Trusting soul award goes to the St. Augustine Wreckord for running a one-sided story reporting that the Inspector General of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection had found blameless DEP's refusal to prosecute criminally St. Augustine City officials -- who dumped solid waste into a coquina lake that it is "an open sore going straight down to the aquifer and the groundwater," according to former EPA Regional Administrator John Henry Hankinson.
The Wreckord did not ask me for comment, while reporting the complaint to DEP IG on page one.
The Wreckord has never acknowledged my offer to share documents on the FDEP criminal investigation coverup, with Captain Grea Beavis writing he would not prosecute St. Augustine because of a three-day Florida Chamber of Commerce environmental conference held in Marco Island, Florida in July 2006.
The FDEP also found no motive for our City's dumping (ignoring the millions in cost savings).
The Wreckord's headline resembled one in East Tennessee in 1983, where a Courthouse gang newspaper (Clinton Courier News) falsely reported on page one that a federal grand jury cleared (issued a "no true bill") on Sheriff Dennis O. Trotter. There are no "no true bills" in federal criminal procedure. Trotter was indicted and imprisoned -- when he left prison, he ended up paying me to setttle a lawsuit over his having stirred up a bogus by bail bondsmen (who also pled guilty and paid for their efforts to stifle free speech).
I've asked Governor Charles Crist's Inspector General to investigate the coverup by the FDEP Inspector General. The Wreckord is guilty of journalistic malpractice.
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