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Levine is out of trouble; Slapp is out of a job
State Attorney's decision to drop criminal charges in the Levine case causes tremors at city hall
-- John Patten, 12/15/02, revised 12/16/02
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Related:
Top Cop Retiring
-- Venice Gondolier Sun, 12/14/02
Public safety boss ready to retire
-- Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 12/16/02
Heat alert -- Venice officials have to learn to live with critic
-- editorial, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 12/14/02
audio of Herb Levine getting arrested by Joe Slapp
-- Venice City Council audio, 09/24/02, MP3 audio file, 1.6MBs

Levine is back in full force, Slapp is history
The Venice Gondolier, in their December 14, 2002 edition, reported that Joe Slapp was retiring from the police department, citing high blood pressure and quality of life issues as his reasons. The article is, in journalism jargon, a puff-piece. What is surprising is that the Venice Gondolier knows, or should know, that the reasons go much, much deeper than what was reported in their front page article.

For starters, Slapp doesn't work for the police department. He is the former chief of police, but now works for the city in the capacity of Public Safety Director. That's a change in title from Emergency Services Director, which is what he was called when he was originally removed from the police department and placed at city hall.

The Gondolier went on to write a glowing bio of Slapp, citing technical and professional accomplishments that Slapp has achieved both for himself and the Venice Police Department. They even cited his ethics training in a grand salute to a standup guy, a man this city will greatly miss.

Ethics training?

Anyone who has even loosely followed the recent and not-so recent chain of events knew one thing right off: the Gondolier was not telling the real story. Not even close.

Slapp is gone, and according to our sources close to the action, it is not wholly by his own volition. His 'retirement' is a direct result of a number of events. The final railroad tie that broke the camel's back was the State Attorney's decision earlier last week to not prosecute Venice Taxpayer's League President Herb Levine for an arrest made by Slapp in council chambers on September 24th. 

The State's decision not to prosecute left the city and Slapp in an extremely vulnerable position. Levine claims he was injured in the fracas. Medical records shown to Venice Florida! dot com by Levine, along with bruising that was noted on the 75-year old man would tend to strongly support such a claim. There is the potential for violation of civil rights actions, both civil and criminal, against the city, the city council, and Slapp himself.

Levine is currently playing his cards close to his vest. Any mention of a lawsuit is dismissed with a wave of his hand and a surly growl. We've spoken with several attorneys about the case and the consensus is that if Levine does pursue the city, a multi-million dollar settlement is almost assured. On top of that, Slapp could find himself as a defendant in a Federal criminal action.

If Slapp does have high blood pressure, one can readily understand why.

Just another in-house coup
This marks the second time in the past two years that Slapp has been ousted from his position due to near insurrection in the ranks. Back in early 2001, Slapp was removed from the police department and offered retirement. According to our sources, Slapp refused to retire then and had enough ammunition to hold out. However morale was so low and tensions were so high at the police department at the time that the department was ready to implode. City Manager George Hunt did the next best thing: a new position was created for Slapp at city hall and he was promoted up and out of the police department.

Since the arrest of Levine this past September, Slapp has been conspicuously absent from council proceedings, a good sign that he had fallen from grace. He was, however, overly conspicuous at the police department, having practically lain siege to the building and becoming a driving force in the post-arrest Levine investigation. The insurrection that George Hunt had managed to avoid last year was threatening to resurface with a vengeance.

Venice Florida! dot com uncovered two of the reasons for Slapp's removal from the city police department early last year.

PuterGate cover-up costs Slapp the faith of the police department
The first involves a story we covered earlier this year, our investigation into the shady business dealings within the city's computer department. In that series of stories entitled PuterGate, we revealed that the computer department head, Charles "Steve" Randall, had secretly restarted his old company, Petra Software, and was not-so-secretly billing the city for services that would normally fall under his job description. Randall netted around $10,000 on the illegal deal.

According to our sources, Slapp very quietly handled the investigation into the Randall affair back in March of 2001, and did it without assigning a case number to the investigation while he was still chief of police. Word leaked out to the troops and a number of officers were infuriated that Slapp was apparently letting Randall get away with the scheme. A low, seething anger was brimming under the surface at the police department, waiting for an igniting event.

