He immediately dissolved the Street Crimes Unit, which was reportedly involved in many of the fourteen fatal deputy-involved shootings under his predecessor’s administration. Frost brought instructors from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute for Nonviolence in Miami to Pensacola to train his deputies. A local civil rights group honored his efforts with its “MLK Man of the Year” award, making him the first white man ever to receive it.
We started the paper six months before Sheriff Frost was sworn into office. There never was much of a honeymoon for the two of us. Maybe it was the stories that Fairley shared, or perhaps it was just Frost’s cockiness, but the truth was we never got along.
His words and actions never quite matched. While he constantly whined about not having enough money to pay his deputies, Frost loved to buy the latest “gadgets.” He bought two helicopters and a mobile command bus that he showed off at the Pensacola Interstate Fair.
He also spent millions to renovate, reequip, and refurbish his administrative offices. Every office had a flat-screen television. While his deputies’ pay remained flat, his administrative salaries nearly doubled, jumping from $1.68 million to $3.23 million.
When he bought his deputies Tasers, reports of abuse began to surface. Frost was forced to settle lawsuit after lawsuit. He reached a $150,000 settlement with a Pensacola teacher, who was struck with a Taser stun gun four times as he tried to comfort his pregnant wife after a minor traffic accident. The family of a high school honor student received a settlement of a quarter of a million dollars after he was tasered while riding his bicycle. The boy suffered severe brain damage.
Then deaths in the jail began to mount—six in two years. Frost tried at first to dismiss them as sick people who would have died anywhere, but after the sixth death, public pressure forced him to reorganize the facility. We had heard the changes were only cosmetic and anticipated another wave of deaths was on the horizon.
Despite the problems, Frost had easily won a second term. After the election, his Democratic opponent filed suit in circuit court against Frost and Peck Krager, alleging dirty tricks by the Frost campaign to hurt his efforts, including dispatching investigators to his former places of employment to dig up dirt on him and sending flowers to his home signed, “Love, Delilah.” Frost settled that case, too.
We reported it all but got little traction from the other media. Apparently, I was the only one who didn’t like Frost. Realizing that no news story or investigation would ever be big enough to knock him out of office, I had adopted the strategy of a thousand cuts, pointing out his miscues and abuses of power without too much hyperbole. The strategy appeared to be working. People were talking about finding someone to run against Frost next time.
The story on pay raises wasn’t a home run, but it was a solid double. Frost had asked the Escambia County Commission to approve a special appropriation so that he could give his deputies a $4,000 a year raise, in addition to the 3 percent merit raise budgeted for all county employees.
The spreadsheet Frost gave me agreed with our research that many deputies weren’t underpaid and nearly two dozen sergeants earned more than sixty grand a year. When I compared his payroll with sheriff’s offices in other Panhandle counties, his troops were paid $3,600 more on average. His chief deputy made $135,000 a year. Five of his administrators made over $95,000. Damn, Peck made $85,000. You would think he could buy a better fitting uniform.
I smiled. This wasn’t the kind of story Frost wanted published while potential candidates were trying to gauge if they could unseat him in the next election.
8
While I held off publishing anymore on Hines on the blog until after Sue’s funeral, the Pensacola Herald had no such compunction.
Sunday morning, Big Boy and I took our daily walk. At the Circle K, where they ignored that I brought a dog into the store, I poured a big cup of coffee and bought the dog a ham and cheese biscuit. The sales clerk loved Big Boy.
The Sunday edition of the Pensacola Herald was on the counter with big photos of Bo and Sue Hines above the fold. Dammit. I paid for a copy, handing the inserts to the clerk. We found the nearest park bench, and Big Boy feasted while I read what a worthless piece of crap I was.
The daily newspaper had published a double truck on Bo and Sue. The spread had photos from their wedding with Rory Evans standing with the couple. They published a team shot from a charity softball game. I was in the back row, having played second base for Sue’s team. The article was a beautiful obituary for a woman universally appreciated by the community.
A separate article focused on the circumstances surrounding her death. The reporter mentioned Bo’s arrest, the Pensacola Insider, and me. Friends speculated about her death and how her husband’s pending trial might have contributed to her state of mind. Wittman took a direct shot at me. He called for a boycott of my newspaper, blaming his sister’s death on the Insider and me.
Reporters, both print and broadcast, had begun digging into my life. I suspected they would profile me soon, warts and all, before the Hines’ trial began. They would recount some of my more infamous battles with politicians. The reporters wouldn’t have trouble getting interviews with those I had exposed, who would offer quotes that questioned my sources and ethics without mentioning the facts backing up our articles. The pent-up frustration and anger toward me would be released.
Payback was a bitch, but I had earned
