Julie, Julie, Julie, do ya love me?
Police Chief Julie Williams goes over the top in this memo (PDF, pops in new window), dated May 19, 2010. The memo is an attempt to deflate facts as presented in this article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and in the YouTube video just below this paragraph. Williams is slated to have secret meetings with each individual city council member over the next few days, presumably to tell them how evil and Satanic I really am. This will be followed by her appearance at next Tuesday's city council meeting, a YouTube moment that is waiting to happen.

The arrest of Joshua Graf
While the admin at Venice Police Department claim that they need a warrant to arrest someone caught in the act of committing a felony, this arrest report of Joshua Graf (PDF, pops) shows that the department apparently felt there was enough credible info available to do a warrantless arrest. Then of course, there is Graf's confession that all kinds of drugs were being sold out of 717 Laurel Avenue, something that Williams, a sometimes actual cop, completely forgets about in her above manifesto.

All said and done, it is tales like this that the word 'clusterf**k' was invented to describe.

Isaac Turner: We can break the Sunshine Law if we just don't call it a meeting
Despite the fact that the very case law decisions that he is citing are quite specific in prohibiting the very behavior that City Manager Isaac Turner is trying to promote in this memo (PDF, pops) dated May 19, 2010, Turner is set to convince council members that they can have a rapid-fire succession of secret meetings with Williams and nobody will know the difference.

Police admin to troops: STFU or we will send in The Spanish Inquisition
Tired of seeing the department's failures pinned where they should be (square on the chests of their administrative prats), the department tells the troops to shut up and take the heat (PDF, pops) or else they'll be dragged in for questioning on yet another of the department's never-ending series of eternal infernal internal investigations (over 100 in the last two to three years alone). You thought the Spanish Inquisition ended when ex-city manager George Hunt fled for the hills? Oh really? Well, think again, victim.

You would not believe the nightmare game of hide the paperwork that the police department, and city hall to a certain extent, played in not sending me this document as requested. I get irritated a bit at the city, but it is extremely rare that I actually get so totally pissed that I don't want to enter city hall out of fear that I'll start screaming and get permanently kicked out. The games that have been played on me over the past few days over documents that I know exist and that aren't being provided to me have made me seriously rethink my strategy of who I can and cannot trust.

Police officer set to file labor lawsuit against city, police department, Chief Williams
That officer that is under investigation, as Williams stated in her three-page manifesto? That would be Officer Demitri Serianni. Oh, and there's a bit of a problem with that investigation, as in the city's police supervisors appear to have broken all kinds of laws in pursuing it. See this notice of representation (PDF, pops) that sets up the PD with yet another lawsuit for bad labor practices.

Citizen set to file false arrest lawsuit against city, police department, Chief Williams
...and we'll have fun, fun, fun, 'til daddy takes the T-Bird away; another notice of representation (PDF, pops), this one from attorney Andrea Mogensen, received just a few days after the above one

City attorney is no fan of the Sunshine
There's a reason City Attorney Bob Anderson is not in a hurry to shut down serialized secret meetings with individual council members -- as Tom Brener noted in this email to Venice Florida! dot com (PDF, pops), it's a great tool that Anderson has used on occasion to avoid bringing questionable material before the general public. As Brener notes here, it's wrong as rain falling up, but what do you expect? This is, after all, Venice!

Officer Serianni disciplined for making a public records request; Chief Williams caught lying about it
Williams, in her manifesto above, claims that no officer has ever been jammed up for making a public records request. She's lying -- flat out, and below is the proof.

Williams also claims that she can't talk about it because the matter is under investigation (but if it didn't happen... nevermind). Additionally, she obliquely threatens me with criminal action if I pursue it any further. Williams claims that if I am in possession of any such documents, then I can be in some serious doo-doo.

I'm shaking in my Converse sneakers.

The documents I am publishing here came from the city's personnel department and the PD's records department as part of a public records request that I made a couple of weeks back, so if Williams wants to act on how nutty she sounds by arresting any culprits, she can start with her own staff.

Here, in one page from Officer Demitri Serianni's annual assessment (PDF, pops), he is given a U (Unsatisfactory) for his belligerent use of emails to request public records. The request was made in order that Serianni could successfully defend himself against an internal investigation for, well, being belligerent it looks like. The assessment even includes a grievous example of Serianni's belligerent abuse of public records requests, which I've published along with the offense description.

If I'm an attorney for the city or I'm a city manager, this alone is an OMFG moment.

And let's not talk about the slap that Serianni gets for not making the departmental traffic stop quotas. Er, goals. Not quotas. Because quotas are illegal. These are set goals. Six per day, BTW.

I talked to lead attorney Barbara Peterson at the First Amendment Foundation about this documentation. At first, Peterson thought I was making it up, it was so unbelievable a scenario for her. After I read to her verbatim from the documents, Peterson called it an egregious violation of Florida's Public Records Law, this in sharp contrast to Williams' written statement that the department has done no wrong.

"Tell that officer that I would very much like to talk to him," Peterson told me.

Demitri: the phone number is on their web site.

Chief: if you want to arrest me, just call me up. I'll be in the lobby of the department within 15 minutes of your call.

and finally, the Fire Department wants to put you in the back of one of their fine, new, modestly inexpensive, deluxe ambulances
Venice has never seen a lawsuit it didn't love to escalate to a high payout, both for the plaintiff and our city attorney. Given that, and the fact that any ambulance service is guaranteed to have a few malpractice lawsuits, it only makes sense that Venice would want to go into competition with the county's EMS service.

Something else that occurs to me -- given Venice's median resident age and the fact that any ambulance service is going to have a few deaths while transporting, compounded with the fact that even normal, explainable deaths can cause a lawsuit -- oh yeah, this is making even more and more sense.

So, the fire department, or rather their union, is using this time of massive confusion to ask for something that they have asked for twice before (and were told both times, "no f**king way!!!"). They want ambulances. They have pie charts and graphs and undecipherable math and all that kinds of stuff (PDF, pops) to prove that this is a chance of a lifetime to get in on the ground floor of a really fantastical deal.

Oh wait, there's no pie charts or graphs. There's nothing here but goofy numbers. Ya know, for a coloring book, this is pretty damned cheesy. I want my money back.

Still, ya gotta give props to the boys in red suspenders (I use the sexist term boys because they don't hire women, and I can avoid racism because they don't hire blacks, either). The timing is perfect. If there was ever a time to sneak this turkey through, this is it.

John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.