Michael Brasfield became Fort Lauderdale’s police chief in the summer of 1995 after a 30-year law-enforcement career in Seattle. In a deposition last December, he answered a seemingly bizarre question about his first days on the job in Broward County. The question was whether he had ever been accused of…
Amid cries of dollars down the drain, Broward County commissioners last week admitted they’re probably wasting $300,000 in taxpayer money — and funneling it to Republican hired guns responsible for the ugly “Big Sugar” campaign of 1996. “A lot of your constituents are going to be angry when they hear…
In their attempts to humiliate Broward’s Clerk of Courts last week, county commissioners may have gone too far. After all, giving Bob Lockwood sensitivity training is like giving an elephant ballet lessons. Still, when they made that demand, commissioners may have hit upon a way to recoup a little of…
Norman Ganz didn’t wait for an introduction before launching into an exasperated monologue on the phone. All he knew was that a news reporter was on the other end of the line. “I am not a bad person! I work for a living and I help people. I don’t steal…
Applauding the Hunger Artist’s Mom Your readers got to know Michael Krasnow from the in-depth story in the April 9 issue (“The Hunger Artist,” Bob Norman) of New Times, but they really didn’t get to know his parents, especially his mother Gail, who is one of the finest people I…
Greetings, Master. I’ve checked the archives and found no reference to the following story, which is supposed to have come from the Daily Texan, the University of Texas newspaper. This guy went out last Saturday night to a party and had a couple of beers. Some girl seemed to like…
To a casual passerby, the sight of Phillip and Doris Samarco probing and poking through the grass of their neighbor’s front yard on a summer afternoon might have seemed a familiar suburban tableau: a retired middle-class couple in West Boca Raton retracing steps in search of a lost set of…
David McMahon knew something was wrong with his breeding experiment with Florida shrimp when he saw dozens of his subjects lying dead on the bottom of their tank. Normally a glassy blue in color, the shrimp had turned bright orange, as if they had been cooked up for paella. The…
There are raw political calculations — and a mouthwatering power prize — behind the blasts of moral outrage Broward commissioners are firing at “Plantation Bob” Lockwood’s racial discrimination settlement. With an all-out assault, some Democratic strategists hope to drive the 76-year-old Lockwood into retirement — opening the Clerk of Courts…
You Spray, You Don’t Pay, So Sayeth the Greenskeeper This is regarding the article “You Spray, You Pay” (Lucy Chabot), which appeared in the April 2 issue of New Times. I felt that the issues presented in the story were very biased and based loosely on opinion. I found it…
In your recent column regarding stigmata [February 19] you failed to mention one very important fact. In most cases the stigmata displayed by “stigmatists” manifest on the palms and the feet. It’s well known that the Romans discovered very early that nails through the hands and feet (especially the hands)…
When the phone hadn’t sounded by 9 a.m., Gail Krasnow expected the worst. It was a practiced ritual, this daily phone call, born of a life-and-death struggle between mother and son that had continued for fourteen years. She could have given up on Michael years before. She could have tried…
Aside from the usual component of offering a free tote bag, WXEL’s recent on-air message to listeners had all the trappings of a traditional public broadcasting solicitation. First came the sober, stately voice of the public broadcasting station’s president, Jerry Carr: “Many of you have called to ask if we…
Purely economic” is how Broward Clerk of Courts Robert E. Lockwood defends his decision to use more than $1.3 million in tax money to end a racial discrimination suit by African-American employees. He really wanted to fight on, Lockwood insists, but a trial would be too costly, and you just…
Good news for anxious 18- to 24-year-olds: You now have a “book of knowledge,” full of wisdom “for grabbing onto the rest of your life with purpose” — and approved by the wife of conservative talk-mouth Rush Limbaugh. Marta Limbaugh is publisher of a new West Palm Beach-based magazine aptly…
It May Be a Matter of Semantics, but No Pink Slip for Wendy Pursuant to the article “You Call This Art and Culture?” in your March 26 issue, I must point out a serious error. If writer Sean Rowe had accurately researched this article, he would not have characterized my…
In your column on the weight of a cloud versus that of a 747 [March 12], you state: “Now of course, it’s true that weight isn’t the same as mass and that a cloud put on a scale wouldn’t weigh anything.” Yuck! The weight of an object equals its mass…
David Park hopped out of the Ford pickup truck wearing his bright white protective suit, respirator, and goggles. It was about 10 a.m. on June 21, 1993, and the Broward County parks worker had just finished spraying a potent mix of pesticides and herbicides on the football field at Tequesta…
Among Florida’s 40 specialty license plates, the top dollar-producer has been the Florida panther tag (not to be confused with the comparative dud that celebrates the Florida Panthers hockey team). The panther plate pictures the snarling head of a big dun-colored cat and features the phrase, “Protect the Panther.” Since…
Donald Trump, a man better known for brash impertinence than charm, describes in his book The Art of the Comeback a nearly pathological disdain for those who defile him by wanting to shake his hand. Palm Beach bartenders don’t care about his hand, but they’d sure like a fair shake…
With fireplug build, five o’clock shadow, and a green dragon tattoo across his forearm, Margate police officer Al Simon will never be mistaken for a fashion model on patrol. Still, standing in front of police headquarters on a bright, hot afternoon, Simon sports one striking fashion accessory: $90 black wraparound…
Can eating foods with poppy seeds (i.e., bagels, muffins, et cetera) really cause someone to fail a routine corporate drug test? I’ve heard the answer is yes, but I am a skeptic. Aren’t drug tests specialized? Are they really testing for opium, which I understand to be the only drug…
