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R.C. White/Miami Herald

The Stolen SUV

The Miami Herald wupped the Sun-Sentinel again on the latest Fort Lauderdale police shooting story, again with the benefit of more reporters assigned to the breaking news. From the Sentinel story:

"Police declined to identify the officer or officers who fired or explain what led to the shooting."

From the Herald story:

"The latest shooting, in Fort Lauderdale, involved Officer Robert Norvis, a decorated police veteran who was once named an Officer of the Year, and Officer Todd Hill. ... Norvis, who joined the department Aug. 21, 2000, received the 2001 Officer of the Year for the State of Florida award for his role in helping bring down a gun-toting, mentally disturbed former Oakland Park policeman.

That gun battle started with what was supposed to be a routine traffic stop for an expired tag. When it was over, Norvis' training officer was left with a slug in his neck and Norvis with a bullet wound to his hand."

I vaguely remembered the case involving the "mentally disturbed former Oakland Park policeman," so I looked it up. Yep, his name was David Royce Truman, an ultra-paranoid, black-clad, weapons-fanatic who neighbors described at the time as a "time bomb waiting to happen." Truman lived in a big black house (that would be worth $1 million today), wore a black cape, and was crazy as the day is long. Here's how the Sentinel's John Holland described his house at the time:

Smack in the middle of one of the city's quietest neighborhoods, Truman's house is unmistakable. Amateurish carpentry on the overgrown front lawn holds handmade signs, including rebel flags, eagles and crosses. Carved owls, apparently wooden, are all over the yard, now encircled in police tape.

The yard is flush with unruly bushes and trees. A stench rises from the yard, a product of his three large Rottweilers, Reed said. Truman, who clashed constantly with the city, was often without electricity and water, Reed said.

So Norvis, who may be a "veteran" now but was just a rookie on the job four days when the 2000 shooting occurred, was involved in a gunfight with a true madman. This latest shooting, however, doesn't look so clear-cut. The Herald today outright stated, without attribution, that the unarmed 21-year-old man wounded in the shooting, Travis Jackson, was shot in the back. Again, if that is true, there looks to be serious problems with this case. I wonder if the shooting of the driver might be considered justified and the shooting of Jackson excessive. But that's all there is now, a bunch of guesses. There's a reason the Sentinel didn't get the name of that officer: The police department is in full bunker mode, hunkering down and releasing nothing on the situation. That's another distinct sign that the department is aware that it has a problematic shooting on its hands.

Once again the Sentinel message board has been barraged by ignorant racist jackasses. Wrote one person:

"I am appalled by the blatantly racist comments on this and other Sun-Sentinel comments boards. The fact that several of these comments seem to have been made by police officers is not helping the public perception of their profession."

The stuff is so similar in tone that it has the reek of a semi-organized campaign (most of it aimed at Carlton Moore, the black city commissioner who is calling for an investigation of the police). And, as I intimated yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised if the brunt of it is coming from cops (though you have to hope they aren't responsible for the most vile of it). Yes, both victims in this shooting were criminals and there is a serious debate to be had about accountability in the black community. But this is pathetic and indicates a lack of respect for the rule of law equal to that of the criminals themselves.

After the jump: Highlights from the Sentinel's Racist Forum

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Fort Lauderdale police shot two men, killing one of them, yesterday afternoon off Sistrunk Boulevard. The best coverage comes from the Miami Herald, which put five reporters -- four of them bylined -- on the story. They identified the dead guy and his passenger and got a lot more detail than the Sun-Sentinel which had a single bylined reporter (Sofia Santana) and two contributors for its front-page story. In other words, the Sentinel got its ass handed to it on a police shooting story in its own backyard. Santana, a good reporter, isn't to blame; short-sighted management is.

The men were in a stolen ("possibly carjacked") SUV at the time. Some witnesses said that after patrol officers stopped the vehicle it moved toward them, putting them in danger. The driver was definitely shot dead in his seat while the passenger, identified by the Herald as Travis Jackson, wound up outside the vehicle. That man's aunt, one Genise Bradshaw, told the Herald that he was shot in the back and was in stable condition. Santana also reported that three separate witnesses told her that the passenger was "wounded in the

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Bob Eighmie/For Miami Herald

This photo comes from Dave Barry's Annual Gift Guide, which was published Sunday in the Miami Herald. The picture comes from the motorized ice cream cone bit. Is that who I think it is? I'm not 100 percent sure, but if not, there is a veritable Jim DeFede clone walking around. My God, there can't be more DeFedes. They'll devour the entire journalism landscape in no time, leaving us all jobless.

