Do common sense & logic ever intersect in transportation planning? I ask because of the "Radical change proposed for Dulles Rail Project" and well, experience in South Florida

Just some policy considerations to think about in the new year as plans, great and small, are proposed as solutions to real-world problems here in Hallandale Beach, Broward County, South Florida and the United States... and where you readers out there in the blogosphere live, from Stockholm to Santa Monica, Notting Hill to Sydney.

First, since some of you newer readers don't already know, I worked in Washington, D.C, and lived there and in Arlington County from 1988-2003, where I probably rode the Washington Metro (WMATA) about 12 times a week. This, after a few years of constantly riding the CTA's El  into downtown Chicago when I lived in Evanston and Wilmette.

At one point, I lived just a few blocks from the end of the El line at Linden Avenue.

Great in the morning, not so much when coming home in evening rush hour!

http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/purpleline_schedules/Linden.pdf

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=112+Linden+ave+Wilmette+IL&hl=en&t=h&hnear=112+Linden+Ave,+Wilmette,+Illinois+60091&z=16&vpsrc=0

I lived right near Lake Michigan at the first house off of Sheridan Road, DIRECTLY across the street from this beautiful site, officially called The Baha'i House of Worship for North America, but which everyone just called The Baha'i Temple.

This is what I looked at from my bedroom window on the south side of the street, and especially at night, it was an amazing sight I never tired of: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/bahaihouseofworship/

http://www.bahai.us/bahai-temple/

View Larger Map

So, all that said, kudos are very much in order for unsuck dc metro blog, who on Tuesday wrote a spot-on Beltway version http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com/2012/01/we-can-put-man-on-moon-but.html of a typical South Florida transit snail's-pace story that South Florida resident Matthew Gissen first made public in 2007 in the Miami Herald.
That was a story of epic Miami-Dade County govt. failure that I followed closely and looked at for myself every time I had some free time while in downtown Miami. 
I finally mentioned it on my blog almost three years ago:

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/bullet-proof-newspapers-good-copbad.html

Similarly, Thursday, over at the GreaterGreaterWashington blog, consistently one of the best public policy blogs in the country, has a great post by Dan Malouff that bears careful reading, as well as the reader comments, since it has a very learned audience.

Dulles Metro must go to Dulles Airport

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/13404/dulles-metro-must-go-to-dulles-airport/

Malouff's post on the preposterous plan -suggested by a supposed responsible party who actually has a vote on the matter- re the Washington Metrorail's overdue line to Dulles Airport actually NOT going to the airport, is a direct response to this bit of news, which I first heard about here: http://wtop.com/?nid=120&sid=2711431

I was dumbstruck.

This sort of "planning" is something that we know about in South Florida, given the often, to be kind, counter-intuitive way things are done here.

Now in most parts of the country, creating a sensible rail option from scratch, a route from the downtown business or legal community to the nearby airport is usually a no-brainer, unless there are physical or geographical barriers that make costs prohibitive at the beginning.

Frankly, it's often part of the price to be paid for enlisting the help of the business community in getting legislation or a referendum for the system actually passed. 

(Then again, they and their employees actually use it)

But as I written here and mentioned in some of the conferences and forums on transit that I've attended down here over the past eight years, in 1970's greater Miami, a rail connection to the airport, for whatever reason, wasn't deemed important enough a priority to make it actually happen, despite how ridiculous that sounds to read all these years alter.

And it has a direct correlation to why certain things are STILL the way they are in greater Miami, and from my perspective, someone who knew where almost everything was in Miami because I'd been there, most of them are for the worse.

Like building sports arenas and stadiums in areas far from population centers that make it easy for fans throughout South Florida to get to and from them easily via rail or train.

That's why getting from Flagler Street, Brickell Avenue or Biscayne Blvd. to Miami International Airport (MIA), then and now, is NOT as simple as paying for a ticket, hopping onto a train and sitting down and reading the newspaper or listening to your iPad for a few minutes, or simply look out the window, like I could in Washington,  Chicago and Baltimore on my way to Reagan National, O'Hare and BWI.

That, plus the power of the South Florida taxi cab industry, which showered Dade County commissioners with campaign contributions, and was NOT interested in having customers cut out the middle-man -them!

