McClash Clash

Nick Azzara's lead piece on the Bradenton Herald's front page Sunday is a dramatic follow-up to his earlier piece in which County Commissioner Joe McClash "shrugged" off concerns that 3,000 new homes coming before the commission this week may overburden State Road 64 east of I-75. McClash said the homes might never get built, given the economy, seeming to suggest that approving them doesn't matter.

But the county commission chairman resumed his hard line on new development in Sunday's story, apparently having heard enough from the likes of Schroeder-Manatee Ranch developer Rex Jensen, who has been clashing with the county commissioner over road-building at least since early July. Jensen, whose Lakewood Ranch super-district has bonding authority to build $4 billion in roads and infrastructure, gathered developers to complain about the McClash clash, which threatens "tens of thousands" of jobs, according to high-ticket homebuilder Lee Wetherington, an attendee.

McClash sang a different tune a week ago, when the state appeared go along with a plan to let Manatee County advance the funds and be repaid, so that developers who need new roads built before their projects can be approved can go ahead with their plans.

What's going on, although the Herald doesn't say so, is that developers who were using the county as a rubber stamp for their pricey projects are getting a new signal from McClash, who appears to be putting his foot down on uncontrolled development and may even seek a moratorium on projects that need road-widening or have new-road components.

We say, well, it's about time. Manatee County needs to turn inward and restore some the of the dilapidated neighborhoods in the county's historic core. Those neighborhoods have never seen a curb or a storm drain or sidewalk. much less a streetlight or a new park. But we never expected McClash - or any Republican - to lead the way.

A month ago, on July 2, McClash told Azzara "I cannot in good faith allow more traffic to be on State Road 64" than was already there, and by rejecting three new projects at that time, he gave some badly needed confidence to slow-growth advocates when he also spoke out against the Riverview South.

McClash appears to be rejecting the new developments he was shrugging off a few days ago. He is obviously under a lot of pressure from constituents who say they don't want county taxpayers to bear the ultimate cost of road-building that benefits the developers of new communities and few others, and in Sunday's piece he acknowledges for the first time that the builders' huge profits could easily accommodate the cost of roads.

Azzara did not make mention of the fact that Schroeder-Manatee Ranch officials won a $4 billion bonding authority in earlier negotiations that created a "super-district" within the county, and that bonds are designed for use to "create roads and infrastructure for the future," according to a Herald article by John Simpson on June 15.

Jensen told the paper at last week's meeting that the company has built more than $80 million in roads, and angrily denied that it has been derelict in its obligation to do so.


Short Takes

Big Pull

St. Petersburg millionaire Frank Maggio, who recently announced he is taking on AC Nielsen in the broadcast ratings business, has hired a top NAACP figure and "consultant" Rep. Frank Peterman to back up his play for approval of the Riverview South condominium project on the shore of the Manatee River in downtown Bradenton. The project has run into opposition from County Commission Chair joe McClash and others.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune's account in Sunday's paper is a pretty good one, revealing that Peterman has never done consulting before and that Maggio's contract essentially put him in business.

The NAACP figures in because the neighborhood that is being cheated of park land and a substantial low-income housing project (instead of the 37 units over stores that Maggio plans) is mostly black and represented by NAACP stalwart Rev. James Golden, a traditional black Democrat.

Presumably, the understanding is that if someone has to sell out the community it might as well be one of their own, although the Trib doesn't say that. Attorney Darryl Rouson of St. Petersburg was president of the St. Petersburg NAACP until he stepped down last September. Now he plans to become Maggio's partner in First Dartmouth, Maggio's hot real estate venture.


Secret Cases

When I learned in 2000 that a tentative decision to award plaintiffs in the long-running Winnie the Pooh royalty case against Disney was under seal, I could hardly believe my ears. I got access to the order and wrote about it, but other news outlets like Daily Variety, the Los Angeles Times and Hollywood Reporter were forced to play catch-up ball because it wasn't available to them.
Under a judge's order, some 47 or 48 boxes of records were being hidden from the public, which at that point had been paying for court services for the plaintiffs and defendants for nearly 10 years.

In response The American Reporter hired an attorney friend named Alexander J. Petale, and he joined lawyers for the Times and Daily Variety in a motion to unseal the documents.
It took a little while and Disney was allowed to redact some documents, but they did get opened and set off a worldwide firestorm of publicity for the case, in which entertainment lawyer Bert Fields and O.J. nemesis and Ken Lay attorney Dan Petrocelli were the opposing lawyers.

Now it seems Sarasota courts have a secrecy problem.

A terrific read in the Trib this morning tells of a
dozen cases that have been sealed without adequate protections for the public, who wouldn't even have known the cases existed if they had to rely on the court clerk's record system.

The system was instructed to delete all informaion about most of the cases, and apparently all but one judge didn't know that:

In addition, Clerk of Court Karen Rushing's computer system that keeps track of every lawsuit and court case is programmed to remove any mention of sealed cases, leaving the public no way to know they ever occurred.

