To Be Perfectly Frank, I'm Sick To Death of This.

It's not always the Biscayne Times, but often enough, it is.  A copy was left in my driveway this morning, and yup, they're at it again.  If the recent tag team of writers is Erik Bojnansky and John Dorschner (of former Miami Herald fame), it was JD's turn this time.  It seems no one can think of anything to say about BP without either lapsing into a rehashing of our past police problem, or frankly making that the whole focus.  And this is a problem that was recognized and dealt with, as best we possibly could.  Do we all wish the problem had never happened?  Of course we do.  But we deal with reality, not what-ifs, our fantasy lives, and utopian reveries.

The article was entitled "The Mess Left Behind by Dirty Cops," and the subhead was "Biscayne Park Police Corruption Legacy Lives On."  The main (intended?) point of the article was to talk about how damaging it is to be arrested for something, and the damage is gratuitous and cruel if the arrested person didn't even commit a crime, or there was little or no evidence that s/he did.  No one can disagree with that.

Did we have a bad culture in our police force during the few years in question?  Apparently so, or perhaps no doubt we did.  Dorschner has somehow named a few of most offending officers, but failed to turn up the name of Larry Churchman, who mysteriously has been able to fly under the radar during all of this.

The facts are these: we did wrong; all of us who are not on the police force didn't know we were doing wrong; the matter came to light (mercifully), and has been dealt with in the proper way, including incarceration of some police officers; innocent people have been hurt; we deeply regret all of that; some settlements have been arrived at, as Dorschner has the decency to point out.

As a partial aside, it's interesting that Dorschner's research led him to learn that in the past, the Village posted "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs.  Many people who know nothing else about BP know about, and remember, those signs.  If those signs represented a statement of rigor, and a demand for safe driving, then the problems of which Dorschner writes, again and again and again, represent a grotesque caricature of ovepolicing.  I hope Dorschner won't be pleased to learn that the pendulum has swung the other way, so that what started out described as the righteous indignation of our current police Chief, Luis Cabrera, has also come to include the removal of those "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs, and what many Village residents experience as underenforcement.  There's a small brigade of current Village residents who want the state to change 6th Avenue from four lanes to two in BP, because drivers drive too fast, and it seems to homeowners too dangerous.  Maybe with a little more enforcement, they wouldn't have to feel so imperiled on their own street.  (And I know perfectly well that BrambleWitch will say the speeding problem preceded Luis Cabrera, which it did.  Almost all of our speeding tickets have always been issued on 6th Avenue.  It's that kind of street.  That's why we need to be most careful and attentive about policing it.)

There are things -- not just one thing -- to talk about regarding BP.  Some are good news about us, and some are examinations of problems.  I'm really sorry, and very annoyed, that the local papers can only ever think of the one thing.  (Do you want to know how many articles the BT published about Tracy Truppman's reign of terror, and the unexplained mindless support she got from her Commission colleagues?  None.)  Are they out of material?  The news certainly isn't slow these days.  The election was Tuesday, today is Saturday, and I still don't know who will be the POTUS on 1/20/21.  Carlos Gimenez just unseated a Democrat for the US House of Representatives, and Donna Shalala just lost her seat.  Any talk about those campaigns (that's what they were when this issue was being planned and put together), and the effects of them locally and in the Biscayne Corridor?  Nope.  Just the dredging up of old and resolved -- as best we can resolve it -- BP news.  Is BP the only municipality in the country, or in Florida, or in south Florida, or in the Biscayne Corridor, that ever had a problem with bad policing?  No.  It's a critically important problem that has much broader implications about race, and about societies and civilization.  Would Dorschner like to tackle a topic that big, and that important?  Apparently not.  It's easier just to reprint resolved misery about BP.  Well, have a nice day, Mr Dorschner.  It's Saturday.  Kick back, relax, and enjoy yourself.