March 19, 2006: New BSO second-in-command Col. John Auer praising Chief Greg Page of Weston in PowerTrac. Also, sworn statements from Edwin Arias. (video & sworn statements download link at the bottom of article)Featured in this video of a September 16, 2003 PowerTrac session are Lt. Col. John Auer and Weston Chief Greg Page. Chief Page is being commended by Auer for posting a 62.7% clearance rate. And, very deserving of the praise Chief Page is. A 62.7% clearance rate is quite remarkable. For comparison purposes, Fort Lauderdale police managed to solve only 17.5% of their crimes in 2003. When Auer asked Chief Page the secret to his success, the Chief gave the credit to hard work and the leadership of criminal investigations sergeant Mike Menghi. But, according to sworn statements given to the Broward State Attorney by former Weston Detective Edwin Arias, a suborinate of Menghi's, it appears that falsification of exceptional clearances played a much bigger role in that 62.7% clearance rate than did hard work. The essence of Arias’s statements was that Sgt. Menghi taught him that falsification of exceptional clearances was standard operating procedure at BSO. In 2002, Det. Arias was the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation for falsifying an exceptional clearance. The investigating sergeant, Steve Feeley, wanted to send the case to the State Attorney’s Office (SAO) for prosecution. However, the case did not make it there because former BSO second-in-command, Colonel Tom Carney, took the case away from Feeley and sent it back to Weston. Taking a criminal case away from Internal Affairs and sending it back to District was unprecedented. Col. Carney told SAO investigators the reason he took the case away from Sgt. Feeley was because the Inspector General of Internal Affairs, Martin Rahinsky, was “crying he [Rahinsky] doesn’t have enough people” to investigate all the cases he had. However, Feeley gave statements to the State Attorney saying he did not want the case to go back to district. Furthermore, his investigation was almost complete and ready to be sent to the SAO. An investigation conducted at Weston concluded Det. Arias was sloppy and that he did not falsify anything. The former Assistant Inspector General of Internal Affairs, Roy Vrchota, called the Weston investigation a whitewash. When Sgt. Feeley saw the results of the Weston investigation, he notified Patricia Windowmaker from the BSO legal department that he had grave concerns that a proper investigation was not done. Mrs. Windowmaker never responded to his concerns. Three years after what appeared to be a successful cover up by a very high ranking BSO official (Col. Tom Carney) of a falsified exceptional clearance, Det. Arias admitted to the Broward State Attorney that the clearance was indeed false. Many BSO employees were touched by the Arias case in 2002 and early 2003. Among them were Weston Chief Greg Page and Lt. Col. John Auer. According to Col. Carney, the Arias case was given to Auer with instructions to conduct another investigation in Weston. Everything stated above are facts that come from sworn statements that can be downloaded from the evidence section of this website. From these facts, certain inferences can be reached:
Sheriff Jenne let Colonel Carney retire wealthy after he assisted Tom Panza in investigating himself. The Sheriff promoted John Auer to Colonel and made him the new BSO second-in-command. Former Inspector General Rahinsky gave a statement to the State Attorney that is contradicted by several former members of Internal Affairs. Former Assistant Inspector General Vrchota quit BSO and settled a whistleblower lawsuit. Sgt. Steve Feeley was purged from Internal Affairs and replaced by Sgt. Frank Balante (who has since been promoted to Lieutenant). Click here to download the video (2MB). Click here to download Arias statment from 11/10/2005. Click here to download Arias statement from 11/15/2005. Click here to download the Arias statement from 11/22/2005.
March 18, 2006: Jim Knight PowerTrac video download & CommentaryRecall the "good case" praise Colonel Tom Carney gave in January 2000 to Captain Mike Goldstein (who is now a Major) after his district exceptionally cleared 99 cases against a "genius junkie" (that video can be downloaded from this website). Major Goldstein was an example of a person who reaped the rewards Sheriff Jenne offered when crime reports were falsified. Contrast Goldstein's PowerTrac interrogation to that of Chief Jim Knight from December 11, 2001. Knight was Chief of District 9 (he has since left BSO). Poor Jim Knight wasn't posting the decreases in crime required by Sheriff Jenne. Sheriff Jenne could not sell his services to other Broward Cities if crime was increasing. So, Knight had to get with the program. Knight had to do what the others were doing (wink, wink). Of those others mentioned, one was the son of the former Inspector General of Internal Affairs, Martin Rahinsky. Recall that Martin Rahinsky gave a statement to the State Attorney that reads like perjury. He was the man who conveyed the orders to limit the scope of the investigation into Shawn Enser's allegations (Enser's statement is on this website). He was also the man who went to the State Attorney in a corrupt attempt to get the Kantor crime downgrading case sent back to BSO. And, most notoriously, he was the man who allowed Col. Tom Carney to cover up the Arais exceptional clearance falsification in Weston in 2002. Martin Rahinsky's son, Dave, was the youngest district commander in BSO history. Dave must have been posting the kind of crime stats that Sheriff Jenne liked because the Sheriff used him as a model for Jim Knight to emulate. Sheriff Jenne also used Chief Steve Canfield as a role model. Recall from the Shawn Enser statement that Steve Canfield removed Enser from the loop when he complained about all falsified crime downgrading going on in District 5. And, coming next to this website is a PowerTrac video of Canfield and Carney where it is revealed that Steve's detectives exceptionally cleared cases on a man they never spoke to. I would say those are dubious role models for Sheriff Jenne hold up for Chief Knight. Click here to download the Jim Knight PowerTrac video (10MB). If you haven't read it already, click here to read Wyatt Olsen's article.