Slapp locked up some of the evidence, in the form of a CD-ROM disc, in his own office safe -- not in the police evidence lockup, where it would remain until a threatened Freedom of Information action by the Venice Taxpayers League in June of 2002 (see Where's the Web).

The official version: Slapp concluded that nothing criminal had taken place and estimated the value of the work received at $40,000. Slapp then turned the matter over to City Manager George Hunt for some in-house disciplinary action in a timely fashion.

Roy Stout, Vice President of the Venice Taxpayer's League, takes issue with that version of events. According to Stout, Slapp and Hunt sat on the mess quietly for quite some time and didn't go public until the Taxpayer's League started sniffing around computer purchase invoices.

Slapp and Hunt hit the panic button
Looking at the calendar, Stout's assertions appear to be valid. Slapp was Chief of Police until April 2, 2001. In mid-April and early May, Stout and Levine were investigating various purchases made by the computer department. It wasn't until May 16, 2001, that the Gondolier broke the story about Randall being under then-current investigation, a full month and a half after Slapp had started working at city hall.

According to Stout, the only reason Slapp and Hunt went public with the information that led to PuterGate was that the two city officials were suddenly deathly scared that the Taxpayer's League would discover it first. It turned out to be an unwarranted fear -- Stout states that he and and Levine had no clue as to what they had stumbled on in the Petra Software invoices until the story hit the Venice Gondolier on May 16, as they weren't looking at those particular purchases, they were focusing on the purchase of computers from Gulf America, a local computer vendor.

Following Stout's line of thought, if Slapp and Hunt had only sat on their hands and not panicked, nobody would have ever known about the incident and much of the grief that has landed at city hall would never have happened. Nobody who couldn't be controlled, that is.

Hunt subsequently suspended Randall without pay, then gave him a raise to compensate for the loss. Randall never had to pay back his admittedly illegal gains, so in spite of the punishment, Randall came out admirably ahead in the deal.

The official version from Hunt's office was that even though Randall's actions were illegal, the city got everything it paid for and then some. Slapp valued the work at $40,000 worth of software and training, a pure fiction. The media bought it.

A year later, in mid-2002, Venice Florida! dot com reexamined the case and discovered that the city had actually received little to nothing for the $12,000 it paid to Randall's stealth company. Despite subsequent pressure from the Venice Taxpayer's League, a formal criminal investigation into the affair by any law enforcement agency has yet to be launched.

The magic marker incident
Going back to early 2001: Slapp was still chief and word had gotten out to the troops about the Randall affair and Chief Slapp's cover-up. As stated earlier, some of Slapp's officers were furious at series of events.

Somebody wrote "Slapp is an asshole" on the message board in the squad room with a magic marker.

With that one simple sentence, all hell broke loose.

Slapp immediately ordered an internal investigation. Fingerprint workups were ordered from forensics on the offending magic marker. The department exploded, turning on itself in a raging internal war.

In one of those exceedingly rare moments when City Manager George Hunt actually becomes aware of a serious problem, gives a genuine hoot about it, and takes some kind of decisive action, Slapp was removed from the police department. Kicking and screaming, yes, but he was out, leaving a brief vacuum of power in the embattled department.

Hunt tried to put a happy face on the situation publicly, but he did give strong indications of an underlying controversy. When Hunt publicly announced the decision to move Slapp to city hall, the Gondolier quoted Hunt as stating that "any further delay might have caused anxiety in the police department," and "...there's been enough anxiety going on as it is and I really don't want to throw fuel onto the fire." (Slapp named to new position, Venice Gondolier, 03/28/01).

Go directly to City Hall -- pass Go, collect $200
Slapp was purportedly offered early retirement and refused. It remains unclear as to what went on in the subsequent negotiations, but it was finally agreed that a new position would be created for Slapp, Emergency Services Director. His office would be located at city hall, removed from the police department by a couple of miles and the Intercoastal Waterway. Publicly at least, Slapp was promoted and lauded by all. Privately, he was reviled by many.