That jurist, Judge Deno Economou, will soon be facing sanctions, we'd guess, for refusing to provide even case titles and numbers to the public on the grounds that the litigants are "not public figures:"

But in a memo responding to the Herald-Tribune, Judge Deno Economou said he would not provide any information about two cases he sealed because "none of the parties are public figures."

One would be hard pressed to find such a lame excuse, and one so ignorant of a court's responsibilities to the public, elsewhere in Sarasota courts. Other judges contacted by the Trib immediately realized that the seals were indefensible and opened the records.

A few remain closed, however, and as Judge Economou dawdles, Attorney General Charlie Crist is doing the brave and noble thing - nothing, as usual. He presumably doesn't know what kind of hornet's nests may erupt if the secret cases are unsealed, and doesn't have the courage to find out.

The Hope A Tire Changer Has

As if if two shootings that wounded a deputy and a suspect, and a fusillade that struck a woman's vehicle in the Village of the Arts on Wednesday was not enough, Friday saw an unarmed man gunned down by three other men at a garage at 3101 Third St. W., not far from the DeSoto Mall.

People who ask what's going on in Manatee County get some of the answers from both of the local papers, but none of the context. It's the eighth homicide in the county so far this year.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune treats the story of the shooting of a 25-year old tire changer at a Bradenton garage pretty much as a matter-of-fact event, but at least it wasn't a new brief. The Trib has his name; the Herald doesn't - out of concern for his family - but it does humanize the victim and the scene.

Reporter Sylvia Lim, who cleaned up the mess of the Wednesday shootings in Friday's paper, quotes the owner as saying the young Puerto Rican was "family" to him and that he had worked there since coming here from Puerto Rico seven years ago.

Lim tells us that as was their tradition, 15 or so men (and probably their girlfriends) were planning to gather later and get haircuts at the garage as they drank and talked. The owner, a guy named Danny, said Jose's girlfriend, who was not named, "was a wreck" after she drove to the hospital and learned there of his death en route in an ambulance.

Who was he? The Trib says his parents are still in Puerto Rico, and that "his friend" Danny says he "liked to work." In the Herald, Danny is his boss and is quoted as saying, "I was his family here. He was like my son."

Herald photographer Grant Jefferies caught a moving image of three young women tearfully embracing outside the garage, and a strong one of detectives with guns drawn peering into a shed.

Police told the Herald they found a gun, bullet shells and a small quantity of drugs at the scene, and quote Sheriff's spokesman Randy Warren as saying "it's more than likely drugs were involved."

That's the end of the story for most readers, who once they learn drugs were involved don't care to know if the drugs and gun were his or not, or what role, if any, they played in his death.

The Trib notes that a man suffering from gunshot wounds was admitted to faraway Lakewood Ranch Medical Center in critical condition, and that it was too early to say if there was a link between the two shootings. The Herald has the story of that second shooting, but in an unrelated news brief.

Starting near the new Lowe's on 14th St. West, 30th Ave. W. is mainly an East-West connector to schools, churches, homes and small businesses where a man can still find affordable mechanics, feeding mostly into 9th St. W and the Green Bridge to Palmetto. I don't get over to the 3rd St. area except on Election Day, when the heavily Democratic precincts in the Samoset neighborhood are busy.

There are a lot of unhopeful possibilities the detectives will ponder. It well could be that if he was involved in the drug trade at all - which isn't known right now - the victim hadn't paid his "rent" to local gangs for the right to sell drugs, or that he'd borrowed drugs from a street-level distributor and not paid up when they were sold. It could have been that the drugs and gun were planted by the killers, or that he was killed by someone he knew over a girl - his girlfriend was in the garage at the time - and that the guns and drugs were irrelevant. Or anything else - and I'm not so sure that matters now.

The fact that a man's brains are blown out in broad daylight in front of his friends on a busy street has resonance immediately after the fact, but for not much longer. Readers know that Jose was preceded in his violent death by any number of young men who have been shot, beaten and stabbed in, around and outside of bars and nightclubs, in alleys and on street corners surrounding downtown Bradenton.

Having seen far more than my share of brains scattered on sidewalks in Hollywood, California - during the crack wars, it was one of the most violent places in America - I am not blase. Many of the people who were shot in my Ivar Hill neighborhood had come as kids to our Christmas posadas, or brought their own kids, and some were peole who secretly cheered our Neighborhood Watch patrols when we made arrests that took violent felons off the streets. I knew who they were, or someone who knew them; that was probably the reason they spared my life.

But when we first came to quiet and peaceful Bradenton, we noticed that drug-related violence was growing rapidly in what is a tiny city of just 53,000 people, albeit part of a fast-growing metropolitan region where the building permits flow like gravy.

We had to ask ourselves, after all, with the very large number of retired seniors here, where do all the customers to support a small army of crack and pot dealers come from? And where does that army come from, too?

