LEE COUNTY CORRUPTION STORIES

LEE COUNTY CORRUPTION STORIES

FROM THE PEOPLE:

Well, as you may have noticed, this happened to me and my family, in 1992-1993. It was all very deceiving right from the beginning. Everyone was very misled. So much happened, it seemed liked it all came like a thief in the night. We started to really notice that things were very wrong, when we received a letter from the city telling us that they were sending a city appraiser over to look at our home. Mr. Geraci. He came into our home, looked every thing over, measured each room and came up to me and told me that we had a very beautiful home. I thanked him and I told him that I had heard that the city was offering the homeowners 7 dollars a square foot for the land. He laughed at me and told me that the "dirt" under my home was only worth $1.58 a square foot. I told him that I would never sell my property for that price and that was less than what a pack of cigarettes cost, something that was unhealthy for you and we were talking about my children's home. He came up closer to me, in front of my husband and two children, and pointed his finger close to my face, calling me "honey" and told me this: You have ninety days to cooperate with us and if you don't cooperate with us, we will put you and your belongings out into the street, with a check slapped on top of everything and IF necessary, we will carry you out by stretcher. Now, I want to tell you this, I had never, in my life, ever had anyone speak to me in this manner, ever, until this moment. I went through abuse in this process that certain people should have been arrested for, the criminal acts they committed. This is not about money, but about my civil rights and my children's rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and the right to remain in a land that is free.

The Fair Housing Act that was put out by Henry Cisneros, states that every American has the right to choose where they want to live to raise their families, in dignity and without fear of discrimination. A fundamental right guaranteed to every American.

At this, I told this Mr. Geraci, to remove himself from my property and that he had no right to speak to me like this, in front of my children. He went chuckling, to the door and he turned around and he said to me: "There is one more thing I want to tell you before I leave." In our original plans of taking, we were going to take the block on the west side of the stadium, but because there was an attorney in that block that told us he would fight us to hell and back before we took his property and tie us up in the courts for twenty years, we decided to come over here in this block and take it instead because there are no attorneys to stop us here. Out the door he went, laughing all the way to the bank. He turned in an appraisal report of my home to the city books for $44,000.

A few weeks went by when we had a visitor come to the house. Jim Stanfield. He worked for the county. He came to confide some information to us and told us that this Mr. Geraci, who posed himself as a city appraiser was not an appraiser at all, and that he owned Geraci travel agency downtown. We were speechless. He told me and my husband to go down to the next council meeting and address the Mayor about this Mr. Geraci. We did. I walked to the podium and I asked the Mayor, "Is this Mr. Geraci a city appraiser?" The Mayor suddenly, looked down at his papers in front of him for a long moment and looked up at me and said. "I don't know, let's ask him" He called out for Mr. Geraci to see if he was in the room. Mr. Geraci stood up and told him he was there. The Mayor asked him if he was a city appraiser and Mr. Geraci told him" No, he was not". I said to the Mayor: "What right does he have to come into my home, pose as a city appraiser, and then give the city a value of my property to the city books. The Mayor said to me: "Anybody has the right to an opinion of value." This is the tip of iceberg.... the witch hunt, as my trial attorney referred it to be. Even though everything was reported, to Congressman Porter Goss, Senator Dudley and Senator Foley, and to numerous other agencies, including Janet Reno, Governor Lawton Chiles, Civil Rights Division in Florida and in Washington DC.... and I was promised by Congressman Porter Goss as stated in black and white in the newspaper, an investigation was being done. My visits with Senator Dudley's assistant also promised me and reassured me that it was all being looked into, the abuse. Nothing was being done, it was never looked into. It all went "see no evil, hear no evil,speak no evil" I became a person, without a country.

Shortly after the incident with Mr. Geraci, we were handed papers to appear for Order of Taking, in which Judge Wallace Pack presided. A huge conflict of interest because he was very good friends with the Mayor and his father, Country club buddies. They played golf together. It was the Mayor's life time dream to have the Boston Red Sox stadium downtown, as he stated to the paper.

