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This being another Sunday in what is billed as paradise, I begin today’s homilies by saying, if you want to really know why things are so messed up on this planet, head to Regal Cinema on North Roosevelt Blvd and see “The God’s of Egypt”. If Moses were here today, he would be amazed. But after the ending, maybe not Jesus: Henceforth, people will get into heaven in the afterlife because of good deeds, kindness, mercy and generosity.
The next segment of today’s church service is the Charles Eimers article in every Friday online Key West the Newspaper (thebluepaper.com).
Here’s the blue paper’s teaser for that excellent article, which I leave for you to open and read, so the blue paper will get you added to their readership tally. Below the teaser are the reader comments, including mine, as of now:
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: Charles Eimers Death-in-Custody
by Naja and Arnaud Girard……. The image of the gray PT Cruiser parked sideways on South Beach with the huddle of Key West police officers who’d just realized the man they’d piled on top of had stopped breathing is probably going to remain in the memories of Key Westers for a long time. What went [read more…]
15 Responses to “DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: Charles Eimers Death-in-Custody”
Here’s my being homeless in Key West homily in the current blue paper:
Homeless Log Date: 3 March 2016, Key West Asteroid
by Sloan Bashinsky…….
During this past Tuesday night’s city commission meeting, City Attorney Shawn Smith advised the mayor and city commissioners that the U.S. Department of Justice had determined there was no prosecutable offense in the Charles Eimers death in police custody case, which the blue paper broke and continued vigorously investigating and reporting through and past the city settling, on advice of defense counsel, with Eimer’s estate for $900,000, which was $100,000 under the city’s insurance policy limits.
Arnaud Girard’s first of many “cartoons” about the Eimers case:
Charles Eimers drove from Ohio to Key West in his PT cruiser, to see if he wanted to live here. He brought along a good many personal belongings. The police officer who made the traffic stop noted Eimers appeared to be living in his vehicle. Thus, he was homeless. Withing maybe 15 minutes, Eimers was dead. Face down on a beach, with sand in his mouth, nose and eyes, under several KWPD officers. One of whom, Gary Lee Lovette, was caught on his taser video recorder boasting about coming down on Eimers like a fucking bomb and they killed him. Then began the cover up, while the blue paper used bystanders’ videos of the capture, which later surfaced, to make the police officers into bald-faced liars.
Arnaud’s 2nd “cartoon”
Forget not, right off the bat, Eimers was profiled as being homeless. If the officer had thought Eimers was a visiting tourist, or a local, it would have gone very differently.
In someone similar regard, the day before yesterday, one of what I affectionately call my vicious van dweller criminal amigos (snowbirds down here for the winter) posted something endearing on Facebook. The fellow is disabled, has a handicap sticker on his VW van, which is his home. He was told by a deputy sheriff and by a Key West cop that he could not park his van in a handicap parking space at Higgs Beach, because he was “camping”. So he, and lots of other vicious van dweller criminal friends of mine, started hanging out at beautiful Fort Zachary Taylor State Park during the day, where they were welcome. Here’s what he put on Facebook, to which he got close to 90 “likes” and 50 comments from his friends:
“The Florida Key’s; a place where I’ve spent the last seven years of cold months living like a King and a Bum at the same time. A magical encounter with like minded nit wits, numb skulls, and knuckle heads who have seen fit to provide an informal education of humorously light hearted and adventurous ways of alternative living. I have compiled enough material in the way of stories, characters, and fodder for several novels over the times spent just coming here. All I need now is some inspiration, knowledge, and perseverance to get it word smithed into a tale that encapsulates the experiences in a way that allows the times, characters, and common thread of these experiences to be best represented. For me to translate all of these things into writing in a way that best describes the encounter of this bygone era is going to be a monumental task for me. If for no other reason than to have had these experiences and encounters with the friends and acquaintances I have made along the way I am thankful for that alone. Some fond memories and best of life lessons were made here and I will miss the tropical madness this place has provided. At another juncture in life I leave out of here today looking forward to the uncertain experiences the future holds with the hopes of returning some day. For all of you who have come to know me over these past years I thank you for your patience and contributions of madness to these past times.”
