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4 comments:
Has anyone found out how many times the Assistant Jail Adminstrator has been in Jail? Capt. Rob Mastrianni, I heard 3-4 times for domestic violence, and 1 time for several weeks for contempt of court, interesting Huh,, once as a trust, and now runs the place,,not rumor check it out,,,,,The public has a right to know,, I undertand the sheriffs secretary was also incarcerated for a dispute,,check it out,,,lets get it out here,,
Posted on Sun, Sep. 02, 2007
The powerful political sheriff tainted himself
By FRED GRIMM
A desiccated reputation and the taint of a criminal investigation are jarring enough, but it's the utter loss of respect that's in such brutal conflict with the man Ken Jenne once was.
Jenne was such a feared player in Broward County politics that a county commissioner once formed a political action committee with nothing more in mind than keeping Jenne's power in check.
John Rodstrom named his 1999 PAC ``Citizens Against A Dictator.''
The move that year to alter the county charter and create an elected county mayor collided with a widespread assumption that the hypothetical office already belonged to Ken Jenne. The specter of a Mayor Jenne was just too unnerving.
Jenne, the former prosecutor, had risen to power in the state Senate as an unforgiving political infighter who, when crossed, emasculated his enemies. He never bothered to disavow his reputation.
Amid the county mayor talk, I wrote a column dubbing him ''the Darth Vader of Broward politics.'' The sheriff sent me an action figure of the Star Wars character, encased in glass, with the inscription, ``Broward Mayor Ken Jenne.''
ROCK STAR
County commissioners may have feared Jenne, but in public they fawned over him like groupies around a rock star. In 2003, when the commission voted 8-1 to cede the county's fire and rescue service to Jenne's expanding empire, Ilene Lieberman proclaimed him ``the best sheriff we've ever had.''
Commissioner Lori Parrish, the lone no vote, explained that while she was ''comfortable'' as long as Jenne was in charge, she worried about vesting ``so much power in a single elected office.''
''There will be very few Ken Jennes in Broward County,'' she worried.
One Ken Jenne, as it turns out, was quite enough.
Jenne reportedly is on the way out, brought down by a federal investigation into transgressions that seem too piddling to fit the myth. Unhappily, all the power Jenne accumulated, all the power that so worried Lori Parrish, now passes on to the next politician in charge.
Jenne was appointed by Gov. Lawton Chiles in January 1998, after the death of Ron Cochran. Sheriff Cochran had been his antithesis, a career cop never comfortable with political aspect of office. Longtime Miami Herald political reporter Steve Bousquet, now with The St. Petersburg Times, remembers Cochran ruefully describing BSO as ``a 5,000-member political action committee with badges and guns.''
`IT STINKS'
Than came Jenne. ''It stinks,'' warned former Broward Sheriff Nick Navarro, a bit tainted himself. ``This man is a politician.''
Indeed, under Jenne the PAC called BSO grew from 5,000 to 6,300 strong. He'll leave an office that ranks as the largest sheriff's office in the state; and one of the largest police agencies in the nation under the direct control of a single elected official.
Scandals under Sheriffs Jenne, Navarro, Ed Stack, all the way back to the infamous Walter Clark (who ran a gambling racket on the side), attest that Broward sheriff has become an outmoded concept.
Broward needs a professional police chief, one who can be hired and fired. Otherwise, as Bousquet noted, ``Every so often, raw sewage bubbles up.''
An all-powerful political sheriff eventually corrupted his own considerable reputation. Broward County, vesting a single elected office with so much police authority and so much political power, puts the concept of good government in perpetual jeopardy.
www.miamiherald.com
Are all of them the same?
Interesting article. A prime example of why we too need a county police department to hold the sheriff in check.
Several years ago if my memory serves me correctly, the Sheriff took a quite a beating in the press for hiring Mastrionni who had been previously dismissed from another law enforcement agency. I believe it was in Valdosta. But this is a little foggy for me as it as been quite a while ago. I do know that when it got really bad Mastrionni left the Sheriff's Office and went to work I think driving a cement truck for a short time and then went to work in the mill. Not sure if he stayed at the mill until it closed but I know he has been at the Sheriff's payroll again for several years now.
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