Dear Pulitzer Prize Administrator and Pulitzer Committee Members:
1. May I please submit this E-mail as my informal letter of recommendation, for the Times' article, "Two Gunshots on A Summer Night," to receive a Pulitzer Prize?
2. I have lived in Florida since 1995 and lived here in St. Augustine, Florida since November 5, 1999. Brian Wallace and I lived in Washington, D.C. when we first visited here in 1992; we fell in love with this small town and the history and beauty of Our Nation's Oldest City and its environs. We had no clue that this county was so corrupt here until several months after moving here.
3. The Times' article, "Two Gunshots on a Summer Night," exposes and skewers our local St. Johns County Sheriff, two Florida State's Attorneys and the local Medical Examiner for their evident misfeasance, malfesance and nonfeasance in their inept response to the shooting death of Ms. Michelle O'Connell, the girlfriend of Sheriff's Deputy Jeremy Banks.
4. The article may prove to be a transformative event in our local governments here in St. Johns County. This is a place where epic corruption long festered under Jim Crow segregation and one-party rule by Democrats, and now festers still under one-party rule by Republicans. This county has never had adequate coverage by any newspapers at any time (since the first printing press arrived here in 1777, under a brief period of British rule).
5. As a blogger and community activist, I have been speaking out on local issues since April of 2005.
6. When I read The New York Times article online on the evening of November 23, 2013, my heart leaped with joy, but my reaction was also one of indignation. Finally, there was an investigative reporter with the perspicacity to stand up to entrenched powers here and calmly and thoroughly expose their actions. The world is watching what we do in response.
7. The article was unadorned by any overstatement, pejoratives or sensationalism of any kind. Given the subject matter, it would have been very tempting for any investigative reporter to engage in at least one "cheap shot" or two -- there are none. With class and panache, the article carefully and effectively lets the facts and science speak for themselves, while treating the shooting victim and her family with the dignity and respect that they deserve. There are no unnecessary details. Every word tells. In four densely packed inside pages, the article assembles forensic evidence to make a compelling reconstruction of how a powerful Sheriff and his employees and political allies responded when the girlfriend of a well-connected deputy was found shot with the deputy's own semi-automatic service pistol issued by the Sheriff's office.
8. St. Johns County Sheriff David B. Shoar should have recused himself the night of the shooting. Everything that came afterwards was the "fruit of the poison tree." What happened on September 2, 2010 and since was made possible by docile local newspapers and aggravated by one-party Republican rule. This is a county where Democrats have not run a county-wide candidate in a partisan race sine 2006 -- eight (8) years ago -- and where the Sheriff has faced no opposition since being first elected in 2004 -- ten (10) years ago. Our community suffers from corruption as a result of ths backward political and journalistic culture. The Times story focuses on just one case as a synecdoche -- a part that stands for the whole.
9. We knew for years that our local burghers were capable of bribery, self-dealing, no-bid contracts, nepotism, Sunshine and Open Records violations and developer favoritism, which clear-cuts and kills trees and destroys wetlands.
10. But thanks to the Times' substantial investment of time, money and talent, we now know that the local political machine is so corrupt that it is quite capable of covering up a death and alleged Officer Invoved Domestic Violence (OIDV), and what should have been treated as a homicide investigation from the start was termed a "suicide" without proper investigation.
11. This is one of the greatest public services ever done by The New York Times in its history. It is in the spirit of the Times' investigation of Boss Tweed in 1871 and the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
12. By way of background, I am a former editor of a small weeky newspaper in East Tennessee (Appalachian Observer) that investigated the U.S. Department of Energy's pollution and exposure of workers to radionuclides and other toxicants in Oak RIdge, Tennessee, investigated our corrupt local Sheriff, Dennis O. Trotter (later incarcerated), and investigated the U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority and other assorted wrongdoers. I know first-hand how tough it is to get local Sheriff's deputies anywhere in the South to cooperate with a newspaper reporter. I am also a former lawyer for whistleblowers, who greatly appreciates the sacrifices whistleblowers may make to speak the truth.
13. I have been a regular reader of The New York Times for some 46 years (I willl soon be 57). I have never seen anything in The New York Times (or in any other publication anywhere) that was quite so hard-hiting, scholarly and insightful at the same time. There are many excellent investigative articles competing for the Pulitzer annually, but there are very few with the potential to make such a difference in so many peoples' lives as "Two Gunshots on a Summer Night."
14. Victims of OIDV, domestic violence by law enforcement officials, have now been empowered by this story, whether in our community or around the Nation, and hopefully across the globe.. I know one such local victim, who has only recently started talking about her experiences.. There are many others elsewhere who will now no doubt stand up to abuse thanks to the Times' investigative reporting. Meanwhile, not one county-wide elected official here has yet spoken out about the O'Connell case. The reason: Sheriff Shoar heads the local political machine, like other corrupt county sheriffs before him. Many locals are afraid of speaking the truth to or about this Sheriff. The New York Times and its reporters were not afraid. Meanwhile, we are hopeful that as a result of this story, Sheriff Shoar, et al. will be investigated by the United States Department of Justice and FBI for criminal civil rights violations and other federal crimes. There must be accountability.
15. "Justice for Michelle O'Connell" will not come easily, but here in St. Augustine -- which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964 called "the most lawless" city in America -- local residents are indignant and empowered as never before in its nearly 450 years of recorded history.
16. I therefore heartily and enthusiastically recommend that you consider this Times article for a Pulitzer Prize in the appropriate category. Borrowing the chilling words of Sheriff Shoar himself, at the end of the article, and re-applying those words to the two co-authors, Messrs. Walt Bogdanich and Glenn Silber, "Let's give these two guys a hand!"
Please let me know if you have any questions, and kindly place me on your E-mailing list.
Thank you for your consideration.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed
Ed Slavin
Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
PO Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
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