The Daily Business Review's Julie Kay has a great piece in today's Daily Business Review that gets inside the Hollywood police scandal. Foremost, she identifies the man who Hollywood Police Chief James Scarberry has ID'd as the leaker: Defense attorney (and former prosecutor and state attorney candidate) Al Milian.
Milian, a fearless advocate who I've found to be on the right side of justice, denies it. And even if he did tell the police union about it, who leaked it to him? If anything, he would be guilty of gossiping. Read the top of Kay's story after the jump:
If Hollywood cops leak is found, prosecution unlikely By Julie KayThe office of U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta won’t say if it’s investigating who tipped off Hollywood police officers that they were under federal investigation for alleged involvement in heroin trafficking and other crimes.
The leak prematurely ended the investigation, which prosecutors say could have netted other officers.
But even if the feds succeed in fingering the leaker, experts say it’s unlikely the person could be criminally charged.
Rumors are swirling about the identity of the leaker. One source close to the investigation says it was Alberto Milian, a former Broward County prosecutor and Coral Gables criminal defense lawyer who has close ties to the Police Benevolent Association. Milian ran unsuccessfully against Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in 2004.
Sources say Hollywood Police Chief James Scarberry, who denies the leak came from within his department, contends Milian was the leaker. In an interview last week, Scarberry said, “it’s possible” that Milian was the culprit. But Scarberry refused to elaborate.
Milian denies he was the leaker and says he does not know who was. “I have no idea,” he said in an interview. “I wouldn’t speculate on something like that. But it wasn’t me.”
Others close to the case say the leaker was Assistant Chief Louis Granteed, who acknowledged that he is a close friend of Officer Kevin Companion, the cop alleged to be the ringleader of the criminal activities.
Granteed did not return calls for comment. But last week he told New Times Broward Palm Beach that he was “absolutely not the leaker.”
Thanks for crediting my pub, Julie -- DBR is the best about that kind of thing.