Here in Broward County, at some point during the 15 years I was working in the Washington, D.C. area and living in Arlington County -near the Ballston Metro station- the Tri-Rail system constructed an "Airport" train station that's NOT actually at Hollywood/Ft. Lauderdale International Airport, but rather in nearby Dania, where you have to wait and catch a bus to actually get to the airport.

But then consider where I live -South Florida.

Here, taxpayers are forever hearing stories from their elected state legislators about their travel hardships, and, I guess, we are supposed to just shrug our collective shoulders and look the other way as these legislators myriad and continual ethical shortcomings and flights of fancy are done after taxpayers have routinely pay $800 for them to take round-trip, non-refundable flights between this area and no, not Los Angeles or Seattle, but to Tallahassee.

And as some of you out there in the blogosphere know independently and some from my having shared articles about it with you over the years via email, some of these state legislators actually have the audacity to publicly complain and bitch to not only local news media about their travails, but also to the FAA, whether about the paucity of airline flights or the size of those planes.

It's not the fault of South Florida taxpayers that the state capital is NOT centrally located, but rather in what is, essentially, southwestern Georgia.

This sort of bitching is so embarrassing, and only makes the Banana Republic rubric applied to Florida harder to shake.

In his post, Malouff reiterates certain basic fundamentals that I believe hold true for concerned taxpayers and chastened activists, no matter where they live, to have any degree of faith and confidence in govt. planning, and transportation planning in particular.

Two sentences in particular resonate for anyone like me who has gone to lots of public meetings in South Florida, esp. about transportation policy & process, and emerged hours later shaking their head.

Cutting so many corners that you don't achieve your goal is not cost savings, it's failure. 

The absolute minimum requirement for a Metro line to Dulles Airport must be that it actually reaches Dulles Airport. Period.

He's 100% right.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

-----

http://www.governing.com/

http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/topic/travel/transportation/public-transportation/T51001001.topic

http://www.transitmiami.com/

Transit Miami is one of the most widely-read blogs in South Florida, especially among people interested in public policy, or, who are, themselves, policy makers. Lots and lots of very educated people who know their way around a City/County Hall and who ALWAYS vote. 

Like me.

Mass Transit reality check from Reason TV: 17 Miles in Just 78 Minutes! Light Rail vs. Reality in LA; backwards South Florida can hardly laugh at LA!

Reason.tv video: 17 Miles in Just 78 Minutes! Light Rail vs. Reality in Los Angeles. Watt Smith plays the role of guinea pig going from LAX to Burbank to see what's true and what's not re LA's Light Rail system, and discover's that even riders would prefer faster buses, not expensive and slow trains. December 2011.

http://youtu.be/7P1bFR5LOcg

Don't act so smug in watching this, South Florida!

As I've detailed previously here and in emails, blog and newspaper comments elsewhere over the years, when the Miami-Dade Metrorail system was in the development stages, wonky transit nerds and Good Government public policy types were completely out-muscled and out-hustled by the local taxi cab industry -and their campaign contribution$- which is why a Metrorail route between Miami International Airport -aka M.I.A.- and the downtown Miami business/legal area then on Flagler Street, and beginning to rapidly move south to Brickell Avenue, was NOT the very first route completed, like it would be in almost any other normal community that didn't have natural obstacles between them.

But in Miami, it didn't happen.

In fact, you STILL can't get straight from MIA to downtown Miami or Brickell Avenue entirely via Metrorail in the year 2011, can you?

And in Broward County, despite the name, Tri-Rail's Airport station isn't really at Hollywood/Ft. Lauderdale International Airport, is it?

No, it's a few miles away in Dania, and you have to take a bus to actually get to the airport.

And there's currently no rail service to Port Everglades and all the thousands of tourists and employees there to... anywhere.

(And who can forget all my many -fascinating!- blog posts here in the past about the lack of a bus at the Tri-Rail station closest to Ft. Lauderdale Stadium & Lockhart Stadium -Coconut Creek- where the Orioles used to have spring training, and the complete lack of a city or county bus or shuttle that goes directly from the Tri-Rail station to the City of FTL-owned stadiums when events are taking place there, despite it being well over a mile away?)

Yes, South Florida has really been blessed the past forthy years with lots of real geniuses in charge of public transportation!

To better illustrate these points, especially for those of you reading this now who live far from the heat and humidity -and sunshine- of South Florida, here are two excerpt of email I've sent

the past four years.