March 15, 2006 - Wyatt Olsen article.If the Miami Herald and the Sun Sentinel had been printing stories like Wyatt Olsen's from the New Times, Sheriff Jenne would have been gone two summers ago. Ask yourself why BSO is more than willing to comment on Herald and Sentinel stories, but not the Times story? The answer is because Sheriff Jenne knows the Herald and Sentinel will print his spin and deception unchallenged. The press is the public's only watchdog against government corruption. Sadly, the two big newspapers in South Florida and every major local TV news station has abdicated that responsibility. Click here to read Olsen's article.
February 26, 2006: Shawn Enser statementI added to this website the statement Sgt. Shawn Enser gave to the State Attorney on Jan. 13, 2004. Contrary to the public subterfuge by Sheriff Jenne, his command staff did everything within their power to prevent the outside world from discovering that BSO was fabricating their crimes stats for years. Former BSO second-in-command Col. Tom Carney was, for a time, successful in covering up an exceptional clearance falsification in Weston in 2002. But by the Fall of 2003, the BSO dam of silence was about to crack. That corrupt dam was built on fear, intimidation and bribes by the upper echelon of BSO management. While most BSO employees succumbed to either their threats or rewards of corruption, a handful (sadly, only a small handful) said, NO MORE!. One of those people was Sgt. Shawn Enser. Originally from Oakland Park PD, Enser came to BSO after Sheriff Jenne's acquisition of Oakland Park in 2000. Enser, fed up being blacklisted because he refused to require or allow his deputies to falsify crime reports, wrote a memo in Aug. 2003 that led to a chain of events resulting in the initiation of an investigation by the State Attorney's office and the public exposure of the corruption at the agency that Sheriff Kenneth Jenne commands. Sgt. Enser's statement gives incredulous accounts of falsified crime downgrading. And, what happened when it was brought to the attention of Chief Steve Canfield. IG Martin Rahinsky makes subtle attempts to paint Enser as a disgruntled employee in his SAO statement, but there are so many contradictions and apparent lies in Martin's statement, that if I had to choose to believe one or the other, I would choose Enser. Besides the cash bonuses paid to District Chiefs for good crime stats and threats of job security to all those at every level who didn't post obscenely high numbers, Enser gives another rationalization used by some for the falsifications. If you didn't post high numbers, Sheriff Jenne and his command staff would make you do operational plans, and that meant hours and hours of extra work. Extra work to reduce crime, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, however, it is when you know, and you know the Sheriff and his command staff know, that no operational plan ever conceived could possibly result in consistent 60%+ clearance rates and less and less reported crime year after year despite a doubling in the number of calls to 911. Ethan Jordan
October 10, 2005:Since I have not made any updates to this site in a month, many have asked if we have abandoned our crusade to expose the corruption of Sheriff Ken Jenne and his partners in crime. The answer is a resounding NO. The crusade still continues. I have spent the last month compiling additional evidence, some of which I added today to the Evidence section of this website (see the Capt. Stan Hodgeman and Deputy Lance Morgan sworn statements and see the John Degroot Culture of Fear memo and the Phil McCann email). I ask all those who detest corruption, especially corruption by top law enforcement officials, to be patient and keep checking back for new material. Commentary will begin again in November. New Evidence will be added throughout this month and beyond. Sincerely,
Ethan Jordan
Sheriff Ken Jenne's Crime Numbers ScandalWhat is it and why should you care? The crime numbers scandal revolves around statistics. It has been described by BSO insiders as a numbers game where coercion from top BSO commanders filtered down to chiefs, lieutenants, sergeants, etc to post good crime numbers. By the time it reached the bottom rung of the ladder, many deputies and detectives were entrapped in a system where falsifying reports became a requirement of the job. The crime numbers tell a story that BSO is better than anyone else at preventing crime and three times better than the rest of the nation at solving crime. Sheriff Jenne used these numbers to acquire police departments throughout Broward County, to get re-elected and he may have used them to get Federal grants (the FBI is currently looking into that). Using the numbers like that would not have been a bad thing if the crime numbers where legitimate. However, even the Sheriff reluctantly admitted in March 2005 that his agency's numbers where bogus. Why should you care?
