HOW NOT TO KILL A DRUNK

Cell phone videos have played a growing role in revealing how cops behave under pressure. More often than not, the videos that get publicized are the ones where a cop opens fire on an unarmed civilian who ends up dead.


This is a video where a Miami cop confronted by a belligerent drunk didn't pull out her gun and shoot this guy.  


Instead, she used her Taser  - which didn't seem to work - and then, with the intervention of a neighborhood guy who obviously knew the drunk, got him to start walking away allowing another cop to take the guy to the ground and handcuff him.


That's the way you want the outcome of a potentially bad situation to end.


Sometimes it doesn't. But this time it did, and whoever this cop is, I think she deserves Officer of the Month.


Sometimes it takes real courage not to put out your gun and shoot someone.

Almost 9 years after my blog was banned from the city computers - which it still is -  a lot has changed. Regalado and his gang of thugs have left te building, to be replaced with Colonel Emilio Gonzalez,  aka "Colonel Klink," as the City Manager.


The Colonel has taken umbrage over my reposting photos of him touring the city with a photographer in tow - we shared a brief moment last week - and even though we were following each other on Twitter, it seems that he had a snit and is no longer following me.


No wonder he didn't get promoted to General.


In politics and in war, it's a lot more important to know what your critics - and your enemies - are saying and doing, then what smoke your friends are blowing up your ass, and boy, there's a lot of smoke floating around City Hall nowadays.


Unlike the Colonel however, I will continue to follow him, because after two months on the job, I have great expectations for "Colonel Klink."

THE SCORPION SLITHERS OUT FROM UNDER HIS ROCK

My bestest pal Marc Sarnoff has been very active ever since he provided money from his Political Committee to help Manolo Reyes and Joe Carollo get elected to the City Commission.


I've written how he latched onto Carollo like a sucker fish to a shark, and continues to show up at City Hall on commission days to hide out in Carollo's office, doing what, no one seems to know for sure, but you can bet it involves making sure that whatever schemes and deals Sarnoff has planned, Joe doesn't fuck it up.


In addition, Sarnoff seems to have every intention to either run for his old Commission seat, or maybe have his wife run again - she did such a great job last time - and in laying the ground work for that, Sarnoff has taken to indirectly bashing Commissioner "Selfie Boy" Russell and his supposed management of District 2 since Sarnoff left office.


Now, I'm all for bashing "Selfie Boy" - and have done so not only in the past, but intend to do more in the future - because he's turned out to be a real disappointment, who now belongs on the list of folks who shouldn't be allowed to be a Chicken Chaser, much less an elected official, and who at this point deserves to be voted out of office at the very first opportunity.


BUT, for Sarnoff to be waging the attacks that he is, represents a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, and also of being very selective about criticizing what shitty things are going in in the City.


I will be writing a lot more about Sarnoff in the coming weeks, but I think it's time we start looking at the campaign he's waging about how District 2 is being managed since he's been gone.


First, you have to understand that when Sarnoff was on the City Commission he was the single biggest violator of the City Charter and it's provision against elected officials usurping the power of the City Manager, and even then, a lot of his District was just as dirty as it is today.


Here is the provision which spells out in plain language that City Commissioners and/or their staffs CANNOT circumvent the City Manager and tell city employees what to do.


If they do, they are subject to criminal prosecution.


Unfortunately, when you've got a corrupt State Attorney like Katherine Fernandez-Rundle, the last thing she would allow anyone in her office to to is enforce this provision of the City Charter.

That lasted about a month until I threatened to file a lawsuit in federal court, and then I was allowed back in the building with a wrinkle.


Cabrera decided that to deal with me they'd set up a new security system that would require people to provide ID in order to get a stick-on pass to enter the MRC building.


It didn't matter, because I continued to get information from city employees.  


The next stunt they pulled was to have a designated city employee follow me around the building when I visited, and in order to know when I showed up, they had a copy of a previously issued stick-on pass stunk under the counter of the security desk.  I became one of 3 individuals put on the BOLO list.


Guards were instructed to call the building manager, who would in turn notify whoever was designated to shadow me around the building.  That didn't work to well, because I started using the stairs instead of the elevators, and half the time I was in and out without my shadow figuring out where I was.