The first was sent to Gabriel Lopez-Bernal, the founder of the very popular public policy and transit-oriented blog, Transit Miami, back on November 7th, 2007.

Gabriel listed this blog on the Transit Miami blogroll a few months after I started it and the South Beach Hoosier blog, the latter of which will be seriously tweaked and improved by the beginning of the new year. http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/

Dear Gabriel:

Per Larry Lebowitz's insightful article about the latest "only in Miami" controversy, around the North corridor of the extension of the Metrorail, something the Herald neglected to mention when discussing the issue of the U-M's move to Chez Huizenga, and your good take on the situation which I read just a few minutes ago, http://www.transitmiami.com/2007/11/could-north-corridor-be-threatened-by.html

"MIA got luggage carts when?" is going to be my new generic response to how things can be the way they are in South Florida.

For instance, the Herald suddenly discovering that there are no general interest bookstores within the City of Miami city limits.

Luggage carts at MIA? That happened like, what, just 4-5 years ago???

When I was still living the Beltway Life up in Arlington, I could get a luggage cart at the Reagan National Airport Metro exit just seconds after going thru the farecard taker.

Don't quote me on this, but I think they had luggage carts at Le Bourget Airport in Paris when Lindbergh landed in 1927

Come on, you know how long it takes for all the good ideas to finally make their way to Miami!

-----

Want more proof of the lack of common sense on transit?

Here's an excerpt from a 2007 email of mine to Broward County Comm. Sue Gunzburger, the Commissioner for my part of Broward, telling her about a series of problems I had noticed even BEFORE the County initiated a new -and long overdue- express bus service along U.S.-1/

Federal Highway called The US-1 Breeze.

The route starts south of me in Aventura at the Aventura Mall, come north thru Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Dania, stops at FLL airport, and then continues to downtown Ft. Lauderdale, near the County and Federal Courthouse and Broward Schools HQ, ending at the Broward County Central Terminal on Broward Blvd., just around the corner from the Broward County Govt. Center.

Since this service started four years ago, if nobody I know wants to come along in my car, I take this when I need to go up to Broward County Commission meetings -or the Ethics Comm. meetings- so I can read the newspaper, listen to ESPN Radio and drink some Iced coffee and be there in less than 45 minutes for less than two bucks -and don't have to pay for parking:

1. Considering the amount of public back-slapping Broward County engaged in after they finally decided to create the #1 Breeze, an idea that should've been done 10-20 years ago, how is it that less than one week before the service actually began, there were still NOT any printed schedules for the Breeze service available on existing #1 buses, the natural constituency of a new line?

Could you possibly sabotage your own efforts any worse?

Actually you could, since there were no easily visible symbols of some sort on US-1 in advance, indicating where the small number of stops would be.

That was the icing on the Breeze cake for me.

As it happens, I spent quite some time investigating this, not only on the phone talking to customer service folks with Broward Transit, but also employing old-fashioned shoe leather, actually walking US-1. You know, the route involved.

Trust me, Comm. Gunzburger, whatever you are told by Broward Transit on this matter needs to be completely disregarded, because it could hardly have been more self-evident they didn't know what they were doing.

How botched was it?

Well, customer service people I spoke to at Broward Transit, just days before the service began, couldn't tell me with any degree of certainty where the stop(s) in Hallandale Beach were to be located.

Or, as it turned out, where the ONE stop in Hallandale Beach was.

The whole subject of the lack of a sufficient number of city-created bus shelters in SE Broward in HB and Hollywood, will be the subject of a future blog post here, though I've broached it here in the past.

I mention this because the north-bound stop in HB for The Breeze consists of two benches across the street from McDonald's -with no sheltered roof to keep you out of the rain or sun.

The one south-bound stop is roughly the same but in front of a gas station.

In the entire length of Hallandale Beach, along very busy U.S.-1, there is exactly one bus shelter on the north-bound side of the road, and it's just two blocks south of Pembroke Road, the cityline with Hollywood.

Welcome to Joy Cooper's Hallandale Beach!

