We hope you didn't miss the O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel Monday evening. Millions of viewers across the country saw host Bill O'Reilly skewer Key West Police Chief Buz Dillon on national television.
Shortly after Dillon had me arrested on June 22 for exposing corruption and incompetence in his department, the story hit the national wire services. O'Reilly spotted the report and told his producer to track me down.
O'Reilly had hoped to have Chief Dillon on the show, too, to represent the "other side." But, O'Reilly told his audience, "we can't get him to pick up the phone." What? Big bad Buz Dillon afraid to talk to the media?
Before those bogus charges against me were thrown out by State Attorney Mark Kohl, Dillon was all over the place, on the radio and in print, telling everybody who would listen that "it was a good arrest" and "if he does it again, I'll arrest him again." When the Miami Herald reported that the law he used to make the arrest had been declared unconstitutional, he continued to publicly argue that the law is, somehow, constitutional.
Of course, Bumbling Buz hadn't bothered to check with either Kohl or with City Attorney Bob Tischenkel before going after the warrant. Our sources tell us that neither attorney would have advised Dillon to go forward with the arrest. One or the other attorney might have even read the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution out loud to Buz, carefully explaining the complicated part: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press."
Before the charges were dropped, Buz agreed to talk with Howard Kurtz, who apparently introduced himself to Dillon on the phone as the media critic for the Washington Post. Dillon, who probably didn't have a clue about what a media critic does, was quoted by Kurtz as saying, "I can't be intimidated by a critic into not doing my job." Maybe that's why Buz' handlers have now told him to sit down and shut up.
Dillon told the Miami Herald, "I called him (Cooper) up when the warrant was filed and asked him to turn himself in. It was just a courtesy." That's not true. Dillon lied to the press— and that lie hit the national wire services.
And he lied to the judge who signed the warrant. When Judge Miller came to see us a few days after the arrest to try to convince us that he was just "doing his job," he said, "I told Chief Dillon that I wanted him to call you and tell you about the warrant. I'm going to be very unhappy if I learn that he didn't do that."
We told the judge that Dillon not only didn't call us, he sent out a press release! And he didn't even send us a copy!
Does that mean that Judge Miller is unhappy with Dillon? Well, he did tell me that, if Dillon came to him again with another warrant for my arrest, he wouldn't sign it. Duh! He shouldn't have signed the first one!
Judge Miller could have scheduled a hearing to try to determine if Chief Dillon really had some "probable cause." At such a hearing, we would have argued that Dillon had falsified his affidavit requesting the warrant— a criminal offense. Following such a hearing, it might have been Dillon in the handcuffs. Perjury in an official proceeding is against the law!
We also think that Dillon lied to his boss, City Manager Julio Avael, telling him that my arrest was not really an arrest at all. He apparently told Avael and others that I wasn't even handcuffed. And Avael repeated that lie in an interview with the Key West Citizen, claiming that a St. Petersburg Times editorial writer was wrong when he wrote that I had been handcuffed.
(The Times, incidentally, called for Dillon's badge.)
Ironically, what this whole flap is about is our series of stories about cops allegedly lying. Do you think that we might be on to comething?
For the record: I first heard about the arrest warrant when a friend told me that he had heard it on the radio. We made a few phone calls to find out what it was all about, then I turned myself in at the police station and was transported to the jail on Stock Island.
I was handcuffed, fingerprinted and spent three hours in a holding cell while the jail staff "processed the paperwork".
Let's say that another way. I was falsely arrested and deprived of my liberty— the most cherished concept in our nation's Constitution. And the only reason that happened is because I publicly criticized the Police Chief and his department. That arrest was wrongful because the obscure Florida law Chief Dillon used to request his warrant had been declared unconstitutional a decade ago. He knew or should have known that!
Dillon now wants to plead ignorance of the law. "I may have had an old book," he said. "I thought I had `probable cause.'"
But let's suppose you're driving your car and turn right on red— and a cop stops you and tells you that he's going to issue you a ticket because, at that intersection, you can't turn right on red after 5 p.m.
You say, "I didn't know that, officer." And, as he's writing the ticket, he says, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."
Apparently, Bumbling Buz was ignorant of the law. Or at least that's what he says. Let's see if he can get away with using that as an excuse.