All would have been fine over at the police station if someone had just told Slapp that he wasn't chief anymore. But that didn't happen. Slapp's powers were greatly expanded. On April 2, 2001, his first day in his new digs at city hall, Slapp was officially placed in charge of both the police and the fire departments. It was an incredibly and stupendously dumb case of not being able to learn anything from recent history.

Eight days later, Jim Hanks was sworn in as Venice's new police chief. Hanks immediately found himself in the unenviable position of trying to mitigate any damage that Slapp might do to the hopefully restabilizing department, but the damage was growing and unstoppable. The bulk of the police force were scratching their collective heads, thinking that they had gotten rid of Slapp only to find him back, more powerful, and seemingly more angry than ever.

Same thing we always do, Pinky: try to take over the world
One of the first things Slapp did at city hall was to revamp the police department's computer systems. Yanking away the department's in-house guru, Dan Acosta, and placing him in city hall was the the first step. Then Slapp overruled his own longstanding decision. For years he had fought city hall to keep the police department technologically separate from the city, stating that nobody at city hall had any need to be climbing around in police computers looking at police records. It's a wise view in our opinion, and a rule that should have been stuck to.

Now working out of city hall, Slapp wanted access to those records. He wanted that access badly. Computer head Steve Randall (yes, that Steve Randall) installed new computers at the police department, all networked in to city hall's system. By the end of 2001, Slapp, Randall, and anyone in the city's computer department had the ability to sit at their computers and read any file or monitor any activity that was taking place on the networked police computers, including the office of the chief of police. The system was so invasive that even a letter being typed could be monitored, keystroke for keystroke, in real time.

That computer monitoring ability by the city's computer department is still in place, and is not limited to just the police department.

Bear in mind, Randall had been the subject of a non-criminal non-investigation that concluded he sold the city $12,000 worth of... of... something that was actually closer to being worth $40,000 of... of... something. George Hunt publicly stated that what Randall had done was illegal. Now Randall himself could monitor the chief of police, the detectives, forensics, anyone. Randall could also delete or alter any data at will if he so chose, thanks to Slapp's new computer access policies, something Slapp had stated would happen over his dead body when he held the office of chief of police.

We're not saying Randall or any other city hall employee altered or deleted any police records remotely, but that they had the ability to if they wanted to. That's not a good thing, not a good thing at all. Just as an example, there's this legal concept called chain of evidence in forensics -- Randall's access to forensics computers could potentially damage the chain if the information in the computer is critical to the chain and if Randall's access went undocumented and if a defense attorney managed to figure it out and present it to a judge. A lot of ifs, but a very real possibility.

Anyone who has watched Court-TV for longer than five minutes knows that if an attorney can show that the chain of evidence is damaged, a judge has no choice but to toss the evidence.

But wait... it gets worse, if that were even possible.

Let's leave the computers alone for a moment and take a look at another incident.

Smile -- you're on Slapp-TV
Sources within the city government have confirmed that earlier this year, Slapp pushed to get video surveillance in a men's room at city hall. Outraged that a men's magazine that contained a few less than savory photos was found in a men's room waste basket, Slapp wanted to know who was grinning on city time. Nevermind that placing a camera in a men's room under such conditions is patently illegal and that Slapp should have known that, nevermind that it was more than slightly possible that it was not even a city employee who had thrown the magazine away. Slapp wanted a camera in the men's room. According to our sources, he received zero cooperation from anyone else involved and the plan was shelved. As near as we can determine, no camera was ever actually placed in the men's room.

But criminy, just the idea that he seriously entertained the thought for longer than two seconds is scary. With everything else that has happened in city hall over the last two to three years, a video investigation into who is reading what while they are sitting on the crapper was a good idea?

Progress is in the eye of the beholder
As this year dragged on, Slapp was regaining more and more hands-on control of the day-to-day functions of the police department. It was as though he never left. With a vengeance, detractors were swept out of the way. The city abruptly stopped paying Venice Florida! dot com's parent company, Creative Pages, for the web site that had been designed for the police department. Although Creative Pages was notified by phone of such intent, no follow-up documentation was ever provided by the city.