But if that is DeFede, and I have to think it is, he finally made it back into the Miami Herald after his abrupt firing last year following the Teele suicide. With his radio and TV gigs, along with the knocks the Herald has had to its reputation over the past year, you might call it slumming.

After the Jump: The Sentinel is better than the Herald?

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Well, it's been a long time coming, but I finally got around to arranging a bust-out for the book. So now I get to invite you all to a book reading. That's right, it's at Murder on the Beach in Delray this Friday evening, where I'll be reading from Florida Pulp Nonfiction, my little book of true and ghastly home-brewed crime which has been dubbed "spellbinding" by bestselling author Aphrodite Jones and "precise, illuminating and often wildly funny" by the great Joe McGinniss. (I have to keep repeating that because Amazon, for some reason, has neglected to put the blurbs on its site).

For those of you who already have it, come by to experience it in a different way and have it signed. It may be worth only $18.50 today, but in 50 years, why, it'll probably be worth twice that, making it at least as good an investment as South Florida real estate at the present time. The show starts at 7 p.m. and it'll last until whenever you feel like hitting the door. Here's the guarantee: You will have a journalistic experience unlike any you have ever had before, one that will outrage you, touch your heart, and ultimately make you more human.

No, seriously.

Directions to Murder on The Beach After the Jump

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I'll begin by announcing that this post isn't to pick on the Boca Raton News. It's a tiny newspaper on a shoe-string budget. I have nothing against it. But for the first time, I stumbled upon the on-line editorials in that newspaper and found them incredibly entertaining. You know, in the same way an Ed Wood movie is entertaining. They are so incredibly bad they're good. It's not so much the ideas -- it's that you can't decipher the writing to know what the hell exactly the idea is. I'm not going to offer any more commentary, just give you a few examples below, in exactly the way they appear in the News, to look over (actually "reading" them, I'm afraid, is quite impossible). Enjoy:

-- "Some critics say that Congressman Mark Foley's former "let's- protect-the-children" public rhetoric, versus a private behavior displaying the opposite, is typical of the hypocritical behavior (can you say Jimmy Swaggart) of anti-tax/anti-government conservatives who offer themselves as the morality police. The liberals add that while painted as compassionate conservatives, Foley and his morality police pals ignore that there are millions of children without health insurance, many millions more of latchkey children, and that Foley, et al, offer a set of "family values" that ignores whole segments of society.

Excuse us, but isn't the real hypocrisy being glued to the TV so as not to miss one salacious detail, rather than doing something, anything, to help children in your own city?

If the liberals want some apples-to-apples criticism, perhaps it would be that all of the media frenzy about Foley's sexual

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Gretchen Day-Bryant must have the easiest job in journalism. She's the Sun-Sentinel's Lifestyles section editor and that means she must pick stories about pop culture, shopping, and video games off the wires and pop them onto her pages. Apparently she has also been given a directive to display the resulting morass in the most chaotic manner imaginable.

Look at today's offerings. A giant picture of Kevin Smith (who may be the most overrated director in history -- Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jersey Girl? you have got to be kidding) and an accompanying lightweight article from the Washington Post's Jen Chaney. The peg for the story? Why the release of his two useless Smith DVDs, of course.

The other article on the front page is about a videogame called Marvels Ultimate Alliance. That came from the Chicago Tribune. Then there's a brief about a Twisted Sister X-mas album from Associated Press that raves it is "quite simply the best hard rock Christmas album ever made." You can fill in your own punch line for that one.

Page 2 has its usual lineup of syndicated advice columnists and a child's story promoting literacy. Page 3, well, that's where you get a taste of local reporting. An eight-inch theater review from Jack Zink and something about a ceramics show from freelancer Candice Russell, that also includes a couple of re-written press releases. Tom Jicha also tells us about a TV show on TBS. The rest is all comics and crosswords.

Remember the dream that local newspapers would use the local Lifestyles (or Features, as it's often called) section to let reporters write about the place where the newspaper is actually published? Yeah, it's dead.