The answer is that a mostly invisible population of low-income minorities and whites, the people who toil in garages and sweep beauty salons, who landscape our lawns, paint our homes and sheds, round up shopping carts and wash cars - if they get work at all - sometimes treat their dead-end lives like so much trash to be tossed away on $10 hits of crack, whether they use it themselves, sell it to others, or deal it to the rich kids from Sarasota and Lakewood Ranch. Inwardly, quietly, many of them know their lives may be worthless and their futures short.

The Herald and the Trib are not yet providing this needed context for the many aimless murders, fusillades and gunbattles, the robberies, burglaries and petty thefts that threaten even their own future; scared people don't read newspapers (they stay home and watch tv), and they don't go out much.

Here is the that missing context: These crimes are about hope, and the lack of it. And hope is an education.

Hope for this community, obviously, is not all that bright now, but county commision and school board officials are planning to move it even further away. While it may be too late for a tire changer from Puerto Rico to get a leg up on life, it's not too late for thousands of other low-income kids like him whose other option is to run in place - and fear - until they die.

Yet, while Jose and his friends are dying or going to jail downtown, Lakewood Ranch is getting the new $61 million Manatee Technical Institute for their sons and daughters, who live in relative luxury far from the communnities like West Samoset where low-income people like Jose live.

And these low-income people desperately need vocational training, and the opportunities it brings, while Lakewood Ranch parents hope their kids will get into a good college. In state tests this year, their school was rated "A" and Braden River High was rated "B," while over on 34th St. West, Bayshore High, like Palmetto High and Manatee High, was rated "D."

Downtown kids want to go to college, too, but often - way too often - they don't. At the NAACP Freedom Day Dinner last year, Superintendent Roger Dearing told us that only 10 percent of black seniors read at grade level; it's a shameful story of neglect that deprives black communities of a future.

But instead of tearing down the small, aging buildings on the present MTI campus on 34th Street West (whose neighbors welcome it, by the way - and my wife and daughter went there) and rebuilding the campus with new four-story buildings better equipped for training well-paid craftsmen and tradespeople, the school board and county commission are quietly conspiring to take this one precious resource away from poorer neighborhoods and into the bosom of wealthy Lakewood Ranch, where would-be neighbors are fighting against it tooth and nail.

The irony is that by bringing it there, the parents of Lakewood Ranch inadvertently have commissioned a portrait of their own childrens' future, because that's where many of them may end up when it turns out Florida's curriculum was insufficient to prepare them for the academic rigors of a good college.

And if the newspapers can't find more inspiration in the life a 25-year-old tire changer who worked hard and did a good job at a tire shop on 3rd Street, maybe their hearts are hardened to the poor. As for me, I know who Jose Rodriguez is - or someone just like him. I wish he could have gotten into MTI, learned auto repair, married his girlfriend, had children and moved to a better neighborhood.

I'll bet you that he did, too.

Chaos Reigns In SWAT Shootings; Probe Of Deputies Now An "Organized Crime" Investigation

(Updated at 3:13 p.m. EST)
Chaos is king of the morning papers, as the Bradenton Herald leads with a report on the confusion at the scene of a deputy-involved shooting during a drug raid in Bradenton, and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune puts that story on page 3 of its Sarasota section but front-pages the metro with news that an organized crime investigation that has linked two deputies from Manatee County and two from Sarasota County with a Palmetto strip club is expanding in Manatee.

The Herald doesn't have that story, but it now has the latest shooting story on its Website. It has also added links to arrest reports and an appellate court decision on an illegal charge prosecuted in a 1996 case against the lead suspect in Wednesday's raid and shootings.

First, the "chaotic" raid Wednesday that left a deputy and an unarmed suspect wounded in a daylight drug raid:
The Herald reported Wednesday morning that there were four suspects, all armed, when deputies with search warrants raided the home at 4608B 27th St. West, but today reporter Sylvia Lim says that there were only three suspects there, and that one of those "armed" suspects, who was shot by unidentified Manatee SWAT team deputies, was in fact unarmed.

It also says that the shooter was not the man they first reported but another, and quotes Sheriff Charlie Wells as saying an "armed and dangerous" seventh suspect escaped. On Wednesday, the suspect count veered from four to five to six, so the seventh is a newbie.

Wednesday morning the paper said:

According to Manatee County Sheriff's Office spokesman Dave Bristow, officers were executing a search warrant at a home. They found four people inside, all of them apparently armed. When officers entered the residence, two suspects dropped their weapons, a third began shooting and a fourth escaped during return shooting.

Today the paper reveals that it wasn't Arnell Elrod who shot the SWAT team leader, Lt. Todd Shear, but convicted shooter Tyrone Cooper, who popped two women in a drug dispute in 1990 and served nine years until Manatee County Circuit Court Judge Janette Dunnigan, who is unnamed in the Herald, was told to turn him loose in 2000.

The paper has also produced the name of a sixth suspect in the case, 18-year-old named Travis McCants - and we guess he can'ts. They also say deputies are seeking a seventh man, whose name they say they "may have" but didn't reveal.

