Tampabay: Playing fast and loose -- and late in court

Playing fast and loose -- and late in court

By MARY JOE MELONE

The city of St. Petersburg and its police chief were going to have to put up or shut up today about Donnie Williams.

Williams was the police sergeant who managed last year to get what nobody else in memory has gotten in the Police Department -- a promotion to lieutenant while he was a suspect in a drug investigation.

Talk about your magic acts.

Chief Goliath Davis III said there was no problem with this, because Williams had been cleared.

Talk about your magic acts indeed.

Davis was talking out of both sides of his mouth.

When this newspaper and the police union asked for the records of the Williams matter, the chief balked. He said the investigation was part of a federal investigation into drug trafficking in St. Petersburg that was still going on.

The paper and the union sued under the Florida Public Records Act in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court.

I had the trial date circled for a long time. It was Sept. 7. Today.

More magic happened.

Last Friday, the city tried to get the case thrown out of court. Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Catherine Harlan, bless her and her black robes, said no. Then the U.S. attorney's office asked to join the suit, on the city's side, because this involved a federal investigation.

Saying they spoke up a little late in the game is like saying you maybe can get roughed up some playing in the NFL. The feds had been sitting in the courtroom for every two-bit proceeding prior to trial.

According to Bill LauBach, the attorney for the police union, Judge Harlan asked if adding the federal government to the suit would delay the trial.

The acoustics in her courtroom must be lousy. Or the federal prosecutor, poor fellow, had a hearing problem. For the prosecutor promised the judge there would be no delay, LauBach said. The judge let the feds join the case.

Labor Day weekend came and went.

Then, just before every lawyer's office closed Tuesday afternoon -- and less than 48 hours before the trial was to start -- federal prosecutors swooped in. They were moving the case unilaterally to U.S. District Court.

The prosecutors want to convince U.S. District Judge Richard Lazzara that turning over the Williams records would blow a big drug investigation. If they succeed, there may never be a public records trial. We'll never know the full story of Donnie Williams and the suspicions about him.

According to Pat Gleason, the general counsel to the state attorney general and a public records expert, the record of past cases in situations like this is pretty much 50-50. Some judges side with the feds. Some don't.

The feds are crazy for secrecy the way Cindy Crawford is crazy for eyeliner. There is so much secrecy already that the lawyer for the city, Robert Eschenfelder, told me Wednesday he was not permitted to identify by name the federal official who told him the case was being moved from state to federal court.

Could it be because this is the same person who told Judge Harlan the state trial would not be delayed?

The U.S. Attorney's Office is not talking. Pending litigation, they harrumph.

No magic here, unless it's the shell game in which you try to make the pea disappear.

The feds want one thing. They want to stop the public records case any way they can, even by the cheap trick of moving the case to federal court at the last minute.

Lawyers for the Times and the PBA are likely to appear before Judge Lazzara and ask that the case go back where it began 10 months ago in Clearwater.

Stay tuned. That little pea has not yet disappeared.