crime downgrading and exceptional clearancesThe BSO crime numbers scandal revolves around what is called crime downgrading and exceptional clearances. They are two different things, but have the same goal in mind: To make it appear the Sheriff is doing a better job at fighting crime than he actually is. Crime downgrading is when a legitimate crime is categorized as something non-criminal, for example, a stolen TV would be categorized as lost property. Crime downgrading makes it appear that less crime is occurring than what actually is. Exceptional clearances are a little more difficult to explain. Crimes can be cleared (solved) by arrest or by exception. When a crime is cleared by arrest, an arrest is made and the suspect is referred to the State Attorney for prosecution. Clearances by arrest are good because it gets the criminals off the streets. Clearance by exception is an alternative way of solving crimes. When a crime is cleared by exception, a person is identified as being the perpetrator of the crime, but that person is not prosecuted for the crime. Clearances by exception are allowed by the FBI in limited circumstances, for example, if the person positively identified as being the perpetrator is dead. Not much point in prosecuting a dead person. Exceptional clearances, done the BSO way, make it appear that more crime is being solved than what actually is. exception to the ruleUnlike other law enforcement agencies (for example, Fort Lauderdale and Oakland Park before the BSO takeover), exceptional clearances at BSO were the rule, not the exception. BSO's overall clearance rate was three times the national average, and the 2003 exceptional clearance rate at their Oakland Park district was over four times the rate prior to BSO's takeover. It has been alleged by newspaper articles, Fort Lauderdale Police and BSO insiders that a majority of the crime downgrades and exceptional clearances were not legitimate. A comparison of the 2004 crime numbers to the 2003 numbers supports the allegations. Even though, according to Sheriff Jenne, his agency's problems with crime numbers started over 22 years ago, it wasn't until the story broke in the press in 2004 that anything serious was done about it. From 2003 to 2004, reported crime increased more than 60% in several BSO districts while the exceptional clearance rate plunged 65% county wide. However, this does not reflect that more crime is occurring and less crime is being solved. It reflects that crime is no longer being improperly downgraded and cleared. It is important to reiterate that with exceptional clearances, the suspect is never prosecuted. No suspect falsely went to jail because of the BSO way of doing exceptional clearances. who's to blameWho's to blame for the improper downgrading and clearances? BSO insiders allege the Sheriff either blamed or had plans to blame the scandal on:
I intend to present evidence on this website to show the Sheriff and his command are to blame. The evidence is out there, but it is like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle splayed out across the floor. I will put the pieces together so that the picture will be obvious. If after you see the picture, you come to the conclusion that Sheriff Jenne has engaged in acts of corruption, cover ups, public deceptions and scapegoating, I hope you will act in the best traditions of American citizenship and join our cause to remove Sheriff Jenne from office pending the outcomes of the already on going investigations into the agency he commands and into his personal business dealings with other BSO commanders and vendors.
Read current updates...more
Read sworn statements...more
Read newspaper articles...more
Read TV news stories...more
Sign the petition...more
|
 in the newsPowerTrac sesions, Coercion for those who don't post good numbers, Rehersal for those who do...more Mike Goldstein PowerTrac video released...more E-mail from PowerTrac lieutenant offering to lose cases in the system...more Sheriff Ken Jenne fires whistleblowers as an object lesson to others who might BSO whistleblower sues Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne for violations of Florida’s Constitution and statutes and for violation of Broward County ordinances...more Is Sheriff Ken Jenne a criminal?...more BSO violated the Florida Policeman’s Bill of Rights. Is BSO General Counsel Ed Dion an accomplice? ...more BSO doesn't follow written policies and procedures in their investigation of deputy: Are they trying to hide something?...more Fired BSO whistleblower New statements to the State Attorney posted on 7/17/05...more
|
side contentBROWARD COUNTY'S MOST WANTED: If you have any information concerning potentially unethical or illegal activity by Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne, please report it to the appropriate authority immediately. Ethan Jordan
ethan@browardsheriffcorruption.com
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent" Thomas Jefferson
Is BSO legal counsel, Ed Dion, the kind of person John Quincy Adams had in mind when he wrote: "The mere title of lawyer is sufficient to deprive a man of the public confidence....The most innocent and irreproachable life cannot guard a lawyer against the hatred of his fellow citizens"? Click here to judge for yourself.
|