BROWARD COUNTY COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS
FinkelsteinThe Broward County Coalition for the Homeless will be honoring Howard Finkelstein today with the, "Elected Official of the Year Award" for his work with the Homeless community and his stand against handling the municipal ordinance violations. The annual luncheon will be held at the Signature Grand off of I-595 and will start at noon.
That award should go to the atttorney that actually stepped in to represent the homeless when Howard left them high and dry. Fort Lauderdale Public Defender John Fry. Sadly John cares about his clients and working hard, not seek public attention. Enjoy the award phony howie.
will the homeless be able to attend the luncheon? will they be able to line up at the buffet? can they aggressively panhandle at the door?
Congratulations for a job well done, Howard. Nobody has worked harder than you in the last couple of years to see that equality is not just a word in the dictionary. It really can mean something when people like you and others desire it to.
signature grand. what a dump. where schreibers retirement party was. quite a shindig. a good time guaranteed for none. capped with whitey bogenschutz donning a ku klux klansmans gran wizard hat in front of a stunned and baffled audience.
To: 9:41am
From: Your Feckless Chief
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Excellent post. No Sunday jail visits required until December 1. Please note that this does not excuse you from visiting clients on Thanksgiving.
Dear Feckless Chief
Sorry bro no bonus no extra visits. Is it true I once heard about a man named Al that was here for many a year who despite state budget cutbacks found ways to keep his staff well paid?
To: Ungrateful SOB
FROM: Your Feckless (and Angry) Chief
___________________________________
How dare you bring up the name of my predecessor!!!!
Have you not received the dictate from the almighty Keuthan that his name is verboten and has been stricken from all records and documents.
This "Al" person did nothing to protect the poor defenseless victims of our justice system and as I have said previously (on tape and elsewhere), the practices of him and everyone who worked for him were unethical, illegal and unconstitutional.
Should you not wish to keep your required and constitutionally mandated Thanksgiving Jail Visits, you are invited to leave the office and not return.
The date of your departure is assigned to be January 15, 2009, the first available termination date given the shortage of packing boxes being used by the APDs that have given notice of their resignations.
Should a space open up before then, you will be notified at a Friday meeting. Please remember that given the reduction in staff, such meetings are now being held in Old Wing Elevator #3 at 12:00 on Friday.
Dear Mr. Finkelsteen
Greeting here from the computer lab at the Broward County Main Library. I want to thank you for abandoning us Fort Lauderdale homeless. The Fort Lauderdale Public Defender John Fry does a much better job. He actually schedules bond hearing quickly and is always there to help. When I was represented by your office a year ago I had to sit in jail on an open container charge from Thanksgiving until mid January because no one would come to see me or set a bond hearing.
While your award is not well deserved, thank you again for stepping aside so a real Public Defender like John Fry could help us.
Remarkable that the Broward PD office does not consider you homeless unless you are in possession of cocaine, and the like. Arrested for vagrancy?--not their concern, let FTL appoint conflict-rife counsel.
The award is an a sham and so is Howard.
trials are bad.
pleas are good.
prison is good.
just make sure the jail log is filled out 1st before you wave bye bye.
Does anyone know what happened this morning with the lockdown of the State and Courtrooms? A man was loose in the courthouse with a gun or something?
Please don't be concerned. I'm sure it was just the Adjudicator packing heat.
was it finta?
what? someone is fitna point a finger at finta?
not true...only the ones he liked we well-paid.
is it true mindy solomon is paid by how many hands of solitaire she can play in a day?
"Cyberblob and Ratboy sitting in a tree, B-L-O-G-G-I-N-G"
CUT TO A SMELLY, DARK HOME. COMPUTER MONITOR GLOWING OMINOUSLY IN THE CORNER. A HEAVY SMELL OF DOG, CIGARETTES, AND LEFTOVER CHINESE FOOD FILLS THE AIR. THE RATBOY IS ON THE PHONE:
BOY: Hey, what you doing tonight?
BLOB: Nothing. What about you?
BOY: Nothing. Wanna come over?
BLOB: Uh, sure. What do you wanna do?
BOY: I dunno, I got this anonymiser. I hate those Jaab guys.
BLOB: Yeah, me too. We can go to every blog in town and tell everybody how much we hate them.
BOY: Cool.
BLOB: Only, I don't know. Shouldn't we at least try to get some chicks to come over?