I replied into that Facebook thread:
“Fair winds and clear skyes, Joe – great seeing and talking with you again this year, mostly at Fort Zach, since the local elected officials and their police stopped letting people who live in their homes on wheels hang out days at Higgs Beach – what’s the world coming to? A man’s castle is not his castle, unless a city commission says it is!”
Pretty discordant city policy, stood next to the city’s official philosophy, “We are all created equal members of One Human Family”. In fact, due to the city’s acute affordable housing crisis, there probably are 100 homes on wheels, parking on city streets, in which LOCAL people sleep at night – illegally.
On the city’s new city cigarette butt litter ordinance, which I had suspected would be used by the city government and its police to target homeless people, Michael Shields wrote into a Facebook thread yesterday, in which I was tagged:
“Overwhelmingly, people, smokers and non-smokers support this! Enforcement will indeed be the challenge and requires advocates keep their support strong so the City (code enforcement and police, alike) knows the public considers this a positive measure.”
I wrote into the Facebook thread:
“I attended all 3 city commission meetings, the last one this past Tuesday, during which this new ordinance was on the commission printed agenda. My sense was the elected officials were not very excited about this ordinance being vigorously enforced. Commissioners Payne and Lopez said this past Tuesday night that they voted in favor very reluctantly. Payne wanted the fine reduced to $10, because he doubted anyone would pay the $100 fine. Lopez said he use to be a smoker, so … There was talkTuesdaynight of the first offense only being a warning, not a fine, which might have been a signal to the police chief sitting in the back of the meeting chamber, to do it that way. At each of the three commission meetings, i asked, pointedly, is this a real ordinance, or is it for show? Even as I said I had pushed for something like this for years, and I hoped the ordinance would be vigorously enforced across the board, it would generate a lot of revenue for the city. However, I asked, who will enforce the ordinance? Code enforcement. City police? And if someone was fined, and did not pay the fine, could that person be arrested and jailed? Only this past Tuesday night did it seem the police chief was told his officers would also enforce the ordinance, along with code enforcement – but does code enforcement have people patrolling city streets even now, looking for litterbugs, for which there already are state, county and city laws not being enforced? It seemed like pulling eye teeth this past Tuesday night, to get anyone on the dais to say the ordinance will not just be enforced against homeless people, like the open container ordinance is enforced. I kept pushing,and finally Mayor Cates said, of course the ordinance will not be enforced only against homeless people. City Attorney Shawn Smith said people ticketed with violating the ordinance could not be arrested and jailed for not paying the fine. During the prior city commission meeting, Commissioner Sam Kaufman had assured me the ordinance would not be enforced only against homeless people, although I had asked each commissioner to make that assurance – Mayor Cates was not present due to illness. This pastTuesday, Commissioner Wardlow said he agreed with me, the ordinance should be enforced by city police. He said new cars today don’t have ashtrays and motorists flip cigarette butts out the window ongoing. Pedestrians do the same. All over Key West. During the two prior commission meetings, I suggested the city offer homeless people jobs, paying a living wage, to be litter cops, enforcing both the litter laws and the new cigarette butt ordinance. Dress them up like pirates, give them fake swords, daggers, pistols. Patrolling on foot high-pedestrian traffic areas, uttering pirate oaths at litterbugs, giving them a chance to pick up what they dropped, and if they don’t pick it up, threatening them with pirate remedies – being stabbed, shot, made to walk the plank, be keel-hauled; and if that doesn’t get them to do right, then whip out a citation pad and write them a fine and hand it to them. Imagine, I said, the publicity that would create for Key West in America and internationally. Imagine our visitors wanting to see our pirate litter cops in action. I’ve been promoting that since I ran for mayor in 2007. Back then, a nationally syndicated live radio show in NY City called and interviewed me about it. The DJ loved the idea. Other radio stations in America then called and interviewed me, they loved the idea. But the Key West city commission wasn’t interested back then, nor since, so far.”
I suppose it would have gone over the top for me to have said at the city commission meeting, or to have written into that Facebook thread, that right after I arrived in Key West in 2000, the angels who run me told me the lungs are the spirit organs for feeling, and people who smoke cigarettes regularly do not know how they really feel about anything. I myself never smoked a cigarette, and never wanted to smoke one, due to my mother smoking 2 packs of Pall Mall’s a day, until she died of cancer at age 45.
