Get drunk at the bar (or be suspected of having gotten drunk at the bar), then drive your car and you'll get whacked at the BAR, no question about it. The kangaroos are always in session.
Tailpipe isn't for letting drunk drivers go free, but there should be a semblance of justice to the process. In the BAR, "hearing officers," not judges, preside, and there's no requirement that they have any legal training whatsoever. Some have little more than a high school diploma. When New Times' Trevor Aaronson visited the Broward BAR two years ago, hearing officer Martha Roldan magisterially delivered her own pithy readings of the law, in one case explaining to a man who was making his first appearance in court: "It's very complicated, very difficult to understand. It's all legal stuff."
Well, sometimes these unschooled magistrates have to muddle through cases, you say. So what? Whiskey-crazed felons deserve everything they get. Fine 'em big-time and flush their licenses down the toilet (which, in effect, is what the BAR does).
But it's not just a matter of a high-minded official who's a little short of legal expertise doling out penalties. The hearing officer has help. One of the duties of DHSMV court attorneys is to serve as legal consultants for the hearing officers. That's the equivalent of having a prosecutor in a criminal case interpret the law for a judge. Even the most radical law-and-order advocates would have to admit that such a system would be biased against a defendant.
In October 2003, attorney Sam Fields filed a lawsuit on behalf of his client, Lighthouse Point resident Craig Tidey, that challenged the authority of the DHSMV courts. Fields showed that even DUI offenders who had their criminal charges thrown out for lack of evidence or a technicality still had their driver's licenses suspended in DHSMV court.
Evidence presented at the trial two weeks ago was startling. A former hearing officer testified that she was instructed to interpret the law in ways that the agency would always prevail. The woman who runs the DHSMV courts in Broward could not articulate the legal meaning of hearsay. DHSMV officials admitted that they counsel hearing officers who rule against the agency too often.
"Can you imagine if that was done in criminal courts?" Fields tells the 'Pipe. "'Judge, we've been keeping track — you've had too many not guilties in your courtroom. You have to meet with the Supreme Court judge. '"
On December 29, following a two-day trial, Broward Circuit Court Judge Leonard Fleet issued an order that called the DHSMV courts "constitutionally unacceptable" and demanded a stop to the practice of unqualified judges' consulting with prosecutors about matters of law.
Of course, the state has appealed Fleet's ruling, and despite the judgment, the DHSMV's kangaroo courts will continue to operate in Broward and throughout Florida. State law allows for a temporary stay until the Fourth District Court of Appeals makes its decision. That could take another year.
It's a tough fight when your opponent is the government.
"Whenever the government is involved," Fields says, "they seem to have different sets of rules about things."
Vanmoor Vaccine
For a brief moment, the attention focused on Arthur Vanmoor seemed to snuff his scam out cold. After New Times' December 22 story exposed his fraudulent websites, they went dark for several days as national and local media — not to mention law enforcement — picked up and ran with the story. But a few days later, cancercure.org and its sister sites, flucure.com, migrainecure.org, and flufighter.net were again peddling placebo products to more unsuspecting sick folks. The nearly identical portals are the target of a lawsuit initiated by the FDA (that's the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, folks, and not the "Fighting Disease Association" mentioned on Vanmoor's sites).
On December 29, Judge Joan A. Lenard issued a summons for Vanmoor to appear in a Miami courtroom to face the charges.
In the meantime, the web pages still promise instant miracle cures for those suffering from the flu, cancer, or a migraine headache. Taking a gander at the Q&A section of each site, it's obvious the brains behind these operations are feeling the pressure, and some of the flippant responses may, in fact, tip off savvy consumers. Each page is identical, exchanging Migraine Miracle for Cancer Control and Flu Fighter and Cold & Flu Formula in the text and supplying the same answers for the same questions:
Q: If Cancer Control really cures cancer, why has my doctor not told me about it?
A: You must have a bad doctor who's [sic] primary concern is his mortgage bills that need to be paid and his kids extra lessons to help them through school. Your health is of secondary concern. Obviously, your doctor does not make as much money if you get cured quickly.
Q: Are there any side effects?
A: No, absolutely not. There are people that take triple the dosage by way of experiment and still do not have any side effects...
Q: What if you can not swallow capsules or do not eat?
A: You can open the capsules and mix them with a drink or yogurt etc. They actually taste real pleasant.
You Win Just by Getting Here
Cheers for Edgar Lee! When the Seattle man arrived in town late last month, Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau officials made one last diagonal hashmark across four vertical ones on a giant chalkboard and proclaimed Lee the county's 10 millionth visitor of 2005. For his timing, Lee received a bounty of booty, the best of what the area has to offer: tickets to the Tut exhibit, dinner and a spa treatment at the Diplomat, a Jungle Queen cruise, a tour of the Stranahan House, beach towels, T-shirts, a picture frame, suntan lotion, a front-row seat to Howie Mandel at the Performing Arts Center, and sundry other goodies, hot damn.
Less fortuitous was the timing of the 10-million-and-first visitor, Mortimer Van Snoodnick, of Camden, New Jersey. But second place doesn't have to be the first loser! Tailpipe has learned that Van Snoodnick's consolation package included some other fine Broward County trademarks:
A spirited cursing-out at an impassable airport taxi stand.
A free neck tattoo near the sand ribbon formerly known as Fort Lauderdale Beach.
A complimentary night of aimless wandering in nightclubless downtown Hollywood.
A $10 gift certificate at a Swap Shop underwear vendor.
Half-off a desiccated bread pretzel at Dania Jai-Alai.
A parking ticket in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
Two front-row seats to Howie Mandel.
Ramp to Nowhere
Tailpipe loves to indulge in what-fools-humans-be moments, and never is human folly so apparent as when the 'Pipe pulls off I-95 at Broward Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.
Maybe you've noticed them on your way to work: a pair of flyover ramps virtually untainted by vehicles. Designed to allow easy access to the Tri-Rail station in Fort Lauderdale from I-95, the twin access ramps stand tall but silent. Tailpipe hasn't exactly set up camp and tallied the traffic, but after driving past the station almost daily for the past six years, the number of cars he's seen on the ramps was less than what you could count on your own fingers and toes. And the day after Christmas, as the 'Pipe waited impatiently to pick up a family member from a northbound train (which was 90 minutes late), not a single vehicle used the ramps.
This battered auto part has to say that driving on the empty concrete ribbons brings on a feeling of freedom, independence, and a gnawing suspicion about tax dollars flushed down the toilet — especially when the 'Pipe considers that taking the regular interchange at Broward Boulevard, which is only a few feet from the Tri-Rail ramp, adds at most a minute or two of travel time.
Meanwhile, Tri-Rail is spending $334 million to add more track along the CSX line and a massive bridge over the New River — in hopes of bringing mass transit to 27,500 people in a metropolis of more than 5 million.
So Tailpipe ranks Tri-Rail and its flyover ramps right up there on the human folly scale next to those twin, 1,500-foot skyscrapers in Kuala Lumpur and the world's largest sculpture made of television sets in Lithuania.
— As told to Edmund Newton
