New developing insider information reveals that Mayor Tomas Regalado, the famed $5,000 man, is possibly receiving monetary kickbacks from the illegal gambling operations that City of Miami Police raided this past late October.
Sources close to the investigation have revealed to us that there is a link between the gambling machine ordinance, the raids, and Regalado's insistence that the raid be canceled by police.
According to these sources, authorities are investigating whether Mayor Regalado received monetary payment from gambling consortia for the passage of the ordinance, and the command to police to stop the raid on the highly profitable machines.
When Regalado could not stop the raid, the gambling operators held Regalado's feet to the fire, causing Regalado to increase the friction in his already tense relationship with Chief Exposito.
If found to be true, these allegations could seriously jeopardize Mayor Regalado's future as mayor, causing him to be removed from office, and a special election for mayor to take place.
Just when you thought it could not get any more bizarre in the City, now we have a paranoid Mayor claiming he is being followed around by the Chief of Police HE PUT INTO OFFICE.
So exactly how many deaths did it take Reverend Dunn until you finally decided to act and call for the Chief's removal?
Remember back in the Summer when Uncle Luke and we demanded the Chief's resignation, where the hell were you?
But now that your Master Regalado is in deep shit with the police chief you all of a sudden wake up and start to call for the chief's ouster, six dead folks later.
Nice try house boy.
THE PREDATORS
Adding insult to injury, the New Times picks up on a story that the Herald won't touch about Exposito's tough boys, "hunting" for criminals in the Magic City.
Fuck professionalism when you can have the two sizes too small shirts on your steroid enhanced body attitude of appetite for destruction patrolling our city streets.
This is what MPD is all about:
"Miami cops smoking stogies, busting down doors and cracking jokes.
"The tone throughout makes it clear: These guys are out for a fight.
"We hunt. That's what I like," an unnamed officer intones at the beginning of the clip. "I like to hunt."
When Regalado said that the City would respond to "violence with violence," he wasn't kidding!
WHERE THE FUCK IS BRAMAN?
We wonder what Billionaire Braman, who applauds Mayor Regalado's leadership skills, would have to say about all this?
What better evidence of Braman's recall efforts being a not-so-veiled attempt at revenge than his refusal to speak up on the meltdown at the City of Miami.
If Norman Braman were truly the civic crusader and savior he claims to be, he would call his buddy Regalado and tell him to step down, leave the business of running a city to someone that is competent.
But every day Braman goes after the "other Mayor" and continues to praise Regalado, it's just another day he reveals his true intent is not civic duty, but pure revenge.
Miami's lack of memory has allowed Mayor Regalado to pull the wool over the lapdog media and distance himself from controversial Chief Miguel Exposito.
The latest victim of this hoodwink is Hank Tester over at CBS 4, writing that: "It also galls Mayor Tomas Regalado, who fears unrest in the streets. Yet the mayor seems to understand the dilemma when he says, "We got to figure out what to say."
But it was only a little over a year ago, when Mayor Regalado first took office, that he made ridding Miami of Chief John Timoney his number one priority.
Back then, Armando Aguilar, president of the Police union gave the reasons for seeking Timoney's ouster:
“There’s been nothing but turmoil since he started at this police department,” Aguilar told the press last weekend. “It’s been hell on our troops. He’s basically destroyed morale.”
Can anyone honestly say morale has improved under Exposito?
Regalado followed with "“My move is to keep saying to the city manager that I’m very uncomfortable with the chief,” Regalado told the press. “I will say that every day. People get messages.”
Does anyone really think that Regalado can't get his lackey Tony Crapp to do what he wants?
So why could Regalado get rid of Timoney and not Exposito?
The answer is partly in today's Herald that reveals that former manager Migoya are accusing Regalado of stalling a raid on gambling machines.
And who is the officer making the accusation? Chairman Sarnoff pal Al Alvarez.
The plot thickens, and Regalado is caught in the middle.
His utter incompetence and "keen knack" have led him to this.
Time to be held accountable, and time for him to exercise some leadership.
If you keep him around, he'll continue to embarrass your boss and mentor Tomasito.
Hell, the cops may even kill more black men, and you may get yourself in the middle of a neighborhood you know nothing about justifying why you, an African American city manager, put up with the killing of African American men at the hands of the cops.
If you fire Chief Exposito, then the question becomes whether your boss and mentor Tomasito will be held accountable for putting Exposito there in the first place.
And oh yeah, there's that multi-million dollar whistle blower lawsuit lined up against the city. Last we heard, the complaint is all written up, all it needs is a signature to be filed.
While Expo and TomAss were having a bitch slap paper fight, City of Miami cops were out on the streets bringing violence yet again to an African American neighborhood.
Family members said Witherspoon was walking to a corner store when he ran into a group of Miami police officers, traveling in a dark tinted SUV.
Witnesses said the officers came out with their guns drawn.
Miami police said the officers were responding to calls about shots fired in the area. When they arrived, officers saw Witherspoon with a gun.
After a confrontation, an officer shot and killed him, police said.
"We don’t know why he was out there with a hand gun in his hand. The officers supposedly identified themselves," said Miguel Exposito, City of Miami Police Chief.
Police are still investigating the shooting.
That's right Expo, we'll never know why he had a gun because your trigger happy cops KILLED THE MAN.
You mean that the Mayor is not supposed to meddle into the affairs of the different departments?
That NEVER happens.
Tomas Regalado has meddled into the affairs of city departments violating the city Charter ever since he stepped foot on the City Commission, and now as Mayor, it is no different.
And because getting rid of Chief John Timoney was Regalado's top priority, he replaced him with Exposito who is a sly fox and is now preparing himself for a whistle blower suit against the city.
Mayor TomAss' "keen knack" for hiring is now going to cost the city taxpayers dearly.
Bend over and open your wallets, it's going to be a rough 2011 at the City!
It takes a Florida grand jury to state the obvious:
Public Government is Corrupt.
Frankly, we're shocked!
As reported in the St. Pete Times (the Herald was too busy licking TomAss to report on this...)
"Saying corruption is "pervasive at all levels of government,'' a statewide grand jury released a report Wednesday calling for reforms to combat "mismanagement and theft'' by public officials.
"Fraud, waste and abuse of state resources'' punishes taxpayers by driving up the cost of services, the panel said."
"The grand jury used the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to underscore the depth of the problem. In that agency, supervisors flagrantly circumvented purchasing rules, a practice that become common knowledge and prompted other employees to act unethically, the panel says.
"We were told employees would steal items such as flat screen televisions from the office. Depending upon the position of the employee, the supervisor often took no action," the report says. "Due to the unethical conduct at the supervisory level, a systemic acceptance of corruption was born."
In April 2009, a janitor sweeping Miami-Dade Transit's office made a startling discovery: In an empty cubicle on the 16th floor of the county's Overtown Transit Village complex, the cleaner found wads of cash totaling $9,863 and old checks for $14,772.
The former employee who had occupied the desk, Jeffrey Bechdel, helped run the county's seven-day Visitor Pass program, which sold weekly passes for bus and Metrorail. For 2 ½ years, before leaving Transit in January 2009, he stuffed the sale proceeds in his desk drawer. ``I'm a lousy bookkeeper,'' he later told police.
Police pegged possible losses at $120,000, but the staffer wasn't criminally charged. The reason: There was no evidence he stole, and investigators determined the agency was riddled with administrative flaws, including failing to create a system to deposit money from the pass sales.
Where was County Manager George Burgess?
Who is responsible for making sure that OUR taxpayer money is looked after?
No one.
If Governor Elect Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature are serious about tackling public corruption, Miami Dade County and City of Miami are the very first places they should look.