Yesterday morning in a city park, a Roman Catholic woman, who feeds the homeless a few days each week, performed a foot-washing ceremony while she fed them. When she washed my feet, I said, you know, Mary Magdalene washed Jesus’ feet before he washed his disciples’ feet; maybe he learned that from her? When I was on the British Virgin Island Tortola, Good Friday, 1996, I went into the Anglican Church in Old Town on GoodFriday, and the black Anglican priest washed the entire congregation’s feet. Then, on Easter, he started his homily with a recount of when Jesus spoke to the three women outside the tomb, and he told Magdalene to go to the men disciples and tell them she had seen him and he would soon be with them. The priest looked at his congregation, said, “If that was not the ordination of a female minister of the Gospel, then what was it?”
After the foot-washing ceremony, in which my lady Kari washed some homeless people’s feet, she asked me how I go about the part of the Lord’s Prayer, “and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”? I said, well, I don’t go about it that way. I just get over what people do bad to me, I can’t explain how, and I spend a good bit of time looking at what I did wrong, which isn’t much fun, but it cools me off when I’m mad at someone else. That night in dreams, I was shown to revisit that, and I awoke and spent maybe a hour in semi-trance, as different scenarios past and present in my life came before me, and I basically moved in each scenario to the place of feeling the other people involved were doing their best, given who they were and what they had to work with, about like me, in that regard, but they had not had the ongoing instruction and correcting from angels I have had, and still have.
I suppose it would have gone over the top for me to tell the Roman Catholic woman washing my feet, if Magdalene washed the homeless man Jesus’ feet with her own hair and tears, and anointed his feet with precious ointment I imagine she scarce could afford, what to you imagine she washed and anointed him with when they were in private? And why do you suppose Jesus sent her, and not his mother or the other woman at the tomb, to tell the other disciples she had seen him and he would be with them soon? Was it because Magdalene was his wife? And who do you suppose authored the anonymous Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, about the Melchizedek priesthood, in which Jesus is high priest, and the grave peril of turning away from that calling? The angels told me it was Mary Magdalene who wrote Hebrews, and she did not put her name on it because it was known back then, if a woman’s name was on it, as scribe, no man would ever read it. And, maybe some or all of that is why I never heard the Letter to the Hebrews and the Melchizedek priesthood preached in any Christian church I ever attended. Or that Jesus was homeless, and he told his disciples, as they did for the least of those around them, they did also to him.
At Craig Cates’ victory party back in 2009, about a hour after he won his first mayor’s race, he thanked me for getting him elected without a runoff. I had been saying at candidate forums, if you don’t vote for me, then vote for Craig – the other two mayor candidates were incumbent mayor Morgan McPherson and Mike Mongo. After thanking me, Craig asked if I would be on his mayor’s homeless advisory committee, because I knew so much about homeless people? I said, sure. Since then, I have somehow managed to show up here and there, shooting off my big mouth about homeless stuff, not always pleasing many people, or anyone.
See you around,
Sloan Bashinsky
Back to the gods must be crazy …
To my … amusement? … it’s looking more and more like the angels are telling me to run for mayor of Key West this year.
Let’s see, what are my qualifications? Maybe I should get back to you on that.
Meanwhile, consider I’m homeless with no fix for that in sight, so why not run and try to get elected and get myself a real job paying maybe $20,000 a year, plus city employee health insurance, which won’t, with my $740 a month Social Security retirement benefits, allow me to pay apartment rent in Key West?
Consider I can’t afford the filing fee to run for mayor, so if I can’t get the filing fee waived by the city, or by the supervisor of elections office, or by someone donating the filing fee, or if the angels don’t wave a magic wand and come up with the filing fee, I can only run as a write-in candidate, which won’t put my name on the ballot.
But then, the times the angels had me run for mayor in 2003, 2007, 2009 and 2014, when I did pay the filing fee (although it was donated in 2003 by Father Stephen Braddock and planning board commissioner Bill Verge when I was homeless but housed in the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition program), I got something like 34 votes, 64 votes, 110 votes, and 172 votes, respectively. So paying the filing fee is not relevant to my political incursions, nor is spending money promoting my mayor campaigns, which I did in 2009 (maybe $10,000) and 2014 (maybe $1,000).
