So John Hanlon is headed to the sheriff's office. The man who investigated and ultimately let off BSO's top brass, including Sheriff Ken Jenne, in the Autotrack Powertrac scandal is now on the BSO payroll. The 68-year-old prosecutor who has made a living out of coddling corrupt public officials for Michael Satz is now supposed to hold cops' feet to the fire.
It's another dark day in Broward County.
And the Sun-Sentinel's coverage of the hiring is almost as outrageous as Jenne's arrogance and gall, starting with the headline: "Sheriff's new hire knows territory."
Yeah, I guess so. Reporter Brian Haas never even raised the idea that this whole thing constitutes an appearance of corruption and conflict-of-interest, that's it's governmental incest at its worst. Instead he writes:
"The role will put him in the familiar position of uncovering deputies' wrongdoings. Hanlon helped investigate dozens of Sheriff's Office detectives over the past two years on allegations they made up confessions to clear large numbers of open criminal cases."
Is Haas on
crack? How about mentioning that rather than go after the sheriff's brass and Jenne, the prosecutor scapegoated low-level deputies? How about noting that because Hanlon and Satz failed so miserably to investigate the case that the feds have had to step in? But it gets worse:
Guttmann said Hanlon doesn't mince words during investigations, which is clear in transcripts of his investigation of the confessions scandal. In August 2004, while questioning John DeGroot, former executive assistant to then-Inspector General Martin Rahinsky, Hanlon asked how Jenne could have no knowledge detectives were fabricating confessions."A skeptic might come back and say that it's impossible for that man at the head of the agency not to know," Hanlon told DeGroot, according to a deposition. "Do you actually believe that the man, the head of that agency did not know that the statistics were bogus?"
That's called lip service, Haas. The kicker: Hanlon is being paid $175,000 a year, more than $100,000 a year more than Satz was paying him. See how much a good boy is worth these days to these Broward County officials?
