Yesterday’s Mystic.Goodies post introduced what Sandy Downs says is a vigilante group operating within the sheriff office. I recieve a reply to yesterday’s post saying the writer could no long trust anything I write, and what a shame that was.
Maybe it’s impossible for Keys people to believe the sheriff office is corrupt from top to bottom. Maybe it’s impossible for them to believe night riders operate inside the sheriff office. But they do.
I personally hired an attorney to defend a young woman introduced to me by Sandy Downs, whom I was convinced was stalked and set up by a sheriff deputy, who was known to stalk and set up young women. Until then, she had either been represented, not very well, by the Public Defender’s Office, or by herself. She said the arresting deputy told her that if she caused him problems in the sheriff office, he would blow up her house. A few days before the trial was first set, while she was away, the house burned down. When the lawyer I hired entered an appearance, the case was continued and started moving in a different direction. He destroyed the State Attorney’s case during the trial and the jury brought back a not-guilty verdict. This deputy has received awards from the sheriff office, and raves from Official Sheriff Spokesperson Becky Herrin, for exemplary work as a deputy.
At the behest of the Goodman family, who head up the local Republican party, the night riders took out after Sandy Downs and her family because she had reported the Goodmans to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for cutting down the mangroves on a state-owned island near their Cud Joe Key home, a couple of hundred yards from Sandy’s home.
The day sandyforsheriff.com went online, the “My experiences with injustice” page about Sandy and her family’s terrifying experiences with the sheriff office was destroyed by a hacker. The same day, the hugely popular Coconut Telegraph page of bigpinekey.com also was destroyed by a hacker. Sandy’s campaign was announced that day on the Coconut Telegraph, along with the fact that the host of that website had built Sandy’s website for her. He had built my websites and I sent her to him so he could build hers.
When the Kelly family objected to Bob Peryam courting and having sex with their daughter in their home, their daughter went to Bob about it and she said he would kick her father’s ass, and right after that her parents were so harassed by sheriff personnel that Mrs. Kelly filed a very long handwritten report with the sheriff office, which Sheriff Roth gave to a private investigator to look into, instead of forwarding the complaint to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement like he was supposed to do. After the harassment stopped, the Kellys said they wanted to drop the complaint.
Sandy told me Ken Davis’ campaign website was hacked yesterday and went back up after it was repaired.
So I return to what seems to be my critic’s favorite place, the sheriff office: to something Sandy told ten days ago me that really made my eyes bug out.
She said the psychological examinations administered to new sheriff hires by David Rice (under a lucrative no-bid contract let out by his son, Major Mike Rice), are used to screen out applicants who will not be inclined to play along with the bubba way the sheriff office is being operated. Sandy said the psychological exams performed by the Guidance Clinic of the Middle Keys (which David Rice used to own and through which he now has a lucrative consultant contract with the purchaser of that business) are used to justify getting rid of sheriff personnel who are not going along with the bubba crap they discovered after going to work for the sheriff office. Sandy said she is not the only person outside of the sheriff office who knows about this, but I do not have her permission to identify anyone else.
If you are wondering why a county commission candidate is so involved in the sheriff race, ask yourself why you don’t know how this county government is run? How it is run is the County Commission approves the sheriff budget ($44,000,000 last year), which then is funded with taxes paid over by the Tax Collector to the Sheriff. However, before approving the sheriff budget, the County Commission has an affirmative and solemn duty to satisfy itself that the Sheriff is on the up and up. If the County Commission is not satisfied, it is not supposed to approve the sheriff budget. The Sheriff then has to go to Tallahassee to get the money to operate, and while there, explain to the Governor and other high-ranking state officials why the County Commission refused to approve the sheriff budget.
Make no mistake, if I end up on the County Commission, I will vote to approve the sheriff budget only if I am satisfied the Sheriff and sheriff office are on the up and up. Right now, they are anything but that. Keep that in mind when you vote for sheriff.
Happy Halloween.
Sloan Bashinsky, non-affiliated District 3 county commission candidate