I suppose I could hope for something viral to happen on Facebook or for goodmorningkeywest.com. Or for the national news media to flip out and take me viral everywhere. Maybe I could get elected in Mongolia.
But consider, I detest politics, endless award ceremonies, ribbon cuttings, kissing babies, and long city commission meetings; and I think the city needs an all-powerful king or queen, instead of a mayor and a city commission; and I’m told, tired, worn out and hurt most of the time, and otherwise don’t look forward to much of anything but watching movies, shooting my mouth off and taking naps when I’m not already sleeping …
The angels have a terrific sense of humor. I’m keeled over, splitting my sides laughing. How about you?
Like I said, maybe I’ll have to get back to you on this …
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
SHAMEFUL. At least the Bluepaper has documented what really happened with the cover-ups, witness intimidation , and all the other stuff THAT REALLY HAPPENED. This would rival a John Grisham novel if it were fiction, but all the lying and obfuscation really happened. So much for justice, accountability , and One Human Family. Will they really get away with this ,City Commissioners?
” We received a complaint that officials of your agency may have been involved in violating the civil rights of Mr. Charles John Eimers. We recently completed our review of the results of the investigation of that complaint to determine whether a federal criminal prosecution was warranted. After careful consideration, we concluded that the evidence does not establish a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes.” – Paige M. Fitzgerald, Acting Section Chief,Criminal Section, United States Department of Justice
Apparently murder isn’t a human rights violation in insane world.
I suggest all you concerned citizens to contact Paige M. Fitzgerald at
http://www.leadershipdirectories.com/profiles/Paige-Fitzgerald-Deputy-Chief-Criminal-Section-Civil-Rights.htm
At the bottom of the page toggle Contact Us.
Paige and her department need to know that this murder of Charles Elmers will not fade. I suggest this murder would be good on Dateline or 48 hours. I suggest someone right a book.
There are many many tourist who are now afraid and disgusted with KW and more and more will find out about this danger. People vacation to enjoy and relax. How can any knowingly tourist enjoy and relax in KW??
I saw the other day where former State Attorney Dennis Ward filed to run for State Attorney this year. I wonder what he might say on the campaign trail about how State Attorney Catherine Vogel handled the grand jury she impaneled in the Charles Eimers case? I wonder if he will say he would have prosecuted Key West police officers and Cathy Smith of Florida Department of Law Enforcement? Thanks to the blue paper, we have the real version, and not just the official version.
The ugly stain of the MURDER of Charles Eimers will forever be remembered by good people who live in and visit Key West, and good people from around the world who have been made aware of this perversion by police officers and their superiors. The total breakdown of police conduct and subsequent investigations has disgraced Key West forever. The perpetrators of this heinous crime, and those who attempted to cover it up – several individuals named in this article – got away with MURDER.
But it is not over. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of news accounts from around the world will live in perpetuity, telling good people of this shameful affair.
Enjoy the rest of your life, something you took away from Charles Eimers.
Based on how the city races went in 2014, when the Eimers case was getting a lot of coverage even in the Key West Citizen and the Keynoter, and twice on CBS Morning Show, there were not many people in Key West who were upset with how the mayor and city commissioners handled the Eimers case. Based on the hordes of people coming to Key West since 2014, the Eimers case had zero impact on the city’s tourist trade.
I’ve commented long and hard from the beginning and all I have left is a copy n paste of my last for I’m now out of fresh words and said this fed would turn a blind eye back when. sooo.
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wankajm says:
February 19, 2016 at 6:43 am
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how will it go if…..the 2 video recordings of Charles eimers ‘death on the beach’ are shown along with the time lines and perjured depositions and other “inconvenient” facts like mr f-bomb’s taser recording. the totally compliant poor sand face encrusted man was killed that day by asphyxiation and didn’t die from a heart problem just because he was taken off the ventilator machine a week later. this is not to say there was any shred of malice since there was none on behalf of key west’s blue team kids but is to say the kid’s play acting being a tv swat dwat can be bad for ones health and the cost of killing has not been met by any standard. great bobble headed cover up though had everyone up and down the line nodding in the affirmative!