-----

seventhmetro'd video: Los Angeles Metro: The past, Present and Future of LA's Mass Transit

http://youtu.be/DGNpibdVuU0

From today's Transit Miami blog, relative to FDOT:

FDOT, Brain Surgeons, Engineers and Trust

StrongTowns video: Conversation with an Engineer, Street Project

http://youtu.be/_-6X1-SLOXM

-----

http://www.transitmiami.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ReasonTV

Rail-Volution's 2007 Conference in Miami, Florida

http://www.railvolution.org/past-conferences/all-conferences

Summary of Lake Worth Charette; Transit Oriented Development

http://www.railvolution.org/rv2007_pdfs/rv2007_001a.pdf

Papers, Presentations and Highlights of other Rail-Volution annual conferences:

http://www.railvolution.org/past-conferences/all-conferences

Creating a Positive Future for a Minority Community: Transportation and Urban Renewal Politics in Miami: By Milan Dluhy, Keith Revell and Sidney Wong

http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=penniur_papers&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2F

http://www.youtube.com/user/seventhmetro

http://www.strongtowns.org/

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/

http://www.youtube.com/user/strongtowns

Bullet-proof newspapers, the Good Cop/Bad Cop/Young Cop Conundrum;Third World Transit

FYI: Once again today, Blogger's editing software is screwing-up my blog and creating all sorts of headaches for me, leading to a jagged and uneven presentation in drafts as well as the final edits below.

Sometimes, it's almost as if someone else is editing my blog, as from moment to moment, the size and fonts on my screen seem to change from what I want to something else entirely.

So far, the only way I've found to minimize the problem is to make everything BOLD, which I usually hate in other blogs, but which for some reason, mitigates the problem slightly. 

________________

Per the attached bits of flotsam and jetsam, first the slightly amusing then onto the more-than-bewildering.  

First, per the story below, which the Chicago Tribune's headline says it all:

14-year-old boy impersonates cop, police say, Teen goes on traffic patrol wearing real police uniform, but is unarmed, authorities say.

The troubling aspect of this story is that this 14-year old kid in Chicago shows more depth of understanding, energy and moxie than Hallandale Beach's current Police Chief Thomas Magill,

who, in my opinion, based on all the known facts, at bottom, ought to be in prison now for what court juries have already found to be true about him: he used city funds and resources to attempt to

frame, prosecute and imprison innocent people, who just happened to be HB cops.

(Yet Magill's past tenure and future have never been publicly addressed by the Hallandale Beach City Commission since this was published a year ago.  In other parts of the U.S., that dogged refusal to deal forthrightly with consequences, with no punishment for Magill, would be news, but not here, apparently.)

Perhaps we can arrange to have James L. Harris, that guy who last year wanted to be a Miami-Dade bus driver so badly that he actually took a county bus, receiving compliments along South Beach for his courtesy while driving, before he was finally caught and arrested, and have him assigned as this 14-year old Kid Cop's personal chauffeur.

Part of a youth movement to get rid of all the 'dead wood' in Hallandale Beach, of which there is so much. 

TIMBER!!!!

Failing that, can we at least borrow the kid from Chicago and have him patrol the beach area in Hallandale Beach, since for years, Magill's Police Dept. has consistently shown ZERO interest in actually patrolling the public beach once in a while,

even on busy weekends, as is pretty customary in most water-side cities, to put beach-goers minds at ease.

Maybe give him a police radio, a clipboard, and a whistle on weekends so the beleaguered contractor lifeguards don't have to continue to do everything, esp. when the beach is really crowded?

As you might imagine, the reader comments on this story from Chicagoland are enthusiastic and supportive -of the kid!

That sound you just heard was the sound of the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid losing even more air...

http://www.chicago2016.org/

So, onto the more serious matter at hand.

See if you can readily connect the following in your head like I did yesterday:

a.) Mayor Carlos Alvarez defending the Miami Mega-Plan in general and the Port Tunnel element in particular, over two broadcast segments yesterday with Michael Putney on TWISF, This Week in South Florida;

b.) the painfully naive and formulaic Herald Letter to the Editor on page 3L yesterday titled Public-works plan worth the money, written by an FIU prof named Alex Lichtenstein, which sounded like it was really straight from the PR desk of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/letters/story/870240.html

c.) The Herald's own Action Line column of yesterday on page 5B, complete with photo,

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/action-line/story/869684.html titled After two years of promises, escalator still not running, on the sad case of the Park West Metromover, which seems to be a typical Miami combination of Twilight Zone and Banana Republic.

I can only imagine how many times that the letter writer, Matthew Gissen, must've thought about that letter of his in his mind, as he passed it, week-after-week, month-after-month.