All the homeowners filed into the courtroom, not exactly sure why we were even there. Most of us at that time were very unaware of what eminent domain was as most of us never even heard of it, and those of us who did hear of eminent domain, thought it was for roads, hospitals, schools. The judge went on to read everyone the amounts offered for their properties, mine was at $44,000, the same figure that Mr. Geraci turned into the city books. After the judge read everyone the amounts, he banged the gavel down loud and shouted very loudly TAKEN!! We all looked at each other in puzzlement because no one understood what had just happened. The whole room went into and uproar and everyone was asking their attorneys what just happened. The attorneys went on to explain to us that as they were speaking to us, our titles to our properties were being handed over into city records and we no longer owned our homes. Everyone went into an uproar again and this time the police came in and made everyone leave the court room.

The next thing that happened was the Arbitration Detention, where they held me against my will, trying to force me to sign a "gag order" or more formally known as a 'non-disclosure" form. I served papers to appear for a mediation. When I got there to the courthouse, into the mediation room, there were eleven reps from the city around a large oval table. Mr. Solomon was the mediator. He told me that he was from Sarasota and that he was friends with some of the men sitting at the table as he went to college with them. The mediation session lasted for twelve hours, from eight in the morning, to eight at night. It was mainly a discussion between the city reps and my attorney, and I was more over on the sideline, as my attorney did all the talking for me. I was tired from months of heartache and as they had told me and my husband from the beginning: You have no say so in the matter. I wanted it to be over, so that my children could have a sense of normalcy again and live in a real neighborhood that was not surrounded with empty buildings with no doors and windows and with glass laying everywhere, and vagrants and winos living in these empty buildings and our home that was infested with roof rats from when they started tearing all of the buildings down to build the stadium. The city had put us into a very unsafe, dangerous environment for MONTHS and MONTHS, and even worse, when they started to tear down all these buildings around us that were riddled with asbestos. The city agreed with my attorney to let me move my historical home to another piece of property, which was originally, an old army barrack from World War ll, which we completely refurbished inside and out, and give us $85,000. The moved me into a small room where it was just my female attorney, myself, and the mediator. They put in front of me a very sloppy, hand scribbled, contract and told me to read it over and sign it. Words were crossed out, here and there. It took me a few minutes to understand what I was reading. When I got to the second page, I noticed there was a part that restricted me from speaking about the issues of eminent domain to the public. I was horrified. I got up from the table, and I told them that I could not and would not sign this and that I would see them in court. I went to head for the door, when the mediator, jumped up and threw himself against the door, hard, to keep me from leaving and he screamed at me in an unGodly loud voice, to sit down and listen to my counsel. I became violently sick. I sat down and I looked at my attorney. I looked over at the mediator, who was now sitting down, and very agitated, punching his fist together, as though to hit me, cussing under his breath, My attorney was shaking her head back and forth, pathetically, and told me that she was very, very sorry, but this is the way it is, the way it has to me and that I had to sign the papers. I was mortified, hearing her telling me this and I yelled "You are a mother of children, I am a mother of children, why are you doing this?" Again, she want on to tell me she was very sorry. I got up from the table to leave the room again and again, the mediator jumped up from his chair, threw himself against the door hard and punched me in the chest with the palm of his hand to push me back away from the door, telling me I wasn't going anywhere. I don't remember much in those next few minutes except that I was pushing this very burly man out of my way to get the door open and I ran out of the court house with the unsigned papers in my hand. My attorney was right behind me, pleading with me to sign the papers. I screamed at her to get a way from me. I told her that it was not enough that they "took" our home from us, from my children, uprooted us, then the city gave me a list of five very run down homes trying to force me to choose from, some in the same area I was already in.....which I refused to and NOW this....they were trying to take my freedom of speech from me. I ran into the police station to call my husband to come and get me. When I got home, I called my attorney's office and left a message, she was fired. I had five attorneys in all, and everyone of them were fired. I could write a book just on The Five Attorneys.

A few days after this, I was telling a neighbor across the street of what they did to me. She was horrified. She told she would help me write a letter of complaint against this mediator and that she would go with me to the head of mediations in the courthouse to deliver this letter of complaint. I handed the letter to Mr. Waditch sp?, the head of mediators and he opened the letter up and read it in front of me. He laughed. He told me that mediators could not be touched, were immune to punishment and that they sat above the law.

A few days after this and a few days before Thanksgiving, I told a news reporter of what they did to me in mediations. Then the trucks came. Sincerely, Angela