In the News

PAHOKEE POLICE TRY TO REBUILD CREDIBILITY

BYLINE:    JOHN PACENTI, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
DATE: April 19, 2004
PUBLICATION: Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
EDITION: FINAL
SECTION: A SECTION
PAGE: 1A
MEMO: Ran all editions.

Four years ago, the body of a city police officer's stepson was found at a Pahokee tree farm.

The murder of 22-year-old Jeffrey Rewis, battered before a bullet pierced his temple, remains unsolved. Still, the investigation took a bizarre twist, imploding the Pahokee Police Department and prompting the sheriff to take over the city force until the chaos could be sorted out. Investigators, after searching the stepfather's house for weapons, later were drawn to Pahokee police headquarters itself. Sheriff's detectives soon discovered that weapons, and an undetermined amount of drugs, were missing from the evidence room. Finger-pointing and back stabbing ensued while detectives dug in. What they had stumbled on was a department in turmoil - and considerable disarray. "It was like the television show CSI meets Seinfeld, where Cosmo Kramer and George Costanza ran the evidence room and Jerry and Elaine did the investigation," said Mark Murnan , a private investigator who visited Pahokee's evidence room last summer while working on a case. After investigating for the better part of a year, sheriff's detectives concluded they had evidence that confiscated guns had been stolen and sold, among other crimes. But the state attorney's office took a look at the mess and decided not to prosecute. It was left to the city manager to clean house. She fired a captain, the head of internal affairs and another officer. The police chief already had resigned. "I don't like terminating employees," City Manager Lillie Latimore said. "I like correction. But that situation was so entangled. I want them to be able to move on and for the department to move on." Murnan , a private investigator for murder defendant Earnest "Burn Burn" Johnson, said that when he examined the victim's shorts, cocaine fell out of a pocket. Apparently, he said, Pahokee homicide investigators had missed it.

He said he found other evidence of sloppy police work. Crime scene photographs in another case were labeled "Dead guy in blue jersey," nothing more. Nellie King, Johnson's attorney, said defense lawyers could use the tainted evidence room to have criminal cases tossed out.

"You can't trust the evidence, you can't trust the officer, you can't trust the report," she said.