Apparently, in the rather oblivious world of Prof. Lichtenstein, basic repairs and upkeep are neither sexy nor necessary.

Sounds to me like he actually needs to get out-and-about and see what's really going on around here, perhaps even have a "scared straight" intervention, so he can get his bearings and see that unlike Chicago, Miami is not exactly the city of "Big Shoulders." 

To me, the most devastating thing of all was this passage in the Action Line response: "...work on the escalator has been completed and that the safety inspection should be finished by the end of February."

Should be? Really? After being broken for two years, does it really take a month to "inspect" something that's supposedly been fixed?

And if it does, or it's not actually fixed, finally, how many other projects are those particular engineers or contractors "fixing" elsewhere?

The official response here only raises more troubling questions.

Now maybe I'm wrong, since I was only coming back down here from Washington at the holidays when the William 

Lehman Causeway was being built in North Miami Beach/Aventura -just down the road from me now- but did it even take two whole years to build the bridge over the Intercoastal, linking A1A to Biscayne Boulevard?

And yet it's taking that long to "fix" a transit escalator? 

Those are the folks that Mayor Alvarez wants us to have faith in?

The ones that yesterday, on the air with Michael, he kept claiming 'really weren't government' when Michael earnestly but continually reminded him of the decidedly notorious track record of South Florida government construction projects,

Mega or otherwise?

As I mentioned in an email about two weeks ago, the small square in front of the entrance to The National Archives that I entered and walked past hundreds of times during the 15 years I lived and worked up there, already has our future written there.

It has a variation of Shakespeare's line from The Tempest, "The past is prologue."

If I were making a documentary film on the possible consequences of the so-called Miami Mega-Plan, feeling as I do now, I'd call it "The Curious Case of Caveat Emptor."

Sadly, the past will continue to be prologue in South Florida as long as we have the same general cast of characters, who continually fight transparency, accountability and common sense, of which the case of the broken escalator is but a small window into that upside-down world.

_________________

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-teen-cop-26-jan26,0,6467334.story

Chicago Tribune

14-year-old boy impersonates cop, police say

Teen goes on traffic patrol wearing real police uniform, but is unarmed, authorities say

By Angela Rozas, Jeremy Gorner and Azam Ahmed

Tribune reporters

January 26, 2009

Chicago police arrested a 14-year-old boy for allegedly impersonating one of their own Saturday.

The boy, who has been charged as a juvenile for impersonating an officer, walked into the Grand Crossing District station, 7040 S. Cottage Grove Ave., dressed in a Chicago police uniform, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. The boy, who reported for duty about 1:30 p.m., partnered with another police officer for about five hours.

The boy identified himself as an officer from another district but was detailed for the day to Grand Crossing and also was savvy enough to sign out a police radio and a ticket book, according to a source. The source also said the boy went on traffic stops with the officer he went on the street with.

Bond said the boy "did not write tickets" and said there was "no information to indicate that he [was] ever behind the wheel."

At an afternoon news conference, police said the boy had no interaction with the public.

After his tour was over, a ranking officer became suspicious of the boy. Police said the officer discovered the teen was not a real police officer when he couldn't produce any credentials. The boy was wearing police-issued pants, shirt, vest, sweater and skull cap, police said. 

He was missing his police star, but that was not discovered until after he returned from traffic patrol. Police said the 14-year-old's partner on the traffic assignment did not recognize the boy was underage.

The source said the boy had an empty holster and a newspaper in place of a ballistic vest in his vest carrier.

Police described the boy as a former "police explorer," which means he was part of a community program run through the Police Department's Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) that allows youths to interact with Chicago police officers. He was part of the explorer program in 2008 in the Englewood District.

"The boy was not armed, and the matter is under investigation with Internal Affairs," Bond said.

Bond also said that how the boy acquired the police uniform was under investigation. Police officers need to present identification while acquiring their uniforms, police said.

The boy "has identified an egregious breach in security," Deputy Supt. of Patrol Dan Dugan said.

The boy, whom authorities did not identify since he's a juvenile, is scheduled to appear in Juvenile Court at 10 a.m. Monday.

