City Officials Jump
COPS BLOW OFF BATTERY
ALLEGATIONS— UNTIL THEY FIND
OUT THE WOMAN ALLEGEDLY
BATTERED WAS THE DAUGHTER OF
COUNTY MAYOR DIGENNARO
KWTN Team Report
It was, apparently, just
your average fun Friday night-
Saturday morning at Rick’s Bar
on Duval Street. It was close
to closing time, about 3 in the
morning, when a female patron
allegedly threw a drink into the
face of one of the waitresses and
was escorted out of the bar by
one of the bouncers.
As the alleged drinkthrower
and her friends were
walking across the street to
another bar, one of the managers
at Rick’s approached Key
West Police Sgt. Robert Currul
and asked if the woman could
be arrested. Currul was off
duty that night, but he was in
uniform, working security for
Rick’s.
In his report, Currul said
that he told the manager that,
“in a bar setting, it would be
next to impossible to prove any
sort of battery in regard to the
drink.” Furthermore, he had not
seen the woman commit any
criminal offense and, he added,
“There were no witnesses to the
drink-throwing incident.”
In other words, Sgt. Currul
just blew it off. After all,
it was Friday night at Rick’s,
right?
kwtn-test 
PAGE ONE COMMENTARY
September 5, 2008 — kwtnCooper vs. Dillon: Transcript of Secret Meeting Surfaces
TRANSCRIPT OF CLOSED-DOOR MEETING REVEALS
THAT CITY LAWYER TOLD MAYOR WEEKLEY AND
COMMISSIONERS THAT THE CITY WOULD PROBABLY
NOT PREVAIL. BUT HE ALSO TOLD THEM THEY HAD
THE OPPORTUNITY TO SETTLE CASE FOR AN
APOLOGY AND NOMINAL PAYOUT. INSTEAD THEY
OPTED TO SPEND MORE THAN $400,000 TO FIGHT
THE CASE. AND THEY LOST
by Dennis Reeves Cooper
If you’ve been in Key
West long enough, you may
recall that, back in June of 2001,
then-Police Chief Buz Dillon
had me arrested, handcuffed
and jailed for daring to expose
corruption and incompetence
in his department. I was never
prosecuted, of course, because
State Attorney Mark Kohl said
that the law Dillon used to
make the arrest was unconstitutional—
and, subsequently,
a three-judge panel of federal
judges in Atlanta agreed.
The arrest made headlines
nationally and I was invited to
appear on Bill O’Reilly’s show on the Fox News Channel.
The Florida statute that
Dillon relied on said that
anyone who filed a complaint
against a law enforcement
officer was not allowed to go
public with that complaint until
the investigation had been
completed. Laws like this are
typically called “gag” laws.
Read the rest of this entry »