never seen it before."

Ok, it sounds plausible, let's see what the officer saw...

"...he began looking for the registration in a black zipper bag.  This officer saw in the bag and observed a small brown glass vial containing a white powder residue suspect cocaine (sic).  Search of D's black bag further produced an envelope containing job cigarette papers and D's insurance papers, court records in D's name."

Wait a minute now, the subject says the vial of cocaine was on the floor while the cop said it was inside a black zipper bag along with a bunch of other crap that was undeniably the subject's!  Unless then we are to believe that the subject asked the fellows riding in the car with him to hide "their" vial of cocaine inside his "black zipper bag" that contained all his personal stuff.  Honestly, WTF?

Obviously, someone's full of shit.  I'll reiterate, it's not a matter of a young kid making a mistake and getting caught with some drugs in his car, it's a matter of a "man" several decades later deliberately misleading a police department about a mistake he made decades before.  Big difference, especially when the position he's looking to fill requires the utmost honesty and integrity and to uphold the laws of our state.  It's more than a matter of perspective, it's about deliberately misleading someone.

More coming, until then, have a great weekend!

Maybe it's all a misunderstanding?

While the detective who lied on his employment application about his previous drug arrest never admits why he forgot to tell the police department that he's currently working for about his past criminal history, he does make a fairly novel attempt at explaining away the whole incident in a letter I found the other day.  Take a look for yourselves...

Now, go back and compare that narrative to the police report we posted a few days back, take a good look, we'll discuss in detail tomorrow.

If you claim you've never been arrested on your job application, how do you explain this?

We left off a few days ago discussing a police detective who claimed that he had never been "arrested, convicted, or plead no contest to any violations of the law, police regulation, ordinance, traffic violations which resulted in fines or(sic) of more than $100.00" on his job application for the police department where he's currently employed.  We also raised the issue of the detectives integrity being compromised because of his dishonesty on his job application.  Since we made that post, our readers have been running wild in our comments section with all sorts of different comments ranging from arguing about the legality marijuana to allegations of the subjects of my recent posts being some sort of vendetta.  Whatever.

With that said, it's time to take a look a the police report from the incident that the detective forgot to mention on his job application, take a look and as always, click on the image to enlarge...

So from what we're able to glean from the report, the subject gets pulled over for some sort of improper exhaust on his car, the officer pulls the guy over then asks him for his drivers license and registration at which time he pulls out a black zippered bag and starts looking through it for his registration.  While he was doing so, the officer spotted a vial with some cocaine in it then decides to arrest the subject.  It gets better, once the officer starts searching through the bag, he finds some "job cigarette papers" aka "rolling papers" and a altered drivers license where the date of birth was changed from 1967 to 1963 which coincidentally would have made the subject 23 years old instead of 19, IE the perfect fake id to use to buy alcohol.  At the end of the day, the subject was then transported the the Dade County Jail where he invariably spent several hours in a holding cell after being booked.

The question that begs to be asked though, is considering how traumatic this experience must have been and the impact it must have left on the subject, how could he have forgotten all about it when it came time to fill out his employment application for a job as a police officer?

We're going to dig deeper into this story next week, in the interim, for all our readers that have been going on and on about marijuana and who's smoking and who's a pot head etc, please tell us, what exactly were those rolling papers found in the subjects vehicle used for?

So you lied on your job application...

Like the title says, so you lied on your job application.  Under normal circumstances, this may not be that big of a deal.  After all, whats a little white lie on a job application?  Maybe you added a few years of work experience on your resume, made bogus claims about your education or even made up a job to fill in long spells of unemployment.  No biggie, right?  How about lying about past problems with the law?  I can understand why people would be reluctant about disclosing prior arrests and convictions, after all, as an employer, I certainly wouldn't want to hire someone with a questionable past.

So what if you have had past brushes with the law?  I guess if you lie on your employment application, you run the risk of the prospective employer checking your background, maybe you get lucky and they don't and perhaps you get the job?  That may work for some, but what if the job you want is in law enforcement?  Shouldn't you disclose everything about your past, even if it involves an arrest and a conviction?  After all, if you want to be a cop, isn't it a prerequisite for a cop to at the very least be honest, especially on an employment application?

Here's what were getting at, take a look at this screen shot of a particular detective's employment application (click on the image to enlarge)...

Now, clearly where it says "Have you ever been arrested, convicted, or plead no contest to any violations of the law, police regulation, ordinance, traffic violations which resulted in fines or(sic) of more than $100.00?" the applicant checked off "NO".  What we're going to find over the next several days is that indeed the individual who filled out this employment application was indeed arrested, convicted and plead to a violation of the law.  Furthermore, the individual who filled this application out was subsequently hired and made a detective.  

Now, you all tell me, how can any of the cases that this fellow put together during his career or any of the testimony he may have given for those cases be worth a shit when he perjured himself at the very get go when filling out his employment application?  This situation seems like a steaming pile of shit to me.  Even worse, if I were a defendant in a case put together by this fellow, I'd want my attorney to know about this situation with his employment application as it shows that from the very beginning of his career, the subject cop was dishonest.

It ain't easy writing this blog...

Throughout the last several years, we've often struggled with the subject matter of this blog.  Whether the story was about a crooked politician, dirty cop or other fraudsters that haven't been found out yet, it's tough writing about these people.  Each and everyone one of them has a family that for the most part may have nothing to do or even know about the nefarious schemes our subjects have been involved in yet by outing these folks we invariably do great harm to the people around them not to mention outing whatever crooked business they're engaging in.  So it's tough to write about some of our subjects over the years knowing the kind of collateral damage that will occur as a result of our work, nothing drove this point home more than watching the friends and family of then City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur during her federal mortgage fraud trial.  It tore me up to watch them have to sit through the trial and ultimately watch her get convicted and sent off to jail, regardless, in my opinion, considering her position and how she abused her position, it was a story that needed to be told.  Perhaps she should have thought about her children before she engaged in a ten million dollar plus fraud?

Regardless, we're now working on a story involving a dirty cop who thinks nothing of manufacturing false police reports, fabricating evidence, etc.  When our story comes out, this cop is sure to loose his job and more than likely his law enforcement certification.  I've held off on putting this story together considering the impact it will have on his family, who more than likely have nothing to do with this guy being a piece of shit.  When considering the consequences of outing this guy, you have to take into account that this guy thinks nothing of writing bogus police reports and fucking with people simply because he can.  A dirty cop?  I think so.  Does he deserve to be outed?  What do you guys think?

FPL backed candidates in yesterdays South Miami Elections get TROUNCED!

The title says it all and our friends over at Eye On Miami said it best...

Incumbent South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard won reelection to a third term last night, with a galloping 62 percent of the popular vote. 1897 ballots were cast, representing 26 percent of eligible voters. Running for city commission, former mayor Horace Feliu -- a stand-in for Florida Power and Light -- lost to Walter Harris by a 20 point margin; the second time Feliu has been turned away by South Miami voters.

They left out Gabriel Edmund also trounced Donna Shelly for the commission seat that Valerie Newman vacated.  Congratulations to Mayor Stoddard, Commissioner Harris and Commissioner Edmund.

With that said, we were fortunate enough to obtain this video from the Newman/Feliu campaign headquarters that was taken just after the results came in...