M.O.

Four score and four days ago, The New York Times reported on the death of Michelle O'Connell, "Two Gunshots on a Summer Night," by Walt Bogdanich and Glenn Silber.
After breaking up with her deputy boyfriend, Michelle O'Connell was killed with a bullet from the gun of a St. Johns County Sheriff's Deputy.
The investigation was biased because the intoxicated boyfriend, Deputy Jeremy Banks told his colleagues it was a suicide. Sheriff David B. Shoar did not recuse himself. Shoar's office failed to analyze evidence or interview ear-witnesses. State's Attorneys Ralph Joseph Larizza and Bradley Davis, and Medical Examiner Predrag Bulic showed a guillible proclivity to believe pretexts and not do their jobs. The Sheriff and his gang have retaliated, firing one deputy and bringing a SLAPP suit against the FDLE agent, Rusty Rodgers, who did his job without fear or favor.
Sheriff Shoar publicly mocked deputies who believe there was a homicide, asking 500 of them to "give these two guys a hand" in video footage that was part of the PBS Frontline story, "A Death in St. Augustine."
(The death was not in St. Augustine, but in the rural county south of town).
Our Sheriff's Department was long the locus of organized crime. L.O. Davis was removed from office by Governor Claude Kirk and the Florida State Senate for corruption in 1970 (although Sheriff David Shoar's website has for years falsely claimed Davis was "exonerated" by the Florida State Senate). I wrote August 28, 2013 and advised Shoar of three errors about Davis on his website; one was eventually corrected (the claim that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested here by "federal agents."
Two material falsehoods still remain in Shoar's paen to "20th Century Sheriffs": the claim that Davis was "exonerated" (he was removed by 44-2 Senate vote) and the claim that "with Sheriff Davis' leadership the community held together" in 1964 when Davis did no such thing: Davis knowingly hired KKK deputes, used cattle prods and police dogs to intimidate demonstrators and was allied with racist brick throwers, racist bomber J.B. Stoner and the Ku Klux Klan. Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young said St. Augusine was "worse than Bimingham" and the only place "where our hospital bills exceeded our bail bond bills."
Like an Energizer Bunny on steroids, the St. Johns County Sheriff's Department in the 21st century keeps going and going and going with nepotism, cronism, coverups, retaliation and ridicule.
That is the MO -- modus operandi -- of the corrupt political machine here in St. Johns County, Florida.
That machine was long headed by the Sheriff, and bossed and bullied by crooked developers. This has been the political machine's MO for decades, dating back to the times when LO --Lawrence O. Davis -- and the KKK and the Flagler East Coast Railway ran this town.
This corrupt MO is contrary to the genuis of a free people. It must be ended at once.
The truth about the death of Michelle O'Connell -- the other MO -- will haunt this county.
The truth will not go away simply because our political, religious and business leaders are cowards, afraid of Sheriff David B. Shoar.
The stain of corruption will not be extirpated until federal crimes are prosecuted by federal agents -- federal crimes like civil rights violations, obstruction of justice, mail and wire fraud, bribery, extortion, etc.
As LBJ said after Selma, "We SHALL overcome."