EDITOR'S NOTE: Following Fantasy Fest at the end of October, the Key West Police Dept. was criticized for arresting, handcuffing and jailing women who playfully flashed their breasts for beads. Many received no warning before being arrested. Yet, two weeks ago, an officer reportedly told a couple having oral sex in a car in broad daylight to simply "move along."
No-warning arrests are also being made on the beaches here at night.
It's 4 a.m. Sunday morning. You are alone, diabetic and subject to seizures, and are 13,000 miles from home. You've just had Northwest Airlines lose your luggage somewhere between Houston and Tampa. In Tampa you were mugged, your money, credit cards and identification stolen.
All you have is a Xerox copy of your driver's license, your insulin, your carry-on overnight bag and the clothes on your back. Things couldn't possibly get any worse, you think.
With the last of your money you bought a ticket to the legendary "laid back" Key West You don't know anyone there, but it sounded like a good place to relax and regroup for a couple of days while friends send you money and identity papers from Guam, where the weekend had begun.
You arrived in Key West by bus. It is a few hours before dawn. Where to plan your next move? The beach, of course. In Guam and the Pacific Islands, the beaches are the property of the people, a haven at any hour of the day or night.
Not so in Key West! Here you can, and will, be arrested for minding your own business on the sand after 11 p.m. and before 6 a.m. No warning required. Except on a few small signs which say, "Higgs Beach. Open 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. No trespassing. Strictly enforced."
Bill Ritzmand, 33, an Army brat, grew up on Guam and has lived there almost all his adult life. He had no idea what was happening when Key West Police officer Kenneth Stinson tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Let's go. The beach is closed." And then, as Ritzmand obediently accompanied the officer, the stunner: "By the way, you're under arrest."
NOTE: Stinson is the same officer who allegedly committed purjury when he testified in a 1997 drunk-driving case that he saw Civil Service Board member Gene Peary get out of the drivers side of a vehicle before the arrest. Peary said he had been a passenger, not the driver. The trial ended with a hung jury, but Judge Susan Vernon ordered a new trial. At the second trial, Stinson changed his testimony, admitting that he had never seen Peary exit the driver's side of the vehicle. Peary was acquitted.
As Ritzmand was about to be transported, with others, to County Jail, he says he heard another officer tell Stinson: "That's it. I've got my quota."
It would be another five hours before Ritzmand, case number MOK 0033-93, would be read his Miranda rights— by a judge on a television set, in the Monroe County Jail.
Ritzmand was clean and sober. He doesn't do drugs, he says. He says he wasn't drinking or sleeping or panhandling. He wasn't combative with the officer. He has never been arrested.
"Never even had a traffic ticket. Suddenly I'm going to have an arrest record," he said.
The audio was terrible when he appeared before the Judge Luis Garcia, via TV, in the morning. "I could only hear about half of what he said. He asked if we could hear him. He kept breaking up."
Ritzmand was charged with a violation of City Ordinance 54.09, "Beach after hours," i.e. trespass. On public property! He asked the judge if he might ask a question. The judge said okay. He asked if it was right that people be arrested without warning for sitting on a beach where it was not posted that they could be arrested for being there after hours.
"The judge asked me if I would rather have two days in jail, instead of time served. I said No, Sir, and I shut up."
NOTE: Garcia is a brand new judge, just appointed by the governor. Has he already developed an I-am-God attitude?"
Ritzmand pled No Contest at his first appearance. He believed that it meant "I decline to challenge the charges in court. Nonetheless I am reluctant to admit guilt, since I committed this `crime' without prior knowledge I was breakin"Adjudicated, time served." Ritzmand thought he was free to go, with only a $10 booking fee left to pay, and then he could flee Key West and the nightmare of it all. Not so!
According to MCSO's Becky Herrin, "He is scheduled for arraignment January 9th. He should contact the Clerk of the Courts office or the Court Administrators office with questions. If he doesn't settle it, and doesn't appear in court, a warrant will most likely be issued for his arrest for Failure to Appear.A vacation in Key West can be truly the gift that keeps on giving!
Needless to say, Ritzmand didn't want to stay one day more in Key West. What next would strike, a plague of locusts? A falling safe? A scourge of emerods? He borrowed money and joked he was going to take the "Greyhound to Guam." Or at least to Miami, where a return ticket hopefully awaited him.
Al Brenner, a snowbird resident of the Keys who was arrested for meditating on Rest Beach with a friend, mail carrier Paul Steinman, last year, says the implications for the tourist are these: they must return in a month for arraignment, then return again for as much as a week, to put in their final appearance on one of two alternate dates set a week apart. Brenner asserted his presence on the beach was entirely legal. The charges against Brenner were ultimately dropped.
A familiar name recurs in all these trespassing arrests: that of Lt. Al Flowers, who appears together with Sgt. Garfield Williams as a "witness against the defendant" in the Ritzmand case. Ritzmand was unable to say whether Flowers was actually one of the cops at the scene.
KWPD's spokesperson Cynthia Edwards sympathizes with Ritzmand, so ill-starred and so far from home. But she points out that the police don't make City policy, they simply enforce it.
"Don't shoot the messenger. We're damned if we arrest people on the beach, damned if we don't." Even though Ritzmand is middle-class and was well-dressed, "If you're going to arrest the guy next to him, you've got to arrest him, too. The law has to be the same for everyone."
NOTE: Of course, that explains why the couple caught doing oral sex were not arrested. The woman's painted breasts wern't showing.
This reporter, who was born in Hawaii where the beaches are open 24/7, accompanied Ritzmand to the scene of the "crime" to check out the signage. In Stinson's report, he claims the signs "cite City Ordinance 54.09 as a penalty." We could not find this on the sign we saw.
Also, Ritzmand pointed out that most signs are oriented to be visible to auto traffic, and most people like him arrive on foot, via sidewalk. Nowhere does it say that people will be arrested without any prior verbal warning for being on the public beaches after hours.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Be serious. In many cases, Key West cops seem to arrest people just because they can!
Brenner, the New Hampshire snowbird, is contemplating suing the City for the several thousand dollars's fees incurred by him while defending himself, and for false imprisonment. He is thinking about printing up flyers to warn incoming tourists about the perils of beach-sitting in Key West.
Ritzmand initially thought about bad-mouthing Key West in all parts west of here, but after sympathetic locals took him in and helped him out, he no longer planned to ôactivelyö warn people against coming here. "I just want to go home and I want it to be over," he said.
Maybe it it and maybe it isn't.
"If people don't like the policy, they can get the Commission to change it" says Edwards.
Until then, the saying still goes: "Arrive on Vacation, Leave On Probation."