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You're listening to DraftKings Network. Spring.

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Surrounding a large field in St Augustine, Florida, people wait to pile in by the hundreds. Fight. Let's go, go. Anticipation growing. For the first Florida Man competition, that's one part Gladiator's, one part cops, He's going to take it out of the back first.

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Oh, he's running.

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One part, Mullet Mania.

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Last weekend was the inaugural Florida Man Games in beautiful St. Augustine. Roy, were you out there?

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No.

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Why not?

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I got better things to do than a fake run from the I don't know about that.

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I got to tell you, there was several teams that were vying to be the Florida Man of all Florida men. And, OMG, it's Wix. Josh Robinson is joining us. He was the MCAP of the event. He is an actor, podcaster, sketch, comic influencer. You can find him at omgitswicks on everywhere, on everything. Sir, how did you get involved in this?

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Well, just making Florida content. Once they posted that they were going to have the Florida Man games, I pretty much got over a thousand tags for me to be a part of the games. After that, Pete reached out. We talked for a few months, and the magic happened after that.

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I love it. So it was the will of the people. I love it. You are the mayor of the Florida Men now. You were duly elected by social media and tags. Josh, let me ask you, I've been watching some of this footage. It is just absolutely amazing. So were you part of the... I know you brought on as MCAP, but were you part at all of the development of this or any of these ideas or these competitions?

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Oh, no. Most of them were a surprise to me. I believe when it first started, there was four or five events. And then by the time it happened, there had been other events added. I think it just got bigger and bigger as time went on.

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And so we're going to do a top five, Roy, coming up of the best events at the Florida Man Games. But Wix, tell me, how did this work? Obviously, it wasn't a Florida Man, but there were teams of Florida men competing?

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Yeah. So there were teams basically competing, and each member did different competitions. So they had, I guess, specialists, the person that- Specialists. Yeah, they had specialists for each one. I suppose they trained specifically for these events.

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Roy, we're going to do a top five events at the first ever Florida Man Games. Are you ready?

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I'm waiting in the anticipation.

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Okay. Wix, I'll shout out the names of these events, and if You could give us a little bit of a rundown about how they went. Okay. We will start with number Five, Cash Grab. Now, this is a hurricane situation, right? We have some hurricane force winds involved. What happens?

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Basically, you get in the machine. Each team has their specialist. They get in the machine and the cash grab machine. I guess whoever grabbed the most money, they were able to keep that amount of money. It was fake money that was in the machine, but they were able to turn it in for real money of that same amount.

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I will tell you, anybody watching the YouTube version of this podcast is being treated to some prime B-roll right now. I mean, just choice, choice B-roll. You're going to want to maybe watch the video version of this. Number 4, Florida Sumo.

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Oh, yeah. That was fantastic. What I had in my mind was way different than what happened in person. They had a picture of beer, and they had a pool, 10 or 2. Basically, they were, I guess, sumoing against each other until one person's beer went out or somebody fell or went into the cage. It was a lot of fun.

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So you had to keep the beer from spilling?

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Yeah, very Florida activity. You got to keep your beer from spilling while doing the sumo wrestling.

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Well, let me ask you, though, what was your vision? What was in your head before you saw what the competition actually was?

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I thought it was just going to be the inner tube, and they just sumoed against each other until one person went off the ring. But then I believe a cage became involved, and that's how I know it was going to go to the next level. Then the beer, like I said. My vision was just the inner tube and two people just doing sumo against each other.

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This was Florida Man innovative here.

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Yeah, absolutely. It went next level.

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All right. The number three event at the Florida Man Games. Sorry, I'm laughing. I'm looking at them.

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It's a stupid name.

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It's not a stupid name. It's great. Are you kidding? I love this. Number three is Weaponized Pool Noodle. Weaponizing a pool noodle.

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Weaponizing a pool noodle. That one was fantastic.

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We can weaponize anything in Florida, Roy. You already know.

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