It was so bad a year ago that the Commission passed a Resolution urging the Governor and the legislature to come up with some relief money to compensate the business owners who were being screwed over royally by this fiasco.

Once a scorpion, always a scorpion. and it would be wise to pay attention to this particular scorpion, because one of the folks closest to him not that long ago told me when I mentioned that I thought that Sarnoff was up to no good, "You have no idea the scams and schemes he's got up his sleeve".


I'm looking now for a pair of scissors to be able to open up that sleeve and see what's inside.


Anyone who would care to share, you can reach me at: 305.759.4788 and Al@alcrespo.net


It's Miami, Bitches!


The implication that Sarnoff is trying to create in people's minds is that when he was around he was the tough guy who told the directors of city departments what to do - and in fact, on many occasions he did do exactly that - but as the Charter provision above states, what he did was illegal, and only the cowardice of the City Managers that he bossed around allowed him to get away with it.


But then again, Sarnoff also gained a reputation as the Pay To Play Commissioner, as I and others documented him doing favors for deep pocket developers that resulted in sizable donations to the Sarnoff Foundation, his personal foundation, End Homlessness Now, the foundation that was created and funded by donations by developers especially to bolster his his image as part of his wife's failed campaign and the monies that were given to Truth Is The Daughter Of Time, his Electioneering Communicatons Organization, which he transferred to a Policital Committee that he was then able to use to support Manolo Reyes and Joe Carollo's campaigns.

In the last several months Sarnoff has been posting photos on his Facebook page like this:.

It wasn't long after I started writing about the City of Miami that the Regalado administration made a decision to block my blog on city computers so that city employees could NOT read my stories on the job.


That only made me more popular among city employees, because obviously if I was pissing the Regalado gang off then I must be doing something good.  


Then, when Regalado and his gang discovered that I had managed to get my hands on over 1 million of his, and the City Commission's emails,  Acting  Assistant City Manager, and all around batshit crazy Luis Cabrera, decided that since banning me from the city's computers hadn't worked, he would ban me from access to city buildings.

MIAMI SHORES UPDATE

NUMBER 7 - MARCH 7, 2018

A significant number of residents - many who live in the immediate area around the house at 9301 NE 2nd Avenue, showed up at the Council meeting tlast night o voice their objection to any restaurant being inserted into their residentual neighborhood, and after some tap dancing that would have made Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers  proud, the Council members decided that perhaps this was a bad idea, and let the discussion item die for lack of a motion.


I'll be writing more about all of this in my next newsletter.

GEE, WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID

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There's no argument that the photos represent a failure of both the Regalado and Suarez administration to be on top of keeping the city clean. but missing in all of Sarnoff's comments about garbage and lack of workers repairing streets is the header: Dear Mr. Manager....


When expressing your displeasure with what you see on city streets, it is the City Manager who is responsible for the actions of the employees who responsibility it is to keep those streets clean.


The real evidence that Sarnoff is in pre-campaign mode and not really concerned with the rest of the city - not that he ever was when he was the Commissioner either - is that the single biggest fuckup when it comes to street problems in the City of Miami is going on in Commissioner Joe Carollo's District 3.


The FDOT project to redo West Flagler Street is a complete and utter mess.  Constructions vehicles sit idle for weeks at a time, no one shows up to work, and residents and business owners are beside themselves over this situation.

Nothing has changed in a year.  The street is still a mess, equipment vehicles still stand empty and unsused, the streets turns into giant mud puddles when it rains, and If there was anyone uniquely situated to call on the Governor for assistance to his city it would be Marc Sarnoff.


He did after all, go out of his way to turn his back on the Democratic Party - to which he claims to be a member - to take part in a staged press conference where he announced his support for Republican Governor Rick Scott's reeelection, going to far as to liken him to President Theodore Roosevelt, as a protector of Florida's lands and sea.

Of course, as it's now become evident, Sarnoff really wasn't interested in looking out for the City of Miami when he offered his endorsement as much as he was in getting Scott to appoint him to a cushy, resume-enhancing postion as a member of the Board of trustees of FIU, and his wife to a position on the State's Transportation Board.

Now that Scott is no longer of use, Sarnoff - a "Hoorary for me, and fuck you" kind of guy - is throwing his arm around the dipshit former Mayor of Miami Beach, Phlilip Levine.