What is of particular sad note is that one of the features on the site was a way for folks to report crimes and information directly to the detective bureau with guaranteed anonymity, a feature that is not used by a large majority of law enforcement web sites. It was an experiment, one that was fabulously successful. There were at least a couple of semi-major criminal investigations that were successful because of information received through the web site. Now done and gone, all that remains of the site is the meaningless web address advertised on the back of each and every patrol car, a web address that will take you to a 'Page not found' message.

Former police computer guru Dan Acosta was terminated by George Hunt mid-year, in a public humiliation in council chambers. Randall and Slapp now had total control of police computers with nobody knowledgeable left to speak against the idea.

And that's just about when things started falling apart.

Viral infections, glitches, e-mail outages that lasted for days. That was the beginning.

Software that had been illegally installed on police car computers under Slapp's specific direction while he was chief was uninstalled after questions were raised about Randall's software procurement procedures by the Venice Taxpayer's League and Venice Florida! dot com. In a conversation we had with George Hunt in the middle of 2002, Hunt revealed that Chief Hanks was privately accused of software piracy by both Slapp and Hunt, even though Hanks had protested futilely about the software to Slapp and Randall when he took the position of chief.

Patrolmen, left with police computers minus the software to write their reports, were suddenly using paper forms from 10 to 15 years back write their reports. If you ever want to get a police force up in arms, just double their paperwork. And that is exactly what happened.

Over at the fire department, things weren't much better. A hard drive meltdown in a central computer wiped out nearly four years worth of fire reports. The backup drive, foolishly housed within the same machine (another Steve Randall decision), was also destroyed. The data was supposedly restored using a company that extracts data from damaged drives at a reported price of $10,000. Officials have told us that the costs were reimbursed by insurance, something that we have been unable to confirm. Randall stated to Venice Florida! dot com that no data was permanently lost, another detail that we have been unable to confirm.

Then came the police tech collapse. The police department's Dictaphone call recording system failed. Calls coming in to the department could no longer be recorded. The system needed to be kickstarted, and there was only one person in the city who had the education, certification and knowledge to do it: Dan Acosta, the same man that George Hunt had fired months before as unnecessary.

Dan Acosta to the rescue?
Sometime around October of this year, Acosta states he got a call from the city's computer department, asking if he would help get the police department's systems back on track. Before hanging up, Acosta made the suggestion that city hall collectively do something that is normally anatomically impossible for an individual, but that is quite feasible for a group of people.

And the system stayed down.

The city's computer department, along with paid consultant Mike Stewart of DKE Commerce, worked furiously trying to figure out what was wrong with the dispatch computers. For a time, things were so bad that dispatch was purportedly working out of a temporary command post. "They're like a bunch of gorillas poking sticks at a beehive, trying to figure out if there's any life left," one observer noted of the computer department's attempts at repairs during the worst of it.

Acosta received another call, this one asking if he knew where the computer department kept the 911 system software. This time he didn't even say anything, he just hung up.

FUBAR or not FUBAR -- that is the question
The system is supposedly back online at full strength. Supposedly. We have been unable to determine what the consequences of the outage were, exactly how long the outage took place, whether the final cost was just down time or if any dispatch records were lost.

Other sources have indicated to us that the system is still screwed up beyond all recognition and that nobody has yet spotted a light at the end of the tunnel.

According to one source, and we have not been able to confirm this, at least one officer resigned from the Venice Police Department, specifically citing the department's backwards technology moves since Slapp's move to city hall as the main reason.

But all this time, Slapp had access to the core department computers, and as long as he had that, the rest could be handled somehow. The department was just going to have to somehow deal with the problems they inherited, and they had best deal with them very quietly.

Venice Florida! dot com gets a visit
Slapp had other controls going as well. Shortly after the arrest of Herb Levine at city hall, Venice Florida! dot com received a visit from two detectives. They wanted to know, in no uncertain terms, our sources for many of our stories critical of city hall. Who was talking to us, did they work for the city or were they friends of employees? Standing on shaky knees and weakening 1st Amendment grounds, the detectives were told nothing about the identities of our sources.

