Still no response from City burghers as to the unconstitional arrests of people for violating city ordinances. Based upon Florida AG Bill McCollum's June 15, 2009 opinion (below), there are a lot of people whose rights our City of St. Augustine has violated over the years.
That reminds me of a story. While working in East Tennessee, my friend Sam, who was the DA's criminal investigator, told me what he had found in old courthouse records researching the criminal history of a man who was being charged with being an habitual criminal. Sam found arrests from the 1940s where the only charge listed was "general principles." Apparently, the deputies and constables were empowered by the backwoods legal environment to say to some poor sclub, "I'm arresting you on general principles."
Such arrests (and convictions) on "general principles" were reported in the New York Times in the 1800s. Philadelphia Police detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is arrested by a Mississippi police chief (Rod Steiger) in the movie "In the Heat of the Night" on "general principles" because a rich white man is dead and Tibbs is African-American and not from around there.
Thankfully, thanks to the Warren Court, such police abuses have gone underground, except here in St. Augustine, where we have unjust stewards in charge of our city government in the City of St. Augustine.
Pity the poor police in St. Augustine, poorly led by City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, poorly advised by our City Attorney and a long string of in-house and outhouse lawyers.
They must be scratching their heads and asking themselves why they were embroiled these last 24 years in arresting visual artists and entertainers for "crimes" that don't exist, "crimes" that were created ex nihilo by dint of St. Augustine City ordinance 1-8, which AG McCollum's opinion shows is a nullity, because local governments aren't allowed by the Florida Constitution to make up their own crimes.
So what's the Constitution among friends, anyway?
Our City of St. Augustine needs to make up a list of the names and addresses of everyone it has arrested based on the anti-artist ordinance and other illegal ordinances where the only "crime" is defined by City ordinance 1-8. They need to notify their victims about how they may get their criminal records expunged. They need to advise their victims about their civil rights remedies. They need to tell the world they will stop the false arrests and false imprisonments.
And then they need to apologize. Or does being the City of St. Augustine mean "never having to say you're sorry?"
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