A Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigation examines how Florida police officers have been protected by laws and procedures heavily tilted in their favor. (Photo: SXC.)
By Ralph De La Cruz
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
When you’re someone who spends a lifetime helping folks, often in the face of society’s nastiness — folks like police officers, firefighters, sometimes doctors — you’re elevated to a certain standing and level of respect.
Those lifesavers and caregivers command the public trust and often get the benefit of the doubt. But because of that, they also receive heightened scrutiny.
A fascinating investigative series in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune illustrates why such constant oversight is needed.
In Unfit for Duty, a nine-part series that ends today, reporters Anthony Cormier and Matthew Doig examined some of the worst cases of police abuse and misconduct — and how local and state policies handled them.
It’s not a comforting treatise. The series is populated by people like Gandhi Lora, a former Miami-Dade cop who’s receiving a $7,200-a-month pension — despite being a registered sex offender who was convicted of possessing and promoting child porn.
And then there’s German Bosque, an Opa-Locka officer who has had 40 internal affairs cases filed against him (16 for battery or excessive force), been fired five times and arrested three, investigators have found a counterfeit $20 bill, cocaine and crack pipes in his squad car. And yet, he still has his badge.
The investigation looks at how people such as Lora and Bosque have been protected by their union and by laws and procedures heavily tilted in their favor. The Herald-Tribune even offers a handy searchable database where readers can type in the name of any Florida law enforcement officer and find out whether there have been complaints or disciplinary action against that officer.
Cormier’s and Doig’s work has been so revealing and exposing that it apparently got the attention of Gov. Rick Scott.
An investigation has been opened into what the governor’s office says are “illegal appointments” to the state panel — the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commissio — that oversees the discipline of law enforcement officers. Former Gov. Charlie Crist allegedly appointed two officials each from three agencies in violation of state law.
In addition, Scott’s office is looking at claims that Crist and former Gov. Jeb Bush, as well as former state Atty. Gen. Bill McCollum and current Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi have packed the panel with union representatives.
And if you can make it through that series and still have the stomach for more enlightening investigations about our lifesavers and caregivers, check out the ongoing series by the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica about the financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies, medical device makers and our doctors by the .
Like Unfit for Duty, ProPublica’s “Dollars for Doctors” is laden with examples of ineffective and unresponsive government responses to this problem. And it also offers a searchable database where a reader can type in his or her doctor’s name to see the extent of the medical practitioner’s relationship with 12 drug and device-makers. Those 12 companies sell nearly half — about 40 percent — of prescription drugs in the United States.
Florida doctors, by the way, received more than $56 million in 2009 and 2010, well behind California ($89.4 million) and just trailing New York ($60.1 million) and Texas ($59.5 million). Remember, those figures are from only a dozen companies which have made public, either voluntarily or because of some court action, their payments.
How did we possibly survive before the Internet?