And then there's Herb
Then there's Herb. Mister Levine (second syllable rhymes with wine, although at city hall it is usually mispronounced deliberately to rhyme with green). The ultimate problem to city hall business as usual. A harsh critic of George Hunt and a consistent thorny problem to Slapp's city order.

Slapp's ultimate solution to the Levine problem turned into his undoing. All of the rest of Slapp's policies, while extremely questionable, were acceptable to George Hunt. Hunt promoted him. Hunt praised him. Even Slapp's attempt to videotape folks while going to the bathroom apparently didn't phase George a great deal.

But this time, Slapp had gone too far.

It isn't the arrest of Levine that poses the problem. Heck, even the Venice Gondolier congratulated the mayor for a job well done on that one, even though the mayor had nothing to do with the arrest. No, it was the State Attorney's Office's refusal to play ball Venice-style. The State Attorney's Office is located physically outside of Venice city limits. The 1st Amendment exists there, even if it doesn't exist within city limits. The city now had to obey laws imposed on them by others, not something that the city normally likes to do.

The ballgame was now an away game with a hostile crowd, and core 1st Amendment issues were at stake. If Herb were to be successfully prosecuted, it would be open war on any and all dissenters who appeared before council in the future. Don't like your water bill? You have the right to remain silent, put your hands behind your back.

Slapp had to play by the State's rules, he had to convince the State that Levine posed some kind of real physical threat in order to support the arrest. In Assistant State Attorney Kurt Hoffman's eyes, Slapp failed to do that.

It wasn't for lack of trying. Witnesses were interviewed, forensics investigators were brought to council chambers, detailed maps were drawn up, witnesses were re-interviewed, volumes of reports were written. "The city has spent more money and man-hours on the Levine case than they did on their last homicide investigation," stated one observer close to the department. While that is probably an exaggeration, it's not a big one.

Venice Florida! dot com received unconfirmed reports of phone calls from city officials lobbying the State to take the case to court and to make the case winnable at all costs. Kurt Hoffman, the prosecutor assigned to the case, denies any knowledge of such calls. "If they are doing that, they aren't doing it with me," Hoffman stated to Venice Florida! dot com during the course of the State's pre-file investigation. "Maybe they are making the calls to people higher than me, but I would never hear about them. The State Attorney's Office is giving me full latitude in handling this case, I'm not receiving any pressure one way or the other."

After subpoenaing and interviewing over 25 witnesses, and after painstakingly reviewing the audio tapes and the evidence provided by Slapp, the State Attorney's Office kicked the case based on lack of lawful grounds for the arrest.

Now, the city is wondering if there will be a lawsuit and if there will be a criminal charge of Federal violation of civil rights. The city is also wondering absolutely cluelessly how it got into the position of giving all the cards to Herb Levine. After all, everything was going so well. Their guy was elected even if they didn't get the raise they wanted.

Say it ain't so, Joe
So now Joe Slapp is retiring. It's time, he says. It's coincidentally less then a week since the State dropped the charges against Levine. If city hall thinks anyone in the city with higher than a fourth grade education hasn't put those two events together, well, they should be sharing their drugs with the rest of the city.

The job that was created just to give Slapp something to do besides sharpening pencils, that of Emergency Services Director / Public Safety Director / Council Bouncer / Bathroom Videographer or whatever they were calling him at the end, will live on, at least for the moment. An unnecessary function, it would seem, if we had a city manager who was actually managing and having department heads report to him directly. Slapp, going out officially with a hero's sendoff, is even trying to name his successor. In the Gondolier, Slapp referred to the idea as a no-brainer.

And Herb? Levine is adamently indecisive. He's not sure about anything, other than that his shoulder still hurts and that his Sunday nights are free now that The Sopranos' fourth season is over. And that lawyers are calling him up. Lots of them, it seems.

And now you know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say. Well, most of it, anyway.