After the jump: Honest Services? Riiiiight. A Bit More On That Crazy Cuban Cartoonist. And Charges Come in Boot Camp Death.

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Some interesting takes on cartoonist Jose Varela and his seige of the Miami Herald building you might not have seen:

-- From Category305 here.
-- From Stuck on the Palmetto here.
-- From Critical Miami here.
-- NEW-Dan Sweeney's take at Doomed Generation.

NEW-After the jump: A letter posted at Romenesko from a former El Nuevo reporter

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Will Miami Stick It To Stoda?

It's a slow news day. So slow that all three big dailies' web sites are headlined by a double fatality on Sunday on Donald Ross Road in Palm Beach County. That's to be expected. But it wasn't completely slow at the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, and Palm Beach Post over the weekend. The Herald was at the center of one of the bigger stories on Friday, the storming of its building by toy-gun toting cartoonist Jose Varela. The Sentinel was marked by a post-Jake Scott column by Dave Hyde. The Scott story was so surprisingly good, I thought it might mark an upward turn in Hyde's usually dull and boneheaded copy. I was wrong. The lede: "Facilities, schmacilities."

I mean, who couldn't help but to read on after clever word play like that?

Sticking with sports coverage, Hyde's counterpart at the Post, Greg Stoda, had a slightly more interesting lede for his column this morning. To wit: "The Dolphins aren't going to make the playoffs."

Every Dolphin fan has to admit they've been entertaining the idea. The Fins, without a doubt, have been the best team out there the past month. Kuechenberg's magic seems to know no bounds. And it looks like Nick Saban's teams do the exact opposite of his predecessor Dave Wannstedt's -- they start sluggish and finish strong instead of

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The Aftermath (Not Mine, But Close Enough)

Well, Turkey Weekend is winding down. For the Pulp, Thanksgiving isn't a day, it's a four-day binge of bird and football. Anyway, John DeGroot has sent along a Thanksgiving letter in which he celebrates the feast of life found here in South Florida every day of the year. I should have published it a few days ago, but I was too busy watching Joey Harrington throw it in his old team's face, a cartoonist lose it at One Herald Plaza, Kentucky rule Tennessee at Neyland Stadium (but still blow the game), South Florida pull off a beautiful upset of West Virginia, and eating enough to clog the arteries of an African wildebeast.

No more about my shameful commission of two of the seven deadly sins, sloth and gluttony (I won't get into the others I toyed around with). Here's DeGroot's letter, which in itself is a reason to be thankful:
----------------------------------
Dear Bob Norman:

Happy Thanksgiving.

And shame on you for not writing a gratitude-filled Thanksgiving column.

Truth is, you of all people should know how much you've been blessed as a guardian of truth, justice, journalism and such stuff here on the western edge of the Devil's Triangle.

That said, I have taken the liberty of listing a few of the more absurd chunks that regularly feed your surreal grist mill — and for which you should be lighting a bonfire's worth of candles in thanks.

Or, more to the point, consider just how far up the old feces creek you would be without:

One — The Sun-Sentinel's Help Team. Journalism by the impaired for the impaired where Forrest Gump trumps Bob Woodward.

Two - The Miami Herald's allergy to all things Cuban, Castro and Communista. Or Tom Fielder's karmic payback for digging through Gary Hart's trash can to

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Varela

"You're talking with the new editor of the newspaper," said Cuban exile and freelance cartoonist Jose Varela as he holed up in the El Nuevo Herald newsroom with a machine gun, "and I am here to uncover the true conflicts of the newspaper. Here they ridicule the exiles, there are problems with pay."

Varela, whose father was reportedly a political prisoner in Castro's Cuba, wreaked havoc at One Herald Plaza before surrendering to police today, which was clearly what he had in mind, however twisted that mind may have been by then. His "machine gun" was a toy model.

He is a cartoonist, after all.

But this was no joke. Varela, who writes in his autobio of his wife and two children (and his hatred of Fidel), also had a hunting knife that could have

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This is just frightening: El Nuevo Herald cartoonist Jose Varela, who was brandishing what looked like a handgun, is apparently holed up on the sixth floor of the Miami Herald newsroom. David Ovalle writes in on the Miami Herald -- which owns El Nuevo Herald -- that Varela "appeared agitated and demanded to see El Nuevo Herald's executive editor, Humberto Castello" and "began ordering women out 'for their own security.'"

