COUNTY COURT WITH FLAIR (FLARE)

A few alert readers emailed us this story, and we have combined the versions for our report:

Prosecutors, defense attorneys, courtroom personnel, defendants, and Judge Luise Krieger-Martin got a surprise Friday when during a routine hearing on a case, a defendant pulled out a Flare Gun as evidence. When the startled Judge asked if it was loaded, the Defendant showed her the shells.

When Judge Krieger-Martin regained her composure she inquired how the Defendant got the gun into the building. The Defendant stated that he was stopped at security, which required asked him to put the gun on top of the x-ray machine and remove his shoes, which obviously could have contained a nail clipper or small camera.

Nothing gets past our ace security staff.

Longtime and careful readers of the blog will remember that we have written about this topic before. ("Sir. yes, you with the shotgun. Please step aside, as that man has a nail clipper and a camera and we need to deal with this. Please take your gun and pass through the screening device.")

The sad truth is that these security screeners do not do a good job, and they will continue to do a bad job until a tragedy occurs, and then everyone will point fingers. Let it be said we were one of the first to say that things are not working and the security process needs to be revamped and tightened up.


OFFICER MACIAS ARRESTED

Speaking of county court, Michael Catalano has a comment up under yesterday's post where he details a frightening incident with City Of Miami Beach Officer Macias sexually molesting a female defendant he arrested for DUI. Then the officer had the cojones (yiddish for "tortillas") to show up at the Driver's License Hearing and falsely testify that the Woman refused to to take a breath test. At this point in time, the State Attorneys Office and Internal Affiars had concluded enough of the investigation to know that the accusations were truthful. They later told this to the DMV hearing officer, who proceeded to.....SUSPEND THE WOMAN'S LICENSE FOR A YEAR ANYWAY.

We can't even begin to fathom the disturbed mental mindset of a bureaucrat so petty and indifferent to the world around them that they would believe a police officer over a prosecutor and an Internal Affairs Detective.

The real issue here is that this is the fourth South Florida Law Enforcement Officer arrested for sexually molesting a woman in their custody in the last year.

Can you say "disturbing trend."?

If four cases have been reported, how many other officers are getting away with this? Don't tell us you believe these were the only ones misbehaving.
Perhaps its time for our State Attorney to interrupt one of her vacations and return to her community and speak out against this problem.

That's what we'd do if we were the State Attorney. But then again, we could never tolerate a vacation for longer than a few days.

Macias was arrested this week after a year long investigation.
Chris Lyons of Lurvey-Lyons renown for the defense.

See You In Court WITHOUT a flare gun.