Whistle blown on crime bill

TALLAHASSEE - As they ready their city for the Super Bowl in January, lawmakers from Jacksonville and the sheriff are waiting for the governor to sign a bill they blitzed through the Legislature that requires mandatory jail time for habitual petty offenders, some of whom have haunted downtown for years.

The proposal, which reached Gov. Jeb Bush's desk Wednesday and awaits his signature or veto, would require nearly anyone in the state convicted of five misdemeanors in a 12-month period to spend six months in jail or a residential treatment facility.

Advocates for the homeless and South Florida judges say they fear that's a back-door way of locking up the downtrodden -- at great expense to state and county taxpayers, who would have to spend more for jail and treatment beds. And they say the timing of the bill is suspicious.

For the past year, Jacksonville has busily prepared for the January 2005 Super Bowl while trying to revitalize its downtown. Beds of flowers have been planted next to new waterfront condos, and so-called ''aggressive'' panhandlers have been locked up after a few sweeps.

The bill proposed by Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford had relatively few public hearings in the Legislature and didn't even stop in the House and Senate judiciary committees, which normally debate law-and-order bills affecting the justice system.

''It's basically window washers and homeless people we're talking about,'' said Rep. Dan Gelber, a Democratic judiciary committee member from Miami Beach. ``Who else is going to get five misdemeanors in a year? It's the most powerless, pathetic members of our society. And it's being done because they want to clean up Jacksonville for the Super Bowl.''

PRESSURE ON BUSH

Gelber has already helped orchestrate a letter-writing campaign in which advocates for the homless and mentally ill are urging the governor to veto the legislation. If Bush doesn't, it will become law in two weeks with or without his signature.

Sheriff Rutherford said Gelber's criticisms are ``absolutely wrong.''

Rutherford, elected last year, said he proposed the legislation to actually help the sick and homeless while punishing the petty dope pushers and prostitutes who go through the ''revolving door'' of the justice system.

Rutherford said he came up with the concept in 1996, when he was Jacksonville's jail administrator and saw a man cycle in and out of jail 27 times for a total of 256 days.

At the time, Rutherford said, he watched hopelessly as judges sentenced the man, a heavy drinker, to a night in jail instead of treatment.

Rutherford said that about 760 people in Duval County commit more than five misdemeanors a year. Rutherford said they cost the county about $10.3 million a year to arrest, process and warehouse.

''Something needs to be done,'' Rutherford said, adding that misdemeanor offenders ``don't fall through the cracks, they're pushed through the cracks.''

Some judges say Rutherford has accurately diagnosed the problem. But they think his solution isn't realistic.

Steve Liefman, Miami-Dade County's associate administrative judge for county criminal court, said he often sentences disorderly drunks and trespass violators to the time they served in jail after their arrest. Otherwise, he said, there would be nowhere to put them.

''We're overcrowded already,'' Liefman said, noting that the county's jail system handles up to 74,000 misdemeanor cases a year. Liefman said he fears that the new mandatory minimum would also force public defenders to be appointed to each case and fight each one in court, costing even more money.

Broward County Judge Ginger Wren said she doesn't like mandatory-minimum laws that tie the hands of judges. She found scant comfort in a clause of the bill that would allow judges to mete out alternative sentences in some cases if they find that it's in the community's best interest.

`KIND OF SCARY'

In Duval County, the judge who had freed the man Rutherford complained about said she understood his frustration as well as the concerns of her fellow judges. But, she said, something needed to be done in Jacksonville.

''I'll say myself I don't walk in parts of Jacksonville downtown because of some of these aggressive panhandlers, and they're kind of scary,'' said the judge, Sharon Tanner. ``There's been an effort, yes, to keep the less desirable people out of downtown because they're trying to get people to move here. It's more of a natural evolution. It's not just the Super Bowl.''