The Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation, a special police unit established in Central Florida to concentrate on vice and drugs, is supposed to keep Orange County clean and family friendly. And they don't care how dirty they have to get to do it. Its agents and prosecutors have harassed and intimidated witnesses, lied about investigations, trumped up charges against old ladies and spent hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to coax a handful of people into committing petty crimes. "It's true the MBI has been successful, but only by degrees," writes Orlando Weekly's William Dean Hinton. "It is, after all, up against a powerful, unbeatable foe: the human sex drive."
After publishing more than 750 consecutive issues, the Flyer was forced to skip an edition when a July 22 storm shut the city down. The blend of heavy rains and powerful winds forced three employees from their homes, including Publisher Ken Neill, who had an 100 foot oak tree fall on his house, rendering it uninhabitable until Christmas. The national press, focused on Uday and Qusay, barely noticed the storm. "We have a joke," Neill says. "If a tree falls in Memphis, does it make a sound?"
By the time she turned 18 in July, Sinika had survived abandonment, sexual molestation, and a long stint on the streets. She had been in Baltimore's foster care system since she was 12 years old. Baltimore City Paper's Afefe Tyehimba looks at what's next for the young woman undergoing the transition from unforgiving control of the foster system to the chaos of making her own way. "Like her tumultuous past, Sinika's future has no blueprint, but her basic life goals are the same as everyone else's: to live a peaceful, stable, prosperous life filled with people to love who love you back," she writes.
And they're celebrating with a special issue and a public birthday bash in a park across the street from the paper's new office building. In addition to a rear-view mirror look at the paper's coverage of educational and environmental issues, this week's Indy includes features like "Top Ten Reasons the Independent Must Die" (No. 4: "They're sex-crazed, amoral sodomists.") and, for connoisseurs of the publisher's occasionally garbled syntax, "Top Ten John Weissisms" (No. 1: "We're growing like hotcakes!").
Arnold Schwarzenegger is grabbing all the headlines, so few may have noticed that Gary Coleman is also running for the Golden State's top job. According to CNN.com, Coleman's candidacy was engineered by New Times' paper in Berkeley "in protest of the scheduled vote aimed at recalling Gov. Gray Davis." Editor Steve Buel, Coleman's campaign treasurer, says he collected the 65 petition signatures necessary to place the former child star on the ballot at a recent Oakland A's game. Even though he's throwing his own hat in the ring, Coleman says he's voting for Schwarzenegger and admits, "I'm probably the least qualified for the job, but I'll have some great people around me."
After a night of drinking and rock 'n' roll, an off-duty Orange County cop engages in random gun play. No charges are filed. But a Santa Ana resident accused of randomly firing a gun in his yard faces a life sentence. OC Weekly's Nick Schou looks at a case where justice isn’t so much blind as stupid. "Let’s see: Shooter No. 1 is a gang-unit cop. Shooter No. 2 is a crew-cut Latino who lives in a gang-infested neighborhood. You do the math," Shou writes.