Reader comments at: http://www.topix.net/forum/source/chicago-tribune/TFMSRHVJVSIGH7BOC

-----------------------------------------

Tomorrow the 27th will mark one year since John Holland wrote this compelling Sun-Sentinel piece, which is still THE only media this story has received.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Hallandale Beach to pay to settle one of two former police officers' lawsuits

By John Holland

January 27, 2008

 

Hallandale Beach commissioners have agreed to pay more than $100,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging Police Chief Thomas Magill falsified evidence, a city board held an illegal meeting and detectives persuaded a felon to lie under oath about a fellow officer.

 

Mayor Joe Cooper and attorney Alberto Milian, who represents former Hallandale Beach Police Officer Talous Cirilo, confirmed the city's settlement with Cirilo but would not comment further, citing a confidentiality agreement. However, Cooper said the payment was more than $100,000, including attorney fees.

 

'I'd love to talk about this and tell people what happened, but unfortunately I can't,' Cooper said.

 

Magill referred questions to City Attorney David Jove, who could not be reached for comment.

 

The settlement comes less than two months after Cirilo filed two lawsuits against the city, alleging wrongdoing in the department and City Hall. Hallandale officials fired Cirilo, alleging excessive use of force, even though a jury acquitted him on battery charges.

 

Cooper said the secrecy is warranted because a separate lawsuit, filed in federal court by former acting Police Sgt. Mary Hagopian, has not been settled. She promised to speak about the settlement at a later date 'if I'm allowed to.'

 

Magill and City Manager Mike Good fired the officers two years ago after prosecutors charged them with misdemeanor battery on prisoner Michael Brack. Early on April 1, 2005, Brack beat his brother as they fought in a moving car, then attacked officers who tried to intervene, according to arrest records and police reports.

 

Months after the arrest, a civilian employee said Cirilo choked and used a Taser device excessively on Brack.

 

More than a year later, the State Attorney's Office charged Cirilo with three misdemeanor battery counts. Hagopian was charged with a misdemeanor for using the stun gun on Brack as he struggled with officers in a jail holding area.

 

Defense lawyers said Magill orchestrated the charges as part of a vendetta against Hagopian and to show his bosses at City Hall he was a disciplinarian. Testimony at trial showed police employees mishandled two key pieces of evidence - a video surveillance tape and software from the Taser - distorting the confrontation between the officers and Brack, defense lawyers argued.

 

Prosecutors tried the officers separately, but jurors reached the same conclusion, acquitting them after about 15 minutes of deliberation.

 

After the acquittals, the officers tried to get their jobs back, but Magill and city officials refused.

 

In one of the lawsuits, Milian accused the city civil service board of holding an illegal meeting outside City Hall on Oct. 9, 2007, one week before a scheduled hearing on the reinstatement.

Florida law mandates that all meetings be advertised and prohibits public officials from meeting out of the public eye or discussing cases with each other. At least six board members met and discussed the meeting in a 'knowing violation' of the law, according to the lawsuit.

 

Good, the city manager, could not be reached for comment.

 

Hagopian, a 15-year veteran, and Cirilo, on the force for five years, hired different lawyers and filed in different jurisdictions but made the same argument: Magill pressured his internal affairs officers and detectives to manipulate evidence and coerce false statements out of Brack so he could fire the officers and enhance his image as a reformer.

 

Magill used public money to have officers track down Brack on a Louisiana oil barge, where he ended up after leaving Broward County and forfeiting his bail, both lawsuits assert.

The State Attorney's office dropped all the assault charges against Brack, including the attack on his brother, then used him to testify against the officers.

 

The chief temporarily assigned several officers to internal affairs without any training, for the sole purpose of building a false case against the officers, Hagopian's lawyer Rhea Grossman said in court papers.

 

Magill sparked criminal charges against Hagopian 'by preparing directly or at his direction police reports containing false or misleading information,' Grossman wrote. Both lawsuits contend Magill elicited false testimony and compiled misleading evidence that he took directly to prosecutors.

 

U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch tossed out four counts last month, saying they belong in state court. He refused to dismiss two others, including one alleging Magill presented false information to prosecutors so Hagopian would be arrested. Zloch also let stand a charge that the city had a policy of not training internal affairs officers that, Hagopian argued, 'encourages fabricated evidence for the sole purpose of allowing the whims of its police chief to terminate employees.'

 

Milian said last week that the jury's quick acquittals proved the charges were bogus.