Ovalle also writes that Varela's motives are unclear. Miami Police are on the scene evacuating the building, as are Miami-Dade marine units to secure the waterfront area at One Herald Plaza.

The Sun-Sentinel is reporting that Varela was fired in February, that he's actually carrying a machine gun, and that he's inside Castello's office. The newspaper is basing its article on unspecified "news reports."

Let's hope we're soon thankful that this thing ends peacefully.

UPDATE: The Herald is now reporting that Castello is safely out of the building: "Castello, who was evacuated, told police that Varela took over his office and trashed it, including a cartoon of the executive editor that Varela had drawn."

Here's another e-mail from Tom Fiedler, which includes the editor's note that will run in El Nuevo Herald tomorrow concerning the alleged "blood libel" committed against reporter Oscar Corral.

From: Fiedler, Tom Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 4:59 PM To: MIA Newsroom Subject: ENH column today Importance: High All, The following note is to be published in El Nuevo Herald in Thursday's edition at the top of the opinion page. Tom ________________________________

Editor's Note: Yesterday's El Nuevo Herald contained an opinion piece by opinion contributor Nicolas Perez, whose final paragraph contained a statement that may have suggested a link between Herald reporter Oscar Corral to Max Lesnick and the Cuban spy agency, DGI. There are no facts supporting this statement and it should not have been included.
Humberto Castello

More shake-out from the Marti story, the recently published Hoyt Report , and Oscar Corral's recent series on USAID's Cuban missions. Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler informed his staff today that today's El Nuevo Herald, which is published in the same building and owned by the same McClatchy company as the Miami Herald, libeled reporter Oscar Corral, who broke the story in August.

In an e-mail to the entire newsroom with the subject line "Truth to power," Fiedler wrote that a freelance columnist committed a "blood libel" against Corral in today's version of the Spanish-language newspaper. He wrote that he's investigating who the columnist is and how "how such an outrageous character defamation" was allowed to occur.

I have found the column in question on the El Nuevo Herald web site, but am not sure if it has been altered since Fiedler's e-mail was sent. The writer is Nicolas Perez Diaz-Arguelles.

UPDATED: Here is the pertinent passage from the Diaz-Arguelles column as translated by New Times receptionist Julia Hallon:

It is also suspicious that Oscar Corral appears to be the bad guy in the picture again. And the question is if Max Lesnick and his friends from [Cuban intelligence agency] DGI of the Cuban government are behind Oscar Corral, which could be or not be true? Who is the highest ranking Miami Herald executive that is behind Oscar Corral? A second foolish question. What are the MacClatchy Company owners waiting for to put out the fire that the Miami Herald provoked in the Cuban Exiles?

So the slightly shaded allegation in El Nuevo Herald is that Corral is a Cuban spy (and it might be noted that McClatchy is misspelled -- not a very smooth move considering it's the newspaper's owner). And there is an inference that a high executive at the Herald is also working for Cuba. With tripe like that published under the company's own banner, it's easy to see why Fiedler would be so steamed.

The entire Fiedler e-mail comes after the jump.

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In the state's newspapers today, a dead baby is found in a landfill, a first-grader is found to possess cocaine, snow is found in Florida, the dad of the Williams' tennis sisters is found to be slightly loopy (again), and the Republican Party in Tallahassee is found to be gracious (for a day at least).

As if that isn't enough, we have, after the jump: Those Whacky Germans, Ana Menendez' (Clean) Laundry, and A Bit on Altman

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Broward County: The only place someone can be elected mayor and it not even be mentioned that he's suspected of having had a sexual relationship with a teenaged student -- and later fathered her child -- while he was teaching at a local high school.

Josephus Eggelletion, the newest Broward County mayor, is accused in court of having had sex with Angelita Sanders when she was a student of his at Dillard High School back in the late 1970s. What is established as fact is that he fathered a child by his former student in 1987 and she is suing him for child support. Elgin Jones at the Broward Times has broken several stories concerning the allegations.

On top of that, Eggelletion has served as a lobbyist for affordable housing developers that do business with the county. Let's see if the dailies publish anything about that in tomorrow's stories. Early web versions in the Herald and Sun-Sentinel don't. This is as far as Bill Hirshman goes in the Sentinel version (which is more complete at this stage than the Herald rendition):

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