A new 4,000-word Weekly story examines the inner workings of the "crusade" the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI) went on against the paper and the spin the agency used to claim victory in the settlement reached last week. "How Orlando's morality police went from fangs bared to tail between their legs is an old story, one the Weekly has written extensively," the paper reports. The Weekly wrote critical stories that embarrassed the MBI and believes it was likely targeted because of them. "The MBI came after the paper with charges serious enough to put it out of business. The charges were dropped and the case was settled out of court," the Weekly reports. "You decide who won."
"All sides claimed victory" yesterday when the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI) dropped 18 charges against the Weekly, which in turn agreed to stop running adult ads and pay the MBI $10,000 for its investigation, the Orlando Sentinel reports. In addition, the paper's three employees who were personally charged agreed to perform 100 hours of community service within nine months to have their charges dismissed. "There's no need to proceed to a jury trial ... when everything that needed to be done is being done," MBI director Bill Lutz says. "They have stepped up. They've actually done more than we asked." But the Weekly says the MBI settled because it knew it was going to lose the case. "It is no coincidence that the MBI entered into settlement talks a week before today's scheduled motion-to-dismiss hearing, in which the Weekly was prepared to argue, essentially, that the MBI was making up the law as it went along," the paper says in an initial report. The Weekly promises to have a full account of the investigation and settlement on its website soon.
The Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI) has dropped its racketeering charges against the Weekly, as well as the misdemeanor and felony charges it filed against three Weekly employees last October for of selling ads to prostitutes, the paper reports. "As it turns out, the MBI brain-trust hit a small hitch -- there's not really anything illegal about that," the Weekly's Jeff Billman writes. The paper has agreed to stop running Adult Services ads, and reimbursed the MBI $10,000 for its investigation.
Legal proceedings for the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation's case against three Weekly employees and the paper on charges related to adult advertising are scheduled to get underway later this month. Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas thinks the case, which "smacks of payback," should be settled, and suggests a way forward: "Immediately drop all charges against the employees," he writes. "Drop all felony charges against the Weekly and ask the judge to withhold adjudication on misdemeanor charges of aiding and abetting prostitution. In exchange, the Weekly reimburses all costs and agrees in writing to stop taking ads from prostitutes and unlicensed massage parlors."
In the editorial of E&P's latest issue, the magazine rails against the "Soviet-style arrests" of Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin in the Phoenix New Times grand-jury subpoena fiasco and the "lavish waste of public funds" used by the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation to investigate and ultimately arrest Orlando Weekly employees for "aiding and abetting prostitution." E&P commends the local mainstream dailies in Phoenix and Orlando for sticking up for the alt-weeklies in these two cases. "But dailies too rarely make common cause with their local alt-weekly when they are targeted by the familiar harassments of police ad stings, library banishments, and 'litter' laws concerned more about free papers stacked in a store than candy wrappers on the sidewalk," the magazine says. "Usually that's because the mainstream paper's top people resent the snarky coverage they get from the alternative with its sneering cheap shots. But thuggish local authorities who believe they can act with impunity against alt-papers will soon wonder just how much they can get away with against the mainstream daily."
The Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation released yesterday hidden-camera videos and 258 pages of documents from its nearly two-year investigation into the Weekly's classified department, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The MBI says the videos, which show ad reps talking about how to best word escort ads, helped convince a grand jury to indict the paper and three of its employees for allegedly knowingly selling ads to prostitutes for sex services, according to Local 6 News.
"Adult services will not be running this week because Orlando Weekly cannot ensure that doing so will not result in additional arrests of its employees by local police," reads the page in the alt-weekly where such ads would ordinarily appear. Instead, the paper printed the text of the First Amendment. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation has released a transcript from the investigation that led to last week's arrests, but the Weekly's attorney cautions against reading too much into it. "We should not rush to judgment based on the release of a transcript from a single conversation from a two-year investigation," Bill Schaefer tells Local 6 TV. "We should examine the propriety of the release of potential evidence prior to judicial proceedings. It may deny the defendants a fair and impartial trial."
The first thing you notice when you land on Orlando Weekly's home page these days is an audio stream of Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" -- a message the paper is clearly taking to heart. In a story nearing 5,000 words published late yesterday, the alt-weekly comes out swinging at the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI), which arrested three of its employees on Friday on charges of deriving proceeds from prostitution and aiding and abetting prostitution. (The MBI also got a grand jury indictment for criminal racketeering against the paper.) The Weekly says that the arrests were simply retaliation for publishing critical stories about the agency, and as proof points to a host of other publications that carry similar ads, yet have not been targeted by the MBI. "The MBI is an inept, inefficient police organization, answerable to no one," the paper writes. "And if you dare confront the agency on their appalling record, they will try to put you out of business."
"Orlando Weekly believes these arrests are an outrageous abuse of process and an attempt to censor the First Amendment rights of a newspaper that has reported critically on the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation," publisher Rick Schreiber says in a statement. Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell seems to agree. "You'll have to forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical about the MBI's arrest of three staffers," he says, noting that the Weekly has "been all over the MBI like fleas on a dog in recent years." He continues: "And yet, in our story today, MBI director Bill Lutz seemed to deny that his department had a grudge against the paper. If that's what he's saying, it's a crock." For more coverage of the arrests, and links to past Weekly coverage of the MBI, check out the paper's blog.