BOY: Uh, ok. I'll call Fake Massachusetts Girlfriend.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Everywhere Fakey goes, Roman's sure to follow. When those guys are in the room, People Against Jaablaw is round the corner. Prince of Darkness is within earshot. And Fake every other character in the world can't stand to be excluded. And BA? Is he the chair of the committee? Why can't big sister Sybil help the little feller take his meds?
Or, why doesn't the 40 year old virgin just find a hobby he can share with a living, breathing human being?
Well paid? Be honest. Al was too busy farming out work to his buddies to be bothered with raises for the working stiffs. Many, many staff attorneys went years and years with only cost of living or state mandated bonuses. He didn't care one bit. At meeting after meeting he told his staff that there was no $ for raises, and all the time he was farming out work, work that could have easily been done in house, to his friends. EVERYBODY knows this. He had the audacity to refer to say at office meetings, of his most experienced attorneys, "you don't have 20 years of experience, you have one year of experience 20 times." That is ignorant and completely out of touch with the legal profession. You may not like Howard Finkelstein, but glorifying his predecessor...now you just sound crazy.
Why doesn't the 40 year old virgin just find a hobby he can share with a living, breathing human being, BESIDES THE BLOB!
919
Remeber me Craig, I am the guy your wife left you for. Dont worry we are enjoying the 20k we took off you in the divorce. She dumped you and got 20k, sweet deal. If only you would stop peeking in our windows and crying.
Some of you would plea out your own mother. I tried 27 murder trials. Chris Roberts was driving the wrong way down the freeway with a bottle of vodka. This guy is so dumb, he went to a match book cover law school.
Aaaaay, Warner Olds.
He's a real lawya!
I miss lit drops. Those were the days.
give me a break. al did things his way. howard does it a different way. if i was in charge it would be different too. no one's perfect.
Don't mess with the Cyberblob. Have you seen his new haircut...He looks salon terrific.
Craig,
Seriously, werent you embarassed that you only made 60k a year and Viv 72 as a pd. No wonder why you were begging Satz for your old job back a year ago. At least you had the JAAB dues to keep you floating. You say other people dont have work. At least I am know I have 20k of your money to blow before I have to work.
Regards from North Andrews Gardens
Hey 930.
It doesn't have anything to to with "liking" or "not liking" Help Me Howie or glorifying Al. It just has to do with results.
How is it that Al was able to make working at the PD's Office the cream of State law positions? He had a law enough turnover rate and enough new people coming in every year through the CLI program that he literally would turn down qualified laterals and grads who didn't come through.
More of Al's lawyers had loyalty to him and the office. The reason was simple -- Al made the office as good a place to work as any government office in the State. You didn't have to clock in and out like a Publix Bag Boy. If you worked your cases, helped your clients, and went to trial, he and his Chiefs and Supervisors knew you were working.
If there is anything that shows the differnece between the offices, it is the tremendously high exodus from the PDO since Howard took over and "reformed" the office.
He appears to show no respect or loyalty for his lawyers, and they, in turn, don't show loyalty for the office.
There's a reason that younger and less experienced APDs are working more serious cases sooner.
There is a reason that Supervisors have now been "demoted" to floaters with their own individual case loads.
There is a reason there are 3 times as many APDs leaving the office every month than during Al's tenure.
There is a reason that many senior APDs, when asked how long they have been at the office, will respond "I have X years left."
This is not to say that Al didn't have his own issues -- he clearly rewarded the "pretty faces" in the office, handed out cases to those departing APDs that he wanted to reward, etc.
But he sure knew how to fight for his office, support his APDs when they were in trouble, and knew how to keep funding even during the worst economic times. And if keeping our funding meant that we had to listen to every politico running for office during Friday meetings and go out on lit drops a couple of times a year, it was damned well worth it.
This administration's abject failure to maintain the quality of representation (caused by turnover and inexperienced attorneys handling more serious offenses), the prestige of the office, and the quality of life and practice for the staff will go unnoticed because the public doesn't care about what happens at the PD's Office. If the public had their way, the first thing they'd kill during tough economic times would be a state-funded office providing representations to indigent criminal defnednats.
The revisionism that has happened at the PD's Office in the current administration is a tragedy. Unfortunately, the public could not care less. They have their TV celebrity as the Elected PD, and he is untouchable.
So enjoy your award Howard, and thank Al for giving you the chance to achieve it.
And thank John Fry, for representing the homeless who are charged with being homeless who you have elected to ignore.