best to all. wjm
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wankajm says:
March 3, 2016 at 12:38 am
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maybe not the only 2 but the only 2 to reply for now. I think the kwpd has had a religious experience at least I hope it did and lee needs use the 2 videos at any training session he can to instill in any newcomer just what could and did happen when you play tv swat. should never ever happen again is the lesson. but he won’t…so I leave it up to the next chief to use both videos the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ one!
poor Charles was dead’er then a doornail when they rolled him over with his sand encrusted face on the 2nd video.
sad the family settled on that scam of only 1M insurance because if they took a closer look into kw finance they would find the municipality had $35+M in reserve funds and a far cry from just $1M insurance,
but the discovery screeched to a stop and many ‘truths’ were buried that day. oh well life goes on. wjm
Yes life goes on but not for Mr Eimers.
Carless action like this will someday cost KW millions.
At the beginning of that video at .14 I heard something I had missed before. “get on the ground” “do it now” sounds like a female.
Up till now I had assumed he did this on his own. So in reallity he did exactly as he was ordered to do by a cop. How can anything get so far out of control as what we all can clearly see ? And to come charging after him that way was stupid. What if he did have a gun ? The order should have been ” freeze ” ” put your hand on top of your head and turn around slowly” Cops are trained better than to take such a risk of being shot at. Many wrong actions took place. Very poor method of making this arrest.
As to the claim of targetted as homeless , maybe I am missing something. How could they know this till they searched his car ? He clearly had no idea where he was going or would not drove to the end of Duval with no way out. None of us will ever know what he was thinking from the time he was pulled over till his death.
So yes they did an investigation but did they watch this vidio ? Did they have all of the evidence and still not see abuse of power ? Why was this amount of cops needed to make a simple arrest ? If they can say no violation after seeing all of this then they never will in any case. Just one big happy corrupt family covering up each others lies.
Will this case cost future tourist ? How can it not ? Only possable gain this sort of thing sometimes can cause is attention to Key West that it might never got before. So sadly yes it could actually help gain tourists.
What upsets me the most is the way cheif Lee took no action to maybe calm down a situation that brings shame to Key West. For most of the times we been in KW and that is very often what we see is a very tolerant professhional police department. We do feel safe at night walking down Duval and that is not something we can say about many other towns. But always remember that even just one bad apple destroys all of them.
Also upsetting is how cops can openly commit perjury in a court and no action taken.
Without this paper we would likely never hear anything negative about this city that clearly is very corrupt. Not sure if it is over yet but hope it does reach attention at some level to bring justice. And trust me I tell everyone we meet to check out the Blue paper and google in Eimers. This is one case that will harm KW for years.
During depositions officers stated that Eimers looked dirty – that he was dressed in hospital pants.
That is shocking to be judging a man based on the of pants he was wearing. Can easily see that after a very long drive from Ohio to KW that ones appearance is a bit less than desirable and to make such a trip in a small car with no trunk such as a PT. would be disorderly. Am I wrong in assuming that this traffic stop was more than asking for drivers license and registration ? The cop must be highly trained to judge that fast and easy. Sure the car might look bit messy but that is exactly how many tourists arrive after a day or two of hard driving. That is hardly reason enough to assume homeless. But yes then seems at this point he was targeted as homeless. And in fact we were told he had just arrived and planning on spending the winter. So yes till he finds a place to rent he is homeless. Is that a crime ?
Jiminkeywest, the officer who made the traffic stop on North Roosevelt, in all that haywire, confusing, dangerous traffic caused by the entire road being redone, profiled Eimers as appearing to live in his vehicle. Cops chatter, especially during a chase. From something you posted under one of my recent homeless in Key West articles, that KW police should round up drunk homeless people to make is safe for locals and tourists, but nothing from you about rounding up the many, many more drunk not homeless people here, I was left feeling you are a bit biased against homeless people. These cops had Eimers pegged as living in his vehicle. He clearly was unarmed. He clearly obeyed their orders and did not resist at the beach. And they clearly killed him there. And then they clearly tried to spin it their way, not yet knowing of the bystanders’ videos. The city officials demonstrated no remorse for what their cops had done. No apology to the Eimers family. They knew their cops believed Eimers was homeless, and they know the city’s policy is to target homeless people and make them as uncomfortable as possible, as the law allows, and even beyond what the law allows, to discourage them from being here. If you had lived on the street here, or if you had friends here who lived in their vehicles, you would not be so incredulous that the city commission has its police targeting homeless people. It’s the city’s policy. It’s been going on for years, and nearly all of the good people of Key West want it that way, Arnaud and Naja Girard and I talked about that today, and we have had much the same conversation in the past.
