Rose gets a pass from Ethics Commission for going to second job while on duty at Venice Police

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The Florida Commission on Ethics dismissed a complaint filed by me against Venice Police Lieutenant Mike Rose. I am publishing the entire document (PDF file, 18 pages) along with a 2007 investigation into Rose performed by then-Captain Dave Dunaway (later interim Chief Dunaway and now retired) into an allegation that Rose was knowingly selling stolen Shimano reels through his bait shop, Mahi Mac's.

The main allegation I made against Rose was that he was working at his out-of-town bait shop during his work shifts and that he was using city police vehicles to travel back and forth between his two jobs.

Budway's blotter blather

After slamming the late Herb Levine in the press and then boycotting Levine's funeral, Gary Budway objects to being criticized, says anyone who speaks ill of him is slanderous. Then the brown acid kicks in as Budway inadvertently admits to violating campaign financing laws.

click to embiggen
(artwork by Venice Florida! dot com)

Ex-VTL dictator Gary Budway (he wasn't really president as he never allowed elections), after getting bootf**ked out of the Venice Taxpayers League, spent quite a bit of ugly time and breath insulting the late Herb Levine. Budway even boycotted Levine's funeral, but the Gondolier gave him plenty of ink to issue his venal verbiage in an article by Greg Giles on Budway's fictional reasons for dumping the Venice Taxpayers League when, in reality, quite the opposite had happened.

Gondo's Giles copies Herald-Trib article on police chief applicants... including the mistakes

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Do you know how teachers usually catch students copying another's work? The cheater invariably copies the mistakes.

On the morning of Friday, December 17, the Herald-Tribune's John Davis reported that former Sarasota Sheriff candidate Dave Gustafson had submitted his resume to city hall for the police chief position (LINK). Gustafson had attended the city council meeting last week in an effort to find out the ground rules for submittuing an application. I spoke with Gustafson during the meeting, even introduced him to the Herald-Trib's Kim Hackett, while the Gondo's resident CQG ball-washer Greg Giles stood by, uninterested and unaware.

On Friday afternoon, the day after Davis' article appeared in the H-T, both Alan Bullock and Kathy Smith (of the city's Human Resources Department) stated that they had received no such resume from Gustafson.

In Saturday's Gondo, Giles re-reported the dubious factoid under his own byline with no attribution to the Herald-Trib (LINK). The Gondo went on to report on Saturday that several "unknown" candidates had submitted resumes, not altogether accurate information again taken from the Herald-Tribune by Giles and unattributed, as several had simply sent letters of interest, not resumes.

Officer formally accuses City Manager, interim Police Chief Dunaway of retaliatory actions and criminal acts for complaining about hostile work environment

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In a nine-page document (LINK - pops in new window), beleaguered police Officer Demitri Serianni exhaustively documents how the department and City Manager Isaac Turner have violated city policies and the law in an effort to duct tape the mouths of officers who complained to Turner about former chief Julie Williams.

Turner's response so far has reportedly been to privately tell council members that Serianni is a lazy cop.

Budway self-destructs, flies plane into Taxpayers League in attempt to avoid hostile takeover by former board members -- VTL re-births itself in spite of Budway's sabotage

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After his entire Board of Directors resigned to protest Budway's idiotic mismanagement, a group of former board members, including the late Herb Levine, had engineered a hostile takeover by demanding Budway's resignation under threat of legal consequences -- Budway freaked out, called the former board "a bunch of flakes," then tried to destroy the League in an act of political terrorism, ending his childish tirade by blaming the entire world for ganging up against him; unfazed, former board members start re-incorporation process

ref: Gondo story on Budway heroically pushing the self-destruct button on the Taxpayers League (link - pops in new window)

The Venice Taxpayers [League] is alive and well, something that apparently scares the bejeebers out of both ex-VTL dictator Gary Budway and semi-literate newsroom gadfly Greg Giles. After reading Giles' premature article on the death of the VTL, I was laughing like hell. To the casual reader, it appears as though Gary Budway is one very bitter and lonely man while the Gondo couldn't even wait for Herb Levine to be in his grave for four weeks before spitting on it. The Gondo and Budway are behaving as though they are scared shitless that Herb might change his mind about this dead and buried thing he has going.

Nice job, guys. Good to see that the Gondo continues to stay classy.

Now that the Gondo has spun out the fiction, here's what really happened.