"This case was an abomination from the very beginning, and good officers were hurt," Milian said. "It could ultimately have a chilling effect on officers who want to protect themselves and their colleagues but are afraid because they could get in the same type of situation." 

---------------------------------------------------------- 

As you read the article below, tell me this isn't proof that the past is, indeed, prologue!

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

FALSE ARREST VICTIM ON GUARD BUT SAYS HE BEARS NO GRUDGES

May 1, 2000

By Tanya Weinberg Staff Writer

Henry Perez won't go anywhere without his identification. 

Not because he thinks he might get a ticket. Not because he thinks he might not be allowed into a bar. 

Because he knows that without identification, police could throw him in jail for another person's crime. He knows he could lose his job and a week of his life before his captors figure out they have the wrong man. 

The odd thing is, when Perez suffered those consequences four years ago, he did have his identification. Hallandale Beach Police arrested the then-17-year-old on his way to school because he had the same name as a teenager wanted for grand theft in Miami-Dade County. 

His driver's license showed he was two years older than Henry Perez the suspect. He kept telling the officer he had the wrong man, to check and he would see. 

"He didn't want to listen," said a soft-spoken Perez on a recent evening before starting his workout at Contenders Boxing Gym in Hollywood. 

For one week of fear and frustration, it seemed nobody would listen. Not the police, not the jail guards, not counselors who asked Perez to fill out surveys on drug use but offered little guidance. Not even a judge. He ordered Perez sent to Miami-Dade County without letting him speak. 

When Perez's lawyer convinced another judge they had the wrong Henry Perez, it took the jail another day and a half to release him. 

The state last year settled Perez's lawsuit against the juvenile justice system for $75,000. But for four years, the city of Hallandale Beach did not apologize, did not acknowledge the mistake, did not make amends. But now it will. 

The city attorney told commissioners two weeks ago that they should stop the appeals process and settle Perez's civil lawsuit for the $100,000 a jury awarded last year. This after Perez's lawyer offered to settle for $19,000. 

"They told us to go fly a kite," said Miami attorney Scott Jay Feder. 

Perez said he plans to save the settlement money. 

"I'm just happy to be done with it," said Perez, who focuses on his budding professional career as a lightweight boxer with a 5-0 record and works days as a customer service representative at Ramada Plaza Resorts in Fort Lauderdale. 

He is surprised his case prevailed. 

"I thought because I was going against the police station there was no way," he said as he wound yellow hand wraps around his knuckles. "I thought because I was young, they wouldn't take my word for it." 

And the judge and jury might not have, Feder said, if the evidence hadn't shown that the arresting officer lied at trial. 

Arrested before 9 a.m., Perez said he was not allowed to call his mother until he was taken to jail late that night. Officer Timothy Donahue testified that in the morning he contacted Perez's mother, Gloria Frances, and told her to bring her son's identification. 

According to Donahue's testimony, Frances said she noticed that Perez had left his wallet at home but she could not bring it in, so officers detained Perez. But the official log of Perez's belongings at the time police booked him showed that he had his identification with him. 

Donahue resigned as a Hallandale Beach officer in October 1998 and currently is a Davie police officer. 

Perez's case is not the only high-profile blunder the Hallandale Beach Police Department has made recently. 

A police SWAT team a year ago surprised a couple by bursting into their apartment and searching them for drugs and guns. The couple, New York horse trainers who say they now avoid South Florida, are suing Hallandale Beach after police admitted to raiding the wrong home. 

Perez and his family just moved from Hollywood to North Miami, and although he is 21, he always tries to call to let his mother know where he is and whether he'll be late to spare her the feeling of panic in his absence. 

Perez said he doesn't focus on the past, on how his pleas to check his fingerprints went unheeded, or about the days and nights in jail when he avoided the frequent fights or slept shivering after someone stole his pillow and blanket. 

Other things Perez doesn't dwell on: that he had to stand up his girlfriend the day of his arrest -- Valentine's Day -- that the nursing home where he worked wouldn't take him back although he explained the arrest was a mistake, that he wouldn't leave the house for several weeks after, afraid of another false arrest, and that he had to make up the time in summer school. 

Perez said he has no grudges against police officers. He does try to stay out of Hallandale Beach, though. 

"When I see a Hallandale officer, I might get a little worried," he said with a shy smile. Then, patting at his thighs, he added: "I just check and see if I have my ID."