Targeting Citizen Lozman

Randall Marshall, legal director of the ACLU of Florida, shares Kaney's outrage. "It smacks of an inappropriate use of city resources that will have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech," he said.

During the weeks and months following that meeting, there was a clear strategy of intimidation against Lozman. In fact, he was an easy target, because he pays rent to the city marina. When I went to interview Lozman there on August 1, 2006, then-marina Director George Carter called the police on him. The supposed crime: Lozman was replacing double doors on his boat before a hurricane was expected to hit the coast. Carter said it wasn't allowed without permission. And he wasn't giving his permission.

"He's after me right now because of my lawsuit against the city," Lozman told me at the time. "... He's good friends with Mayor Brown. They've got him doing this to me."

The police arrived, including Assistant Chief David Harris, who one might imagine had more important things to do than deal with a guy fixing his boat. "I oughtta slap the cuffs on you now," Harris told Lozman menacingly.

I believe that had I not been there, notebook in hand, Lozman would have been arrested. But Harris ultimately let him go. The column I wrote about it was headlined, "Witness for the Intimidation."

"Suddenly, I was being watched by marina employees and the cops," Lozman says. "Before I filed the lawsuit, I had a lot of privacy, but that was gone."

It was just the beginning. Lozman has since been thrown out of City Commission meetings on five occasions. During one of them, last November, Commissioner Wade ordered him out of City Hall after he had begun (very calmly) addressing the commission. Police handcuffed him at the podium and later charged him with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. The charges, not surprisingly, were dropped by prosecutors.

The city also ordered Lozman's eviction from the marina, saying that he refused to muzzle a dangerous dog. The canine in question: A 10-pound dachshund named Lady, who has never bitten anyone. Lozman fought the eviction in court. Although he represented himself at trial against a pair of well-paid veteran city-hired lawyers, the jury determined that the eviction was a retaliatory action by the city and sided with the activist, who still calls the marina home.

In March, most of the commission was voted out of office, including Brown and Wade. I interviewed Wade about the transcript last week. She was unapologetic. She said Lozman was "agitating" and "aggravating" and that she, indeed, wanted him out of her city.

"The aggravation of him meeting with citizens, he had something to say about everything we did," said Wade, who is challenging County Commissioner Addie Greene for her seat. "He got in my face about things. So if the rest of the commission felt that way, I would not object. Stop this idiot any way you can. That's the way it is."

She said she felt Lozman was rude and unfair, especially since, she says, she's not corrupt.

"The day you see me leave here and buy a private island? That's the day you need to question me if I got paid," she said.

Bafflingly, she claimed Lozman wasn't a citizen of Riviera, because he didn't own a house and lived on the water.

"I told him, 'Mr. Lozman, you are not really a stakeholder here, you pay no property taxes,'" she said. "Yet he rants and raves as a taxpayer."

Her dislike of Lozman remains palpable.

"I can't stand to see that man walk through the door, because of his tactics and the way he does people," she said. "I'm not afraid of Fane Lozman, period. I don't believe he can outthink me, and I don't believe he can whoop my behind. I told him that I would put my foot so far up his behind he would think my toe is his tonsil. I ain't going to pay nobody to kill him. But if he gets into my face, I will get him out of it."

Lozman says he's gotten several death threats. He said that a former commissioner and city insider named Sylvia Blue told him repeatedly that someday he would be found dead under his houseboat.

"They aren't going to run me out of this town," Lozman says now. "This is where I live. No one is going to intimidate me. And if you keep fucking with me, then I'm going to fight back."

He got another taste of what he believes was intimidation last Wednesday evening. This time a friend was arrested after a protest at City Hall instead of Lozman. After the activist and several other marina denizens protested racism at the marina at a commission meeting, a friend and hired hand of Lozman's named John Logan was apprehended by police at a nearby convenience store.

Logan, who is black, a product of the rough streets of Riviera, had gone to the convenience store to buy cigarettes before he planned to address the commission. He says that outside the store, a female police officer named J. Thornton accused him of loitering.