Mitch Perry
Happy 420 Day.
There have been some interesting stories being produced by our friends over at the Tampa Bay Times over the past week.
The paper returned to their coverage of Doug Hughes yesterday. Hughes is the Ruskin postal worker who hoped to raise awareness about the influence of big money in politics by violating national airspace to land his gyrocopter on Capital Hill. And while there has been some discussion about campaign finance reform in the wake of his actions, there’s been a lot more talk about the lack of security in Washington D.C.
Too much for Hughes, apparently.
“We’ve got bigger problems in this country than worrying about whether the security around D.C. is ironclad,” Hughes told the Associated Press yesterday. “We need to be worried about the piles of money that are going into Congress.”
The Times has been subject to some criticism for only contacting the authorities about Hughes action just prior to him flying over the Capitol. It’s been rather mild though.
Let’s be honest here. It would be a whole different story, if Hughes was blown up in the sky, which is what Lindsey Graham says he would have done if he were president.
The other big story in yesterday’s paper was the Alex Zayas/Kameel Stanley piece on how the Tampa Police Department have issued issued 2,504 bike tickets over the past three years, more than Jacksonville, Miami, St. Petersburg and Orlando combined. And that nearly 80 percent of those pulled over are black.
This story hit with an impact on several points for me. For one thing, I’ve myself just begun to begin riding a bike on a regular basis in Tampa. I purchased lights and a helmet, not because I’m in fear of being apprehending by the police, but out of safety concerns, since these are some of the most dangerous streets in the nation when it comes to cyclists and pedestrians.
The story says that beginning in 2007, the TPD started cracking down on bike riders during a mission they called “Bicycle Bliztkrieg.”
According to a department memo obtained by the Times, law enforcement’s goal was “to aggressively enforce bicycle infractions … where there has been increased criminal activity.”
The idea outlined in the memo, as that stopping people on bikes, especially after dark, would bring officers face-to-face with “potential criminals, thus opening more avenues to make arrests and clear the streets of the subjects that are committing the crimes.” Sort of a Broken Windows approach to policing, I suppose.
Well, Mayor Buckhorn has always been a fan of what Rudy Giuliani did in New York City.
The Mayor has insisted that there’s absolutely no problems going on inside the department, which is why he’s committed to hiring one of three people in the department to replace Jane Castor, who is just weeks away from retiring. There have been some calls for him to expand the search nationally, but he has said basically “If it’s not broken, why fix it?”
I look forward to hearing what Assistant Chief Eric Ward and deputy chiefs Brian Dugan and Mary O’Connor , the three reported finalists for the job, feel about “Bicycle Blitzkrieg,” working with confidential informants and other issues that have arisen over the past year.
In other news…
We were in New Hampshire, with stories on Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and others. Go to our home page at Florida Politics to check them out.
