The benefits of having a police chief as a friend...

A few weeks back we discussed how embattled City of South Miami police chief, Orlando Martinez de Castro, abused the federal NCIC database to look up people for apparently no good reason.  Specifically we mentioned to people that the chief looked up, one of which was prominent attorney Joe Klock...

Mr. Klock didn't respond to our request for a comment, but shortly after we made our blog post, Mr. Klock responded to the New Times when they covered our story and said...

This is an invasion of privacy and a violation of a person's Fourth Amendment rights," Stoddard says. "When the chief of police is doing this, we have a serious problem."
Adds Klock: "I think the police chief believes he is above the law and he can do anything he wants. The people who continue to employ him can solve the problem by firing him."

Very well.  Now let's move on to the second person that the chief looked up, leader of the nonprofit Cuban exile organization Brothers to the Rescue, Jose Basulto...

Rather than get ignored with an email request for a comment, I decided to call Mr. Basulto and see what he thought of the chief running his name through the NCIC system,  I certainly wasn't expecting the response that I got!  When I got Mr. Basulto on the phone he told me that Mr de Castro was a good friend and that he used the NCIC system to look him up as a favor to see if there were anything going on that he should know about!

WTF?!  Really?  A friend asks a fucking police chief to run his criminal background to see if there's anything that he needs to be made aware of?!

No shit!  I won't even get into how outrageous this situation is, I'll leave it up to you guys to deal with it in the comments section...

Did you have a chance to check out the City of South Miami NCIC logs?

So did you guys have a chance to look at the City of South Miami PD NCIC logs?  Admittedly, I've been too busy to take a close look, but I did scan them briefly.  Here are some names that stood out for me...

Joe Klock

On February 3, 2011 the chief asked to look up the criminal history of a fellow named Joseph Klock, this name stood out as I was listening to him talking on the radio the other day about one of his clients, Matthew Greer.  If I'm not mistaken, this guy the chief looked up is none other than super lawyer Joe Klock of RASCO KLOCK PEREZ & NIETO!  Why the hell was the chief looking up Mr. Klock?  Perhaps Mr. Klock was involved in some sort of criminal activity that the chief was looking into?  Or maybe Mr. Klock was retained by someone to go against the chief or the city of South Miami and the chief just decided to take a peek into Mr. Klock's past to see if there was some way he could screw with him?  Interesting.  If any of you guys have any idea what went on here, drop me a note via Silent Sender or simply leave a comment, either way your anonymity is guaranteed.

On to the next name that caught our eye...

Jose Basulto

If you can decipher that chicken scratch, it looks like it says Jose Basulto.  Could that be Brothers to the Rescue Jose Basulto?  Hero to the Cuban exile community Jose Basulto?  The aviator that risked life and limb to save Cuban rafters throughout the 90's?  The same Jose Basulto whose organisation's purpose is to... 

"support the efforts of the Cuban people to free themselves from dictatorship through the use of active nonviolence".  

If so, how ironic that Mr. Basulto's background is being checked by a fellow named Castro!

Perhaps I'm mistaken, maybe there's more than one person running around South Miami with the same names as the fellows we wrote about today, but then again maybe not.  We'll have to dig a little deeper into this NCIC log stuff and see what we come up with.  Tomorrow we'll talk about all those redactions that come up in the logs and see whether or not they're legal.