Sorry if you took anything I said as being biased as I am far from that. Am sure being homeless is very hard. And after hearing about the conditions of the shelter it seems the woods would be safer. Someone in the health department is not doing their job.
Up till last night I missed the few very low orders from the cop telling him to get on the ground. Till then I assumed he laid down on the ground on his own free will as an indication of surrender. This changes little about what followed as he complied and all that was required was to cuff him. To have 7 cops jump on him is clearly misuse of the amount of force required to make the arrest. So yes violated. What followed was a bunch of on duty cops looking to join in on a game of thug cop with adrenaline rush. That Lee defended them is not surprising. Plenty of wrong issues in KW. I had always been told cops had to follow a code of ethics on the job and off. Seems that is not the case in the KWPD.
Yes it was murder and seems the KWPD got away with it. At this point will simply believe the right department or news reporters have not been alerted yet.
We all know why they don’t go after the drunk tourist or enforce the open container law on tourists. Tourist have the one thing KW wants and that is money. And without them KW would become a ghost town and be far less jobs and even fewer cops. This is called doing your job just enough to stay employed but not enough to make the need of that job go away.
We did notice the last few visits to KW that we seen an old van with a wood box on it’s rear seemed to stay at Fort Zack every day and that seemed a bit odd that they could afford to pay the park fee if homeless. Had not noticed they were ran off of higgs beach. Will assume they park on the street at night and for what ever reason the cops are leaving them alone.
Can tell you if they are serious enough to remove all of the homeless that they have enough laws on the book to make life pure h— to the point of they will leave. Only thing stopping them is it cost them more than they can afford to arrest all of them and lock them up. Given the choice between KOTS and jail it does seem that jail would be a better choice.
I do feel sorry for anyone that ends up homeless but that is the result of a system of SS that simply is not enough to live on. And that situation will be getting far worse as the number of workers that retire end up without owning a home and unable to afford rent.
But as far as the Eimers case I am not sure how it would have changed even if the man was not homeless. He left the seen after being pulled over for a traffic stop. The officer had no choice but to pursue him and at that point acted proper. Would the story ended better ?
The people who live in vans generally are pretty okay people, they tend to be educated, interesting, informed, lowish income, either retirement or social security or VA. Some make a little money selling their art. They are like a subculture, live else where in their vans, and sometimes stay with friends or relatives.
Then are people who live in their vehicles here, who live here full time, but can’t afford rent for one reason or another, tending not to be their fault.
Likewise, many people live with relatives or friends, because of financial strain.
The street people are further down the ladder, many are chemically dependent and/or mentally ill in some way or another. There are some street people who are really smart and just as interesting. And other variations.
The city doesn’t want any of them here, but is constrained by law to tolerate having homeless people, many of whom end up in the sheriff’s jail for offenses non homeless are not jailed.
KWPD also is using the jail as a Marchman Act facility, and the hospital, too – usually for drunk homeless people.
Perhaps, I hope so, the Eimers tragedy woke the city and its police up, and we won’t see anything like that again here.
Eimers did talk and behave strangely when he was stopped for illegally changing lanes. He could have been viewed as on something, or mentally ill, as well as homeless. But he didn’t do anything aggressive, and his death was bizarre and pointless, is about the kindest way I can say it.
The blue paper has had an effect on city hall and its police, more so after Naja and Arnaud took the helm.
Oh Keys, Oh Keys. Oh Keys. How little doth yee know of the shananigans that walk on your top. How little doth yee know of the life that disappears from your top. Or maybe yee do know. Maybe yee were looking up when Mr Eimers was looking down and praying for his last breath. Maybe yee are looking up and trying to find the very culprits and lowlifes that extinguished Mr Eimers’ life. Maybe yee have put a curse on these lowlifes already . One doth never know.