I can't believe the ignorance of so many people on this blog. Doesn't anybody read real newspapers anymore? From what I read and heard, Howard decided to invoke a new state law to refuse defending municipal ordinance cases in order to force the cities to either shell out their own money or stop making municipal ordinance arrests. In theory, the cities, primarily Fort Lauderdale, would slow down on the number of homeless people being arrested on BS charges with absolutely no scrutiny of the State Attorney's Office. If they didn't slow down, it would cost them real money. After Howard stopped representing those type of cases, a county court judge ruled the cities would have to pay for defense counsel. I don't know Mr. Fry and he might be a fine attorney, but he's not doing it for free, he's being paid by the City of Fort Lauderdale. So, Mr. Fry is no saint and the indigent defendants are getting counsel.
As far as the homeless community goes, if they gave Howard an award, I would presume that community was in favor of Howard's decision to do something to change the status quo.
As far as comparing Howard to his predecessor, everyone knows that before Howard took over, the PD's office did very little for the indigent defendant prior to arraignments, except to have one elderly gentlemen sit in magistrate court and occasionally object to probable cause. As a result many were forced to beg, borrow and steal to come up with enough money to try and retain counsel. In many cases, after a few months of paying what they could, the money ran out, the attorney dumped the client, the judge was more than willing to allow the private attorney to bail out (which doesn't routinely happen in other counties) and the PD's office got stuck picking up the pieces. No wonder why there are a few private attorneys pissed off at Howard's policy of starting representation right after arrest, which is what the law mandates.
I've talked to a few attorneys who left after Howard took over. Most left because they liked the 8:30 to 5 job and now Howard expects them to work harder. And even though Howard is rewarding harder work with more pay, some would rather not do it. That's their choice.
Maybe Al did what he did to get re-elected, but that doesn't make it right. Because everyone knows that Howard can't be beat, he has the ability to do what is right as opposed to what is politically expedient. That hasn't happened in Broward County in a really long time. Keep it up Howard. Most of us are routing for you. The bloggers that attack you are either the judge's who don't like working hard for a living or private attorneys who think they're loosing too much business. Ignore them and keep up the good fight.
wait, this is a guy who is in charge of apd's that drop speedy demands forcing the state to trial before the apd is even ready for trial hoping it will force a nolle prosse of the case b/c the apd believes the asa wont be able to track down their victims who have been beaten up by teenagers in county parks and who's address on the pc affidavit reads "at large"?
nice office policy, hypocrite... its bitten them in the ace a few times. If there is no justice, there should be no reward from the Broward County Coalition for the Homeless.
There was no new State law. Howard decided he didnt want to contract with Lauderdale and declined to do so. It seems very simple, call the PD's office sometime their own telephone greeting says they represent indigent people charged with crimes. This is a lie. For political reasons and airtime Howard sold out the homeless. Dont be too impressed by the award as most know many of these charitable awards are purchased. Buy 2 tables or have your employess and friends buy some adspace and you can be person of the year for many a charity.
Al wasn't able to make working at the PD Office a cream of law (sic) position. Respect? Loyalty? Not to his staff; just to his friends. He told his staff year after year that he had no money for raises and bonuses. That wasn't true. He was giving 10 cases for $10,000 to attorneys as they were leaving the office, meanwhile giving nothing to the attorneys who stayed! Do you understand the message that sends? He was spending the money farming out work to his friends to build up loyalty. Looks like it worked!
Then why was turnover so much lower under Al than it is now?
If he was just rewarding his friends and didn't make the office a good place to work, how did he get more people to stay?
The fact remains that the office provided quality legal services to the indigent during Al's tenure.
The current administration's decision to take a crap over what Al did during his time in office and to denigrate the service APDs provided to our clients during that time shows much, in my opinion.
The fact that the Chiefs have towed the party line after having worked for Al and showed no concern about policies during those two-plus decades says more about how few years they have left before a full pension rather than a "coming into the light" regarding the supposed "unethical and unconstitutional" practices of their former boss.
This award to Howard is a sham and should be handed to him in a trash-can.
There's a rumor Mindy may run for judge against Ana Gardiner. Seems like the new chief criminal judge may have some JQC problems and is making a lot of enemies very quickly.
She should contact all Ana's old "friends" on the NBHD.
Slogan:
"The wisdom of Solomon"
Al was a joke. plain and simple.