Now it appears only three men were in the apartment and only one was armed, although police say they found a substantial cache of weapons - three shotguns, a rifle and four handguns - along with cocaine and $18,000 in cash. The armed man was apparently concealed in another room when SWAT deputies entered the home and got off one or more shots at Shear as two other deputies returned fire, presumably hitting Elrod in the leg.

Ironically, police can't get at some key evidence - doctors haven't been able to remove the bullet from Elrod's femur.

With this latest account, it at least seems possible that Elrod was shot by Cooper. Deputies say not. We say no one can faithfully keep track of bullets in a gunbattle and that until you have a uniquely rifled bullet in hand, you can't stay with certainty who shot who unless only one person was armed.

The other suspects were seized outside the building, deputies say, because in a planning error, they failed to approach the home at a time and in a way that wouldn't tip off a group of street dealers to their arrival, and didn't get to the back door of the home in time to prevent escapes. It's left to readers' imaginations how police knew how many escaped before they arrived, and how they miscounted the original number of people in the home.

In a colorful note, the Herald says bystanders scattered as police arrived, yelling "5-0, 5-0" their street slang for the fuzz.

From an evidentiary standpoint, we'd guess police will have some difficulty tieing the majority of the seven suspects to the cash, cocaine and weapons in the house, but the paper says the bust capped a three-month investigation by locals and the FDLE drug enforcement team.

The Herald-Tribune, meanwhile, provides additional detail on the actual shooting, quoting Wells saying that Elrod was shot because a deputy thought a gun near Elrod had been fired at him, and that what was actually Cooper's bullet hit Shear's gun and ricocheted, producing a "flesh wound" on his neck.

The Herald originally reported that in addition to the neck wound Shear was hit in the "upper torso," but today says he was hit in the hand, and we think it was probably as a bullet struck his gun.

Police seem to be saying that the bullet that him in the hand was apparently the same one that hit him in the neck, but aren't doing so for publication. Neither paper raises or answers that question.

And on to the "organized crime" probe:
There's not much new detail on the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's expansion of the bust of two Manatee County deputies who bought "stolen" liquor in a sting aimed at them by Wells. The two men, who are cousins, were working as bouncers in a strip club against departmental policy.

Local police, sheriff's deputies and even Florida Highway Patrol officers can take their cars and uniforms and work at local movie theaters and the like, so long as the places don't have liquor permits. It is not clear that local governments and the state are reimbursed for the use of the cars, uniforms and weapons that their taxpayers purchase, which if not would seem to be a gift of public funds that are converted for personal gain.

Police here are mostly non-union and vastly underpaid - few could qualify as new home buyers - so authorities apparently allow the extracurricular work to augment their meager salaries.

That can puzzle some bystanders, whop might - as we did recently - see 8 or 10 officers from three jurisdictions laughing it up beside their cars in front of the Carmike Theater in Bradenton.

The two men worked along with at least two Sarasota deputies at a strip club in Palmetto which has cooperated with the investigation.

It is unclear when it became an "organized crime" investigation, or whether the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's report that more Manatee deputies are being questioned is due to their working at that club or other ones. There's not much detail beyond the original story in the Trib report, and no coverage at all in the Herald.

Lightning Stills The Hot Air at WWPR AM1490

Bradenton's only radio station - and a hotbed of political intrigues - is off the air this morning, the victim of a lightning strike, owners say.

"We got hit by a lightning strike. We're working on it," said WWPR-AM 1490 minority partner and station director Ed Edwards.

The station is also home to a lot of black and Spanish preachers who may have suggested that God strike it dead. We have no source for that, though.

The station is host to competing political talk shows on weekday mornings, with showman Henry Raines of Bradenton's left-leaning "American AM" from 7 to 9 a.m. Mon.-Fri. competing with Matt Bruce's right-leaning "Captain America" from 9 to 10 a.m. Mon.-Fri., and the latter fighting Manatee Democratic Executive Committee vice chair Mitch Mallett's Democrat-oriented "It's Your Gavel" from 10 to 11 a.m. Wed.-Fri.

Bruce's "Captain America" recently bought the 9 a.m. slot from the station when Mallett's hour, which had been running five days a week at 9, fell behind on payments.

Bruce, according to station insiders, turned up with a check for $3,600 and demanded Mallett's time slot and got it, moving Mallett back an hour and cutting him to three days.

But the question arose of where Bruce suddenly acquired the $3,600 for the time, and insiders said he boasted it came from Congressional candidate Vern Buchanan.

Both Buchanan and Bruce denied that to Herald reporters who looked into it, but the Sarasota Herlad-Tribune subsequently reported a similar issue over sponsorship disclaimers arising over attack ads aimed at Buchanan at another station where a rival car dealer was paying for attack ads.

At WWPR, the issue is also over hidden sponsorship of an entire show, and the Federal Communications Commission has been asked by yours truly to look into the matter.

