Federal Fascism In Florida: "Quality Of Life" & "Pirates"

Between Jan. 1 and March 23, they made 90 arrests, and the federal stimulus will ensure that the trend continues: the Key West police recently received $813,000 to add four officers to its 89-member department. Their sole mission will be quality-of-life policing.

“It’s for vagrants,” said the police chief, Donald J. Lee Jr. “People who are out on the streets, disrupting the quality of life or experience for visitors, residents and businesses.” What some call vagrants, of course, others call simply down-and-out. The police say their targets are people like the homeless man arrested last week after he told two teenage girls they were sexy and offered them a swig of his Jack Daniel’s. Yet in a city of 25,000 that claims to have more bars per capita than anywhere else in the country, enforcement can sometimes look selective.

The police now regularly question the homeless but ignore visitors like the man at a table near Ms. Skinner’s Jeep last week. He was passed out before sunset, snoring, with a 16-ounce beer in front of him and two chickens pecking near his feet. Only his pressed shorts and a half-eaten Godiva chocolate bar suggested that he had a home.

[...]

“The tourists come here and drink all day long,” said Manuel Casas, 43, who moved to the Keys from Miami five years ago. “When we sit here and have one drink, we get arrested.”

Mr. Casas was sitting at the island’s main beach, at a picnic table with a half-dozen homeless friends. With raspy voices and slurred words — some actually sounded like pirates — they all said they deserved to be left alone.

“God gave us this, not the government,” Mr. Casas said of the island. “This is what he’s given to us. Why can’t we enjoy it?”

Homeless going teabag? Gawd over gummint? What'll happen when they get guns?

Actually sounded like "pirates?" Has typist Cave ever heard an "actual" pirate?