As we all know, last Thursday the City of South Miami commission adopted a resolution that stated that former police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro's employment contract was voided when he took on the position of acting city manager. A couple of hours later city manager, Steven Alexander, issued a memorandum appointing Major Rene Landa acting police chief since he concluded that he "had no police chief in place".
Shortly after the commission meeting, de Castro's son, Christopher Martinez de Castro, confronted me and accused me of "writing bullshit about his family, wrecking his family, putting his family through hell, etc" and ultimately concluded his tirade by calling me a "bitch ass nigger" then tried to physically attack me. That's all well and good, its understandable that the friends and family of the de Castro clan would be upset, after all their patriarch just lost a formidable position within the community as well as six figure salary, in part because of my actions.
This must be a traumatizing experience for the former chief and his family, I can only imagine. Somehow though, I know what it feels like to be publicly humiliated and accused of all sorts of wrong doing, I know the shame that is visited upon a family after being written about in the local media for your alleged nefarious deed. I suspect that the three tellers that were framed for stealing tens of thousands of dollars from de Castro's wife's tag agency have some idea of what this feels like as well, accused of wrongdoing, humiliated in public, thrown out on the street with no job, etc. How about Warren Papove? I suspect he knows how it feels? Taken away from his home and thrown into detention for months on end then deported, for what? Some bullshit immigration charge trumped up by some bogus code enforcement violation that the former chief de Castro dreamed up?
I could go on and on with stories of people getting screwed by former chief de Castro, the one distinction that Mr de Castro enjoys when compared to these other folks is that he wasn't falsely arrested, striped of his rights then had to fight the criminal court system for months if not years to clear his name. Next time the members of the de Castro clan are sitting around thinking about how unjust everything that has happened to them is and what an asshole I am for writing about their misdeeds, think about the people that you've fucked over and just how bad you've altered the course of their lives.
Consider that the girls from the Airways Auto Tag case were/are facing 190 years in prison for the crimes that you've accused them of committing, consider how you racially profiled and victimized prominent attorney Joe Klock's law clerk countless times for no other reason than his skin color, consider the different city employees, constituents and former elected officials whose lives were shattered because of your political machinations. Take a moment while you're stewing over what happened to you over the last year or so culminating with the loss of your beloved job as chief and think about the people I've mentioned and the countless numbers of people I haven't mentioned and contemplate what you've done to them before you lash out at me or any of your other critics. Only then can you come to peace with yourself and your actions.
