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JUDGE REJECTS NO-TICKET POLICY: Hillsborough Circuit Judge William Levens on Monday declared unconstitutional a Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office policy against ticketing law officers who run red lights or stop signs.
Attorney Matthew Jowanna of Tampa Palms is suing the Sheriff's Office on behalf of his wife, Camille, who claims sheriff's Deputy Preston Hollis ran her car off the road by driving through a red light on Aug. 6, 2002, at Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and Amberly Drive.
Jowanna said his wife smashed into a curb, incurring about $20,000 in medical bills because of neck and back problems. During the lawsuit, he said, he learned the Sheriff's Office had a practice of not issuing tickets to on-duty law officers who ran traffic signs or committed other civil traffic violations.
"The bottom line is, when you treat deputies different from citizens, it's a violation of equal protection," Jowanna said.
Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Rod Reder said deputies involved in crashes must face a crash review board anyway, with possible discipline that includes taking away a deputy's car, so it would be redundant to ticket them.
Reder said the judge has stayed his decision pending the outcome of the Sheriff's Office's planned appeal. "The majority of police agencies in the state have the same policy," Reder said.
OFFICE COMPLEX PLANNED IN LAND O'LAKES: A long-vacant piece of State Road 54 frontage in Land O'Lakes has been sold to developers interested in building an office complex on 11 acres.
Bloomingdale Development LLC this month bought a field sandwiched between SunTrust Bank and Gulf & Lake Academy on the south side of the highway.
The property abuts Osprey Lane and fronts the Village on the Pond subdivision. Co-owner Tom Mathew said Bloomingdale plans to build offices on the parcel in about a year. Doctors are among the prospective tenants.
Mathew and his business partner, Paul John, are Tampa-based silk importers. They bought the land from Mid-Continent Plantation Inc., based in Tampa.
MARCHING TO SAVE FUNDING: Protesters marched Wednesday at a former used car lot that was designated as a protest area near the Tampa office of the Florida Department of Children and Families at 9335 N Florida Ave. Several hundred people were at the protest. It was part of a statewide effort at DCF district offices to call attention to reductions in the rates of reimbursement for adult day training and residential rehabilitation. The Tampa office serves Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties.
Protesters argued the rate reductions are forcing group homes and other programs run by the Association for Retarded Citizens and their affiliates to close or be drastically scaled back.
At his own press conference held simultaneously Wednesday in Tallahassee, DCF Secretary Jerry Regier disputed the assertion that cuts had been made. Regier contended that providers had been increasing their costs at levels much higher than officials expected when they created a standardized payment rate in July.