As we covered last Friday, Andrew Lannon, the Palm Bay City Attorney, has resigned.
There has been some speculation as to why Lannon resigned. Certainly he had made it clear that he was looking to obtain the position of the Brevard County Attorney after Scott Knox resigned, but that position was filled in house by Eden Bentley in a surprise move last Tuesday.
From what we know, the Lannon resignation had nothing to do with the County position being filled and Lannon not getting the job.
The City of Palm Bay recently received a demand letter and a lawsuit which name Lannon as a direct defendant. (A demand letter is sent prior to an actually lawsuit being filed.)
It is very rare for any attorney to be named in a lawsuit. That applies to both the public and private sectors. The common thing is to name the client as a defendant and not the client’s legal representation. Generally speaking, it is against legal laws and rules to file papers against people who are not or cannot be a party to the suit themselves. We bring this up because as the two suits named Lannon as well as the City of Palm Bay, the plaintiffs must have a good faith cause for naming Lannon in the actual suit. That is not a good thing.
With Lannon named as a defendant, the City sought outside counsel for legal advice on how to proceed. (more…)
The above notice was mailed out to the residents of Satellite Beach. Our first thought was “who is paying for this mailing?” but it could be the City or the County using franking privileges for commissioners. Smith is in a fight for his Commission seat with Trudi Infantini in the upcoming November elections. As far as we know, Smith has never done anything like this (a mailing and a meeting) so please excuse us if we see this as nothing but a political campaign stop organized with the help of the City of Satellite Beach.
If Smith wants to talk about Brevard County and his “leadership,” we are all for it.
First, we want to ask him about his disastrous and unConstitutional “Civility Ordinance” that he proposed and then pulled from the agenda after feedback from many groups and people.
Let’s talk about the $5 million for “sports turf” for the Viera Sports Complex. It is not that we are against the expenditure, but rather we are against the idea that the Commission was able to pay for the turf without going through any competitive bidding process by allowing USSSA to pay for the turf, and then the County reimbursing USSSA. The no bid contract may technically be legal, but in a county that is screaming for money to pay for the lagoon and roads, why not have the expenditure above board and within the spirit of the law? Does Smith really think that the County should be doling out $5 million without insuring the taxpayers are getting a good deal? (more…)
You may have heard of a trial going on in California where the cities of Oakland and San Francisco are suing oil companies for their alleged part in “climate change.”
The lawsuit is not about actual climate change because there is no way that either city or citizens could live without oil and petroleum products. Instead, the cities want oil companies to pay for “costs” associated with their products that are legally bought by a third party (the consumer at the gas pump.)
One of the key elements in the lawsuit is that the cities accuse the oil companies of hiding data and the supposed effect of the use of their products from consumers and investors. It is a key element for the cities to prove that the companies defrauded consumers and investors by the companies telling people of the so called risks to the climate when the products are used.
The cities represented to the judge that there was a “smoking gun,” – a memo that the companies had tried to suppress and hide from the people.
Such a charge would fit into the narrative of “profits over people” which is what the cities want to portray.
However, there is a problem and the judge in the case saw it: (more…)
They were the best of the best. Often cited as a shining star in law enforcement in the City of Baltimore, the members of the elite Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) were in fact criminals – selling drugs, robbing victims, and assaulting people at will.
The BBC has a lengthy investigative story on this task force and it is worth the read not because of the salaciousness of the accusations, the cases and the trial of these officers.
Here’s what the public was led to believe about the Gun Trace Task Force, before the FBI arrested almost every member of the squad:
That in a city still reeling from the civil unrest that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody, the GTTF was a bright spot in a department under a dark cloud. The 25-year-old African-American man’s death after a ride in a police transport ignited a build up of decades of tension between Baltimore’s black residents and the police, touching off days of demonstrations, including looting and violence.
That while the homicide rate was on a historic rise, this elite, eight-officer team was getting guns off the streets at an astonishing rate – their supervising lieutenant praised “a work ethic that is beyond reproach” that resulted in 110 arrests and 132 guns confiscated in a 10-month period.
That the GTTF’s leader, a former Marine and amateur MMA fighter named Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, was a hero who’d plunged into a violent crowd during the unrest to rescue injured officers, an act of bravery that earned him a departmental Bronze Star.
But when the sun came up on 1 March 2017, the city awoke to a vastly different reality.
Seven officers were arrested and indicted for racketeering, extortion and fraud: Sergeant Jenkins; Detective Daniel Hersl, a 17-year veteran of the force; longtime partners Detectives Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam; and Detectives Maurice Ward, Evodio Hendrix and Marcus Taylor. Only one member – oddly enough, John Clewell, the man whose name triggered the entire investigation – escaped indictment. The FBI found he was never a part of the criminal enterprise.
“They were involved in a pernicious conspiracy scheme that included abuse of power,” the US Attorney for Maryland told reporters that day. Police commissioner Kevin Davis, who’d once praised the men’s work, now likened them to 1930s-style gangsters.
“It’s disgusting,” he said.
The public soon learned that the GTTF stole from drug dealers, but also from a homeless man, a car salesman, a construction worker and many others. The victims were overwhelmingly African-American.
However, there is a theme in the entire narrative: (more…)
