News & Views for Southern Sailors - Southwinds Magazine

LETTERS
the officers who often don’t know the law, but their superiors as
well. If they all did, there wouldn’t be so many cases that require
judges and courts to do the final interpretation of the law. I would
say even the lawmakers in Congress and state legislatures are
equally ignorant, passing laws that fit more their ideology than
their knowledge of what they can and can’t do. Then again, I think
many police do know the law and figure they can get away with
interpreting it their own way and intimidating the public into
behaving as they want them to, by just inspecting them. I call it
punishment without conviction or arrest to deter you from acting
as they see fit. Of course, you shouldn’t have to be a lawyer to
understand the law, but that’s what it seems like.
We also know that, at this point in time, officers on the water,
through court decisions and executive decisions, act as though
they can stop anyone for any reason they want and use inspections
of toilets as their final excuse to legally go down below and look
around inside. I word it this way—very carefully—because I don’t
believe they have that legal right to do so in such an unlimited
manner that many use it. I definitely don’t believe they have the
moral right.
Yes, I agree that subsequent harassment is pretty rare, but if
it happens to you once, it could be enough to ruin you and your
life, throw you in jail, have an arrest against you or even bodily
harm. Harassment by a police officer once is enough, and I would
say that any officer guilty of subsequent harassment should be,
upon conviction, given a stiff jail sentence and barred from any
police work for life. None of this suspension without pay crap as
punishment. That’s for minor offenses like giving your girlfriend
a ride with the sirens on so you can impress her enough to go out
with you.
Editor
The Caribbean islands stretch in an arc almost
2,500 miles long, from Cuba to Trinidad. There are
more than 7,000 islands, cays, atolls and reefs. The
Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos islands, are not part
of the Caribbean and are located in the Atlantic
Ocean.
✳
The right side of a boat is referred to as starboard
because early astro navigators would stand on a
plank (which was on the right side) to get an unobstructed
view of the stars. The left is the port side,
because that’s the side you put in on at port.
MIAMI BEACH POLICE APPROACH BOATER
An Open Letter to Miami Beach Mayor Bower
I know that running for office can be expensive, and that
politicians often seek financing from those with the money to
contribute, but at what price to the politician And just what
is the price to the people represented by that politician
The balance of this letter, Mayor Bower, is intended to
put the onus on you to stop the abuse of rights in Miami
Beach that wealthy political contributors think they have
purchased when they finance a politician’s campaign, not
only in the specific circumstances outlined in my letter.
My sailing students and I had only just anchored at
Sunset Lake in Miami Beach, behind the house on North Bay
Road, when the police boat came up to us. The officers
aboard politely requested that we move the boat a couple of
hundred yards south. They very carefully explained that we
didn’t have to do this, that they had no right by law to make
the request, but that they would appreciate our doing so.
The reason for their request We had anchored in front
of the home of a man with considerable political clout,
apparently purchased with substantial donations to various
politicians, although the police didn’t give specifics. The
man had phoned the police, probably before our anchor had
finished sinking to the bottom. The officers had been
ordered to respond, and did so in less than 10 minutes. I’m
quite certain that there are victims of crime in Miami Beach
who would be astonished by the speed of this response, but
as we were discovering, wealth does have its advantages.
10 July 2011 SOUTHWINDS www.southwindsmagazine.com