Cutting Through The Crap

Remember the two folks who were arrested while they were handing out Gideon Bibles near a school in Monroe County? The Gideon folks believed they had a right under the First Amendment to pass out bibles on the bike path where they apparently were. Well, they had a court hearing recently, and the judge threw out the case.

The State Attorney said the defendants were trespassing. "This was never a free speech case," . . . he said. "It was a trespass case."

Yeah, right! No one believed that for a Key West minute; including the judge. Of course this was a First Amendment case. Who was the prosecutor trying to kid?

This was also a case of an over zealous prosecutor who apparently didn't have a case or forgot to bring it to the Courthouse. The case never should have been brought in the first place. Once it was, however, the prosecutor should have accepted the plea deal offered by the defense attorney. It's likely that emotion and ego got in the way. And then there was face-saving to be done.

So Judge Payne cleverly cut through the crap and did the right thing.

Must Have Been The Kilt

Is it true what they say about kilts? Maybe so.

In this strange incident in Fargo, North Dakota, a man wearing a kilt and a T-shirt reading, "For Sale," was arrested after he and a woman were they were observed having sex behind a house. The arrest occurred when the couple refused to stop upon police command to do so.

Only the man was charged, proving, we guess that it's not a crime in Fargo to get under a kilt.

What Is Plan B ?

The Monroe County School Board has announced that it is looking for money to replace the four school resource officers the Sheriff has told them he may have to cut from his budget. The School Board and the superintendent have met with a representative of the Sheriff's Office.

But just what is the School Board's plan? To say we are looking for more money, we are lobbying Islamorada or Marathon officials, or we'll have to talk to the municipalities are not plans. What is it besides look for more money and talk to the municipalities that the Board is going to do? Will it cut other services to meet the shortfall in funds? Will it cut administrators? Will it do without the officers? Will it seek private funds? Will it ask businesses to help? What, exactly, is the School Board going to do? A plan would be good and now would be a good time to tell the public what it is.

The way the School Board is proceeding makes us (and perhaps others in the public) think there may be no Plan B.

Cutting The School Resource Officers

What we don't understand about the announced potential cuts of four school resource officers by Sheriff Rick Roth's office is where the School District Administration was when all of this was happening. We don't believe for a Conch minute that the School District was unaware of the potential for cuts. The School District has a liaison with the Sheriff's Office. It is reasonable to assume the School Superintendent knew what was going on. If school officials were co concerned about the potential cuts why weren't they revving up the parents before now?

We wonder whether this situation is not another one of those forget-about-it-until-it-happens situations that has continued to plague this school district's operation. Maybe the School Superintendent is confident that the positions will in fact not be cut or will be restored in the end. We don't know.

What we do know is that the Sheriff's Office doesn't just willy-nilly make cuts. Position cuts are a matter of the tough choices that have to be made among scarce resources. Does one increase this response team or that response team? Does one devote more resources to the schools or to the road? Does one put more resources into crime prevention or to apprehension? Ideally, the Sheriff's Office would like to have the resources to put more of them toward every one of these activities. But the resources just aren't there. So the Office has to make some hard choices about where to put the resources it does have. At the end of the day, it all comes down to money.

The County Commission or the School District (or both) could allocate more money for the school resource officers. Of course, it is still the Sheriff's call whether to assign the officers to that duty, but there is no reason to believe the Sheriff would not do so. Alternatively, the Sheriff could "find" additional money or back away from the potential cuts. However, that seems unlikely at this point in time.

Now if the Sheriff is about to fight with the County Commission over his budget, it is a well known budgetary strategy to cut cows that seem sacred to politicians to increase the likelihood that money for those cows will be added to the budget without reductions being made to other priority items. Do school resource officers fall within this category of sacred cows? Probably not, but the announced potential for cuts may generate enough calls to Commissioners and School District politicians to save some of the resource officer positions or give the sheriff some budgetary wiggle room.

The potential cuts may have one salutary effect. They may force the School District to focus more closely on its own goals and priorities and develop back up plans for situations like the potential loss of the four resource officers. If the School District has a Plan B the District has not announced it. That is not surprising since to do so might lessen the chances of insuring the survival of the resource officer positions. What worries us is that there may be no Plan B on the drawing board.

Bibles On The Bike Path

Distributing Bibles on school property could be dangerous, according to the State Attorney's Office spokesperson, Matt Helmerich, in commenting upon a lawsuit filed in Key West Federal Court against the Monroe County Sheriff's office and the State Attorney's office. The suit was filed after two persons (Gideons members) were arrested while distributing Bibles on a bike path near a school. The Gideons are challenging a Florida law that purportedly prohibits persons who do not have "legitimate business" (whatever that means) from loitering within 500 feet of a school.

"If we let anyone with a stack of Bibles on school property, that would be tantamount to giving a license to sexual predators," Helmerich reportedly told The Citizen, while, according to The Citizen, "emphasizing that he was not suggesting Gideons members are sexual predators."

He told The Citizen, "The arrest was not based upon a freedom of speech issue, it was based on protecting our children. The idea that we are arresting them or charging them because they are handing out Bibles is a spurious claim."

Really? Let us understand this, Mr. Helmerich. You are not claiming the two who were arrested are sexual predators, so they were not arrested for that. You apparently admit they all they were doing is handing out Bibles. What exactly were they doing that was not "legitimate" if they were only handing out Bibles?

Oh, we get it, you really just want to "protect" bike path users. some of whom may happen to be kids, but some of whom may also be adults, from that dangerous stuff in the Bible, is that it?

No?

So then, is it that (when you seem to have no good arguments left) you think it's O.K. to inferentially trash these defendants by evoking the dangerous, fearful, what-if-they-were-but-we're-not-saying-they-are "sexual predator" words? That way no one might really think carefully about what you have said, and might accept your argument that passing out Bibles on the bike path within 500 feet of a school constitutes "loitering" and is not "legitimate."

Well, guess what? We have thought about what you apparently have said, and we think it's in the running for our "Dumbest Statement of the Year Award."

If You Go To Eat At The Outback . . .

Leave the drugs at home is the message from the incident described by two hungry cops in their police report here.