Broward News & Opinion

I have a few golden rules in politics. People are who they are. Never trade a vote for a vote. And never, ever mess with the cops or their pensions.

Today, I'm breaking the last one.

Relax. Your pensions are safe. But Fort Lauderdale cops need somebody to tell them the truth about Amendment 9.

Read the fine print. Then vote NO.

Thank me later.

YOUR CHIEF GETS FIVE BOSSES

At first glance, Amendment 9 sounds harmless enough. It would take the police chief out from under the city manager and make him a charter officer appointed by and reporting directly to the Fort Lauderdale City Commission.

Chief William Schultz may see that as a promotion. For you, it means the person at the top of your chain of command will have five political bosses.

Five commissioners with five districts, five political agendas and five different ideas about how the Police Department should be run. Each one will expect the chief to answer the phone, hear their complaint and treat their problem like the most important problem in Fort Lauderdale.

Apparently Schultz thinks this is a good idea. Was he sleeping through what just happened to former City Manager Rickelle Williams?

Commissioners publicly beat Williams up during her evaluation. The press piled on. Williams got the message.

Being more politically savvy than the people she worked for, Williams signed a mutual separation agreement.

What happened next was predictable.

The same politicized environment that helped drive her out suddenly produced stories lamenting her departure and showering her with praise. One commissioner said he was disappointed to see her go.

Rickelle collected 20 weeks of severance and walked away with her integrity and career intact, along with a pile of positive post-departure evaluation stories she can ride into her next job.

Schultz watched his boss almost get ground up by politics and apparently decided the Police Department needed the same arrangement.

Good luck with that.

The reality is that most days, nobody will notice the difference. The chief will go to work. The commissioners will go to ribbon cuttings. Everybody will smile for pictures and talk about public safety. But the charter isn't there for most days.

WAIT FOR THE NEXT BAD DAY.

You don’t have to imagine how quickly one of your arrests can become everybody else’s content.

Fort Lauderdale cops got a preview Friday when officers arrested YouTuber Jack Doherty after responding to a domestic dispute at a Riverside Park home.

The call came in just before noon. By Friday night, Doherty’s mugshot and arrest were national news. That’s what happens when the guy you’re putting in handcuffs has more than 15 million YouTube subscribers and millions more followers across social media.

Now wait for the next one, when the camera is already rolling and the first clip makes you look like the bad guy.

Maybe some homeless advocate sticks a camera in your face while you're enforcing the city's camping ban. Or maybe you have to get aggressive with a teenager who was fighting on Himmarshee Street. Someone's phone captures the physical arrest, but not the fight or anything else that happened before you stepped in.

The video goes viral and the narrative gets set. By the time the body camera footage shows the real story, everyone has already decided what you did and why you did it.

Then there is the picture that should really scare you.

An angry neighborhood president takes a photograph of you sitting in your patrol car while what looks like a quality of life crime is happening somewhere in the background. Because you and the alleged crime appear in the same frame, the neighborhood president decides you sat there and let it happen.

Maybe you never saw it. Maybe you were looking at your computer, handling another call or simply passing through the frame.

The neighborhood president doesn't wait to find out. The picture goes straight to their commissioner with an angry message about the Police Department ignoring their neighborhood.

As they say in the military, crap rolls downhill.

The commissioner lights up the chief. The chief lights up the command staff. The command staff lights up your supervisor.

Amendment 9 puts five politicians at the top of the hill and you at the bottom.

Today, the city manager absorbs the political heat and gives the chief room to let the investigation work. Amendment 9 removes that buffer and puts the chief directly on the phone with five politicians who may care more about the next headline than what the body camera shows.

WELCOME TO BABYSITTING DUTY

That same direct line a commissioner uses to demand your suspension on Monday can be used to demand your presence at a political event on Saturday.

It will start with a reasonable sounding request. A commissioner has a city event and asks whether an officer can stop by. Then there is a big citywide event at multiple locations and somebody decides a police escort would be a good idea.

Before long, a commissioner is making the rounds on Las Olas and wants an officer nearby. Never can be too safe!

Miami already knows how this ends. The Miami City Commission has a police bodyguard assigned to protect each of the city leaders.

When Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo tried to remove the commission's bodyguards in 2021, commissioners folded it into the political war that ended with the Chief losing his job.

Give it time and each Fort Lauderdale commissioner will be gallivanting around town with his own version of a bodyguard with a badge and a gun while 5 police officers get pulled away from actual police work.

Nobody will call it a personal security detail. They will give it some impressive sounding public safety name like “sergeant-at-arms.”

It will still be babysitting duty.

DON'T FIND OUT THE HARD WAY

An old FOP union boss once summed up local government for me better than any political science professor ever could.

“In local government, if you don't have three, you have this,” he said, holding up his middle finger.

That was the whole lesson, and he was right.

Amendment 9 takes that math and puts it at the top of your chain of command.

When your career is on the line, the chief won't just be weighing the facts. He'll be counting commissioners. Commissioners that ask questions and express “concerns.” They remind the chief that the public is angry and the press is calling.

Amendment 9 gives him five reasons to ask, “What do my bosses want?”

I'm breaking my own golden rule to tell you: Vote NO on Amendment 9.

Thank me later.

And if it passes, keep my number next to your union rep's. You're going to need a political consultant on call.