By Ray Downs
The Palm Beach Sheriff's Office
has been selectively taking names of police officers who get arrested off the
booking blotter, effectively giving busted cops special treatment over regular
folks who get their names, mug shots, and personal information put online for
all to see when they get thrown in jail.
A story published Sunday by the
Palm Beach Post revealed the practice, which PBSO officials have since admitted
to doing. Their excuse is that their computer program doesn't allow them to
scrub officers' home addresses and birth dates, which is not allowed to be
released to the public under state law. And since they can't take off that
information, they decided to just leave police off the record entirely.
The PBSO has done this for all
five officers (that we know of) arrested this year, including the recent arrest
of Boynton Beach officer Stephen Maiorino, who is accused of raping a woman at
gunpoint on the hood of his patrol car.
See also: Boynton Cop Stephen
Maiorino Arrested for Raping Woman at Gunpoint
But as the Post points out, the
PBSO was able to scrub addresses and birth dates of officers before -- like how
they did for Boynton Beach Police Officer Alex Lindsey in 2011 when he was
arrested for falsifying documents.
Interestingly, the PBSO's
booking blotter was offline Monday night and the link instead goes straight the
site's homepage. The PBSO tells the Post it will continue to be offline
"until further notice."
Records of the officer arrests
are still available to the public under Florida's open records law, but for
now, a request to the PBSO must be made to obtain them. But with the booking
blotter currently down, even non-police officers will enjoy the privilege of
not having their mug shot and private information published online for all to
see and use for money-making purposes like charging a fee to take to take the
information off private websites. For now, at least.
Jerry Hyland won't come out of the closet and speak up against police murders of unarmed citizens in Fairfax County