The previous posts highlight an ongoing issue between BSO, the Public Defender, the Clerk's Office, and Judge Ross.  In a nutshell, Broward has long passed the point where a second magistrate court needs to be implemented, either in the Main Courthouse or at one of the Satellites.  This idea is, of course, anathema to the Judges, and Judge Ross, despite repeated requests from BSO, has ignored or refused to answer the calls for double magistrates.

As you can see from Howard's letter, many arrestees are simply not being brought before a judge within the prescribed time frames.  Judge Ross' proposal is to end the 4:00 a.m. cutoff and have BSO transport arrestees to the Main Courthouse throughout the day, in some cases before being booked, a solution which even a layman can see is fraught with problems including but not limited to the following:

1. Public Safety - BSO Deputies and all municipal LEOs will be spending their days driving individuals to the Courthouse from all over the County, thereby taking them out of the municipalities they should be protecting.
2. Deputies will sometimes be parading unbooked individuals who may be psych cases, violent, on drugs or still drunk, or with long records, whose identity may not be known to BSO, through the halls of the Courthouse, searching for a judge to hold a first appearance hearing.
3. The jail population will be impacted because the PD's and pre-trial will not have the time or availability to interview arrestees before they have been magistrated, and, without a cut-off, the judges and State and PD's and Clerk will not have any of the paperwork at arraignment to effectively hold the hearing (BSO currently prepares and provides copies of all the paperwork for magistrates; this is a large basis for the current 4:00 a.m. cutoff).
4. The Main Courthouse judges' dockets and trial schedules will be impacted since the arrestees will come streaming in at different times and will have to get the lengthy colloquy currently given by video en masse in the jail before magistrates dockets.
5. Etc.

Judge Ross, confronted with an issue that may negatively impact the lifestyle and workload of his judges, has latched on to an unworkable solution that will stress every level of the system and ultimately endanger the citizens of Broward County.  His solution is simply the most convenient one from the perspective of the judiciary.  Currently BSO has four booking stations and five jails, yet thre is no on-site magistrates or dual magistrates a la Miami or Palm Beach, or as in any other large urban area in the country with a population like Browards.  This is just another example of Broward either ignoring reality or purposely lagging behind the times to the detriment of all its citizens.

Lastly the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) audit is to begin tomorrow and run through Thursday.  It is my understanding that the Exit Interview, currently set for Friday at 9:00, is open to the public, so please plan on attending if you wish to be heard (the location has yet to be set, I will post when they set it).  The NIC's recommendations on how to fix Broward's troubled system will be hard for anyone, Judges included, to ignore, so please make the effort to be heard.

The Times They Are A Changin'.