Verizon Goes South, And So Does Herald Copy

A headline writer at the Herald got lines crossed when crafting a hed for a story on the Verizon outages in southern Sarasota County Thursday. Not only did he fail to cap Manatee, but he confused the two counties, too:

Major telephone outage reported in southern manatee

HERALD STAFF REPORT

SARASOTA - Verizon is reporting major telephone line interruptions in the South Sarasota County area. Residents of North Port, Venice, and unincorporated areas of South Sarasota County may also experience interruptions, according to Sarasota County officials.

In the event of an emergency, residents affected by the interruption who do not have landline telephone service, are advised to call 911 via a cell phone or call 316-1201.

Sheriff Admits Bad Police Work In SWAT Deputy Shooting

The Sheriff's Dept. has now admitted that much of the confusion surrounding the drug bust that led to the shooting of a SWAT deputy was due to poor police work after the SWAT team left the back door of a duplex they were raiding unguarded.

The escape of two suspects became confounded with a bizarre shooting episode in the Village of the Arts, and a questions about how many suspects were actially ibvolved.

Deputies originally told the press there were four armed suspects and that one escaped, but two more were eventually captured outside the building.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune has the story, but as of 1 a.m. Friday morning, the Bradenton Herald does not:

July 27. 2006 3:44PM

Authorities admit mistakes in bust

By ANTHONY CORMIER
anthony.cormier@heraldtribune.com

PALMETTO -- A SWAT team did not cover the back door of a suspected crack house on Wednesday morning, allowing a drug suspect to escape during a raid that left a deputy and an additional suspect wounded, authorities acknowledged at an afternoon news conference.

The shootout left Lt. Todd Shear, 34, with injuries to his hand and neck after a bullet ricocheted off his weapon inside a back bedroom at the duplex on 27th Street West, Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells said.

Wells said the failure to cover the back door in time allowed an armed man to escape. The man, whose identity has not been released, was still on the lam Thursday afternoon.

Shear was released from Manatee Memorial Hospital Thursday morning while 22-year-old Arnell Elrod remained hospitalized with a bullet wound to his leg. Six people have been charged in the raid, including Tulani Cooper, 25, who is accused of shooting Shear.

How Many Suspects? Shooting of Sheriff's SWAT Deputy Leaves Press Perplexed; 'Sixth Suspect' Arrested; 4 Deputies Mired In Strip Club Case

UPDATE

SUSPECT ARRESTED IN 10th STREET WEST SHOOTING

Here is the latest news on a man who may be be a sixth suspect still at large in the shooting Wednesday morning of a Sheriff's Dept. SWAT officer on 27th St W (click link for map). The sixth suspect in the case was thought to be holed up in a home in the popular Village of the Arts (click link for map) near downtown Bradenton that a Bradenton Police Dept. SWAT team raided shortly before 5pm, only to find it empty.(7:04pm EST).


The Bradenton Herald, which earlier referred to the man they sought as a "sixth suspect," turned out to be someone unrelated to the earlier crime, although it did not say so:

Police arrest suspect in Village of the Arts shooting

SYLVIA LIM
Herald Staff Writer

BRADENTON - Police arrested a 19-year-old man this evening, accusing him of firing shots at a passing vehicle outside a home in the Village of the Arts.

Benjamin Gillyard was charged with attempted murder after a woman said she saw him fire eight shots at her vehicle while she drove by, according to a Bradenton Police news release.

Initially, police feared that he might have been hiding in the home in the 1400 block of 10th Street East, a place police said he frequented, the release stated.

Police, including a SWAT team, staked out the house for more than three hours, until they received a warrant to raid it. No one was in the house when the SWAT team stormed it a little after 4 p.m. etectives later found Gillyard in the Oneco area at about 6:15 p.m., the release said.

They also found a semi-automatic handgun and crack cocaine in the house, according to the release.

This was not the first time police had seized firearms and drugs from the home.

On June 15, officers raided the home and recovered crack cocaine and three guns.

Local media earlier reported that there were four suspects and that the fourth had escaped and was being sought; later, NewsManatee was reported that the fourth suspect was the brother of one of the original four and had been captured outside the house. Then, the Bradenton Herald reported that there was a fifth suspect, Anthony Warrick, who also was captured outside the house, apparently without a gun, after Sheriff Charlie Wells described him as "armed and extremely dangerous."

At that point, it appeared that there was a sixth suspect, too, after a man fired shots at a car in the Village of the Arts in central Bradenton and authorities thought the shooter might be linked to the first shooting.

But as late 11:39pm Wednesday night, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's Website was still reporting in a story written shortly after noon that an "armed and extremely dangerous" suspect was still on the loose. By then, the Herald had reported that an apparently unarmed fifth suspect, Anthony Warrick, had been arrested outside the house.

Here is the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's early, confusing account:

July 26. 2006 12:31PM
Deputies search for shooting suspect

By ANTHONY CORMIER
anthony.cormier@heraldtribune.com

BRADENTON -- The Manatee County SWAT member shot twice today while serving a search warrant at suspected crack house has been identified as Lt. Todd Shear.

Shear was shot once in the hand and once in the torso this morning as he searched a duplex in the 4600 block of 27th Street West. The injuries are not life-threatening, Sheriff Charlie Wells said.

Sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow described Shear as a “veteran deputy who is very, very well liked.”

Four men were arrested in the home, including Arnell Elrod, 22, who was shot by deputies returning fire. Elrod was shot once in the leg and is expected to survive.

Also arrested were Tylani Cooper, 25, and brothers Trinidad Hamilton, 24, and Maurice Hamilton, 26. Authorities say Maurice Hamilton was standing outside the duplex when police arrived.

Police are searching for a fifth suspect, who fled the duplex. He is described as a black man who is about 6-feet 1 inches tall and weighs about 165 pounds. He was last seen wearing baggy blue jeans worn low, exposing his white underwear.

Wells said the man is armed and extremely dangerous.

Here is the earlier Herald story:

Five people arrested in officer shooting, manhunt underway for sixth suspect.

FARA MONROE
Herald Staff Writer

MANATEE - Officials identified the Manatee County Sheriff's Office SWAT officer wounded this morning in a shooting at a duplex on 27th Street West. A total of five people have been arrested, with a manhunt continuing for a sixth suspect.

The officer is Lt. Todd Shear, who suffered injuries to the hand and upper torso, near the neck. He was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital. Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells was at the hospital with him.

The man who allegedly shot Shear also was injured in the incident. Authorities identified him as Arnell Elrod, who suffered a gun shot wound to the leg and was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital.

The incident took place about 10 .m. in the 4600 block of 27th Street West about mid-morning.

According to Manatee County Sheriff's Office spokesman Dave Bristow, officers were executing a search warrant at a home. They found four people inside, all of them apparently armed. When officers entered the residence, two suspects dropped their weapons, a third began shooting and a fourth escaped during return shooting.

Arrested in the home were Elrod, Tylani Cooper and Trinidad Hamilton. Two other people, Maurice Hamilton and Anthony Warrick, were arrested outside the residence.

At noon authorities continued to search for the suspect who escaped; he was not identified.

But the Sarasota Herald-Tribune perpetuated the confusion, too, saying on its Website as late as 11:30pm that police still sought a fifth suspect:

July 26, 2006 12:31PM

Deputies search for shooting suspect

By ANTHONY CORMIER
anthony.cormier@heraldtribune.com


BRADENTON -- The Manatee County SWAT member shot twice today while serving a search warrant at suspected crack house has been identified as Lt. Todd Shear.

Shear was shot once in the hand and once in the torso this morning as he searched a duplex in the 4600 block of 27th Street West. The injuries are not life-threatening, Sheriff Charlie Wells said.

Sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow described Shear as a “veteran deputy who is very, very well liked.”

Four men were arrested in the home, including Arnell Elrod, 22, who was shot by deputies returning fire. Elrod was shot once in the leg and is expected to survive.

Also arrested were Tylani Cooper, 25, and brothers Trinidad Hamilton, 24, and Maurice Hamilton, 26. Authorities say Maurice Hamilton was standing outside the duplex when police arrived.

Police are searching for a fifth suspect, who fled the duplex. He is described as a black man who is about 6-feet 1 inches tall and weighs about 165 pounds. He was last seen wearing baggy blue jeans worn low, exposing his white underwear.

Wells said the man is armed and extremely dangerous.

The downtown suspect, Gillyard, was said to have fired at least nine shots at a woman in a passing car, who was not injured in the fusillade. Again, SWAT officers have apparently not determined with certainty that there is a connection between the two shootings.

After evacuating nearby residents, SWAT officers ultimately fired tear gas into the home in the Village of the Arts and entered to search, but the suspect, if he was ever there, was gone.

This earlier story from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is now dated:

July 26, 2006 3:14P
Suspect holed up in house

STAFF REPORT

BRADENTON -- The police department's SWAT team is evacuating homes in the 1400 block of 10th Street West in preparation to storm a house where they believe a man is holed up.

Police say they received reports of a man firing five or six shots at a passing car before retreating back into the house.

About a dozen SWAT members, carrying high-powered rifles, have surrounded the home.

The home, at 1404 10th St. West, is owned by Omar and Leticia Aratia, according to county records. It's not known whether either of them lives in the home, or is there now.

Here is our updated first report, filed at 11:49am this morning:

A Manatee County SWAT team officer met four armed men holed up in a duplex when deputies entered an apartment 4608B 27th Street West in Bradenton late Tuesday morning to serve a search warrant.

In the gunfire that followed one suspect was shot and the officer, identified as Lt. Todd Shear, was wounded in the hand and "near the neck," a sheriff's spokesman said, but his injuries were not life-threatening.

The shooting came as four sheriff's deputies, two each in Manatee and Sarasota County, face criminal charges in thefts and misconduct complaints that made headlines hours before the shooting.

In the first shooting, it remains unclear why deputies entered an apartment where so many armed suspects were waiting for them. Two of the suspects dropped their guns and a fourth, Maurice Hamilton, 26, escaped but was later captured. The Bradenton Herald obtained the name of a fifth suspect, Anthony Warrick, who like the elder Hamilton was also captured outside the house. Police are still searching for a sixth suspect.

Taken into custody were the suspected shooter, Arnell Elrod,, 22, and alleged accomplices Tylani Cooper, 25, and Trinidad Hamilton, 24, the brother of Maurice. The fourth suspect was not named in earlier stories, but the NewsManatee Website identified him as Hamilton's brother Maurice, 26.

The fifth suspect was named by the Herald later as Anthony Warrick, with no age given.
Lt. Shear is in good condition at Manatee Memorial Hospital and expected to make a full recovery.

Here is the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's report on the charges and resignations in the case of four deputies linked to liquor thefts and other misconduct at a strip club in Palmetto where they worked while off duty:

Manatee County sheriff's Deputy Charles E. Elsenheimer, 34, was charged with 13 counts of dealing in stolen property for reportedly buying caseloads of liquor that he thought was stolen. His cousin and fellow deputy, Gary P. Harrison, 23, was charged with two counts.

Authorities say both men worked off-duty at Cleopatra's strip club, a windowless bar along a fast stretch of U.S. 41 on the northern edge of Palmetto.

Elsenheimer also reportedly leaked confidential law-enforcement information to an undercover detective who posed as a patron of the club.

Harrison and Elsenheimer resigned Tuesday after interviews with internal affairs investigators.

In Sarasota, sheriff's Deputies Alfred B. Ainscoe and Edward P. Falcone also resigned amid allegations connected to the criminal case in Manatee. Neither was immediately charged with a crime, however. It is unknown whether Ainscoe and Falcone also worked at Cleopatra's.

The sheriffs of both counties remained tight-lipped Tuesday, and neither would comment on the ongoing FBI probe.

Here is the Bradenton Herald's first story, from its Website:

Wounded officer, suspects identified

FARA MONROE
Herald Staff Writer

MANATEE - Officials identified the Manatee County Sheriff's Office SWAT officer wounded this morning in a shooting at a duplex on 27th Street West.

The officer is Lt. Todd Shear, who suffered injuries to the hand and upper torso, near the neck. He was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital. Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells was at the hospital with him.

The man who allegedly shot Shear also was injured in the incident. Authorities identified him as Arnell Elrod, who suffered a gun shot wound to the leg and was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital.

The incident took place in the 4600 block of 27th Street West about mid-morning.

According to Manatee County Sheriff's Office spokesman Dave Bristow, officers were executing a search warrant at a home. They found four people inside, all of them apparently armed. When officers entered the residence, two suspects dropped their weapons, a third began shooting and a fourth escaped during return shooting.

Arrested in the home were Elrod, Tylani Cooper and Trinidad Hamilton. Another person, Maurice Hamilton, was arrested outside the residence.

At noon authorities continued to search for the suspect who escaped; he was not identified.

Elections Over, County Commission Agrees To Pay for Roadwork Developers Need

With the Manatee County Commission election for all intents and purposes already at an end - only one little-known Democratic challenger remains on the November 7 ballot - commissioners have resumed their obeisance to the demands of developers who back them for office.

The County Commission agreed Tuesday to pay $25 million to widen State Road 64 (the eastward extension of Manatee Ave. East) from Lena Rd. close to I-75 to Lakewood Ranch Blvd. so that three proposed developments - which were put on hold when it appeared there might be serious challengers - can now proceed at taxpayer expense.

Just a month ago, posing for posterity, County Commission Chairman Joe McClash had demanded that developers pay for the widening, which the state said it could not afford until 2009-2010. McClash then dramatically put three developments proposed for the area on indefinite hold until a way could be found for developers or someone other than taxpayers to pay for them, at least while elections were pending.

Several developers came forward and offered to pay a share of the cost, but McClash apparently directed county planners to reject those offers as he learned that there will be no challenger for Commissioner Ron Getman's District 4 seat. Getman was considered the weakest Republican officeholder in the county.

Now, with Getman safe, McClash is content to let taxpayers pay the $25 million cost, as a local developer had recently asked in a Bradenton Herald OpEd titled "Sharing the Road-Building Burden."

The developer said a $300 raise in property taxes or a one-cent sales tax hike could pay the cost, which some developers say is grossly exaggerated and should actually be no more than $7 million.

The Schroeder-Manatee Ranch Corp., which developed Lakewood Ranch, has a $4 billion bonding authority, but using it to pay for the widening was apparently something company officials were not willing to do.

Shea Withdraws from County Race

I won't be a candidate for County Commission District 4 as hoped. I spoke with the Herald's fine county reporter, Nuick Azzara, about my decision a few days ago. My campaign Website, ElectJoeShea.com, also carried this note and linked to the the Herald's story:

Shea Withdraws From County Race - Page C1, Bradenton Herald, 07/22/06

The Herald reports today that Joe has withdrawn from the race against Ron Getman for the Manatee County Commission District 4 seat.

In a statement, Joe said he felt the party was not ready to fight an expensive campaign for the seat.

Joe congratulated Ron Getman on his victory, and encouraged voters to support County Commission At-Large candidate Sarah Meaker in her race.

Joe expressed an interest in possibly running for office in 2008.

Here is the relevant part of the Herald story:

Slate for election finalized
One candidate leaves race, all others qualify
NICHOLAS AZZARA
Herald Staff Writer
MANATEE - All but one previously announced candidate for the Manatee County Commission qualified by Friday's noon deadline for this fall's elections.

Joe Shea, a Democrat who in June had declared his candidacy for the District 4 seat held by Republican incumbent Ron Getman, withdrew his name from the mix. Shea said he decided not to run Friday morning after realistically assessing his chance of winning.

"I wish I could have run. There are a lot of important issues to talk about in this county, and I would like to have talked about them in public forums," Shea said.

He listed several reasons for withdrawing, and said the Manatee County Democratic Party "was not ready to commit all it needed to win local races." He said the party is rebuilding and will be ready to run more aggressively in 2008.

Shea said local Democrats are not "fully prepared to take on an intense and hard-fought and expensive campaign for county commission."

Shea voiced support for Sarah Meaker, the lone Democrat running for county commission. Meaker is running for the District 6, countywide seat and in November will face the winner of the Sept. 5 Republican primary contest between Frank Brunner, Stella Burnett, Dr. Craig Trigueiro and Carol Whitmore.

The general election is Nov. 7.

When he declared his candidacy in June, Shea said he would work to repeal Manatee's recently approved 5-cent gasoline tax increase and to preserve Manatee lands from spreading development.

Shea said he might consider running for a seat in 2008 if the circumstances are right.

The candidates could qualify two ways. He or she could have collected enough signatures to equal 1 percent of the total number of registered voters in the last general election for the district, or the potential candidate could have paid a qualifying fee of 6 percent of a commissioner's annual salary. Commissioners make $70,853, so the qualifying fee this year was $4,251.

Nicholas Azzara, county government reporter, can be reached at nazzara@HeraldToday.com and 745-7081.

A Letter to the Herald

The Bradenton Herald has some unusual ideas about news coverage. For instance, it will cover the entrance and exits of local candidates but won't cover their campaigns. In an effort to fill in some of the gaps, I have created Manatee County On The Move to talk about issues the Herald finds too thorny to discuss.

For starters, I want to share this letter I just wrote to the paper about how taxpayers are assuming the cost of 93 Sherif's Dept. personnel without a peep from the paper, and justified it for a while by creating a "crime box" that had little correspondence with reality.

Here's my letter. I hope they will publish it and let the issue end here. Otherwise, I feel I will have to assemble a group of plaintiffs for a class action lawsuit against the paper and the Sheriff's office for uncritically publishing this spurious information and damaging a stable middle-class community that it has tainted with the shadow of violent crime.

I found your coverage of the Manatee County budget adoption - and in particular the Sheriff's $10 million budget increase - woefully lacking in
information that should be known by every taxpayer.

Due to an error made by the Sheriff, taxpayers are being asked to absorb the equivalent of 93 new personnel.

To recap briefly, the Sheriff ignored a $500,000 consultant study that recommended Manatee county build a jail that would meets its own needs and sustain the county's lucrative 1996 contract with federal immigration authorities to hold 350 ICE prisoners. The Sheriff opted not to follow the consultant's recommendations, and instead built a jail that he was publicly warned would cost Manatee County the immigration contract revenue it has enjoyed for 10 years. When Manatee County lost the contract, 93 Sheriff's employees became redundant. Instead of biting the bullet, admitting his error and letting those people go, aided by the Herald's silence he managed to get a $10 million budget increase needed to cover the value of the $7,750.000 lost contract. That decision was abetted by the vote of District 4 Commissioner Ron Getman, a former FHP supervisor sponsored for County Commission by Sheriff Charlie Wells.

Instead, you ingenuously reported on July 13, "Wells said the 12 percent increase in next year's budget over this year's is not a result of upped efforts inside a "crime box" in the central part of the county. ... In April, Wells outlined a 9-square-mile box in the heart of Manatee County where one-third of the county's violent crime occurs. At that time, he said some of this year's funding would be shifted to tackle the crime box."

The crime box has caused values to drop in neighborhoods that were included without any evidence of crime problems, such as Bayshore Gardens, where dozens of homes have gone on sale since his spurious "crime box" was published in ther Herald as a cheap but clever ploy to justify so much extra funding to cover his error in not following his consultant's recommendation - and where no significant crime rate has ever occurred. In turn, his selfish strategy has cost homeowners valuable equity, tarred the image of a stable, middle-class neighborhood in Ron Getman's district, and put the stability of tha entire Bayshore Gardens corridor at risk.

The Sheriff's duplicity is obvious only to a few. It should not be too much to ask of the Herald that it tell the clear truth to all. When can taxpayers expect full coverage of this issue from you?

Joe Shea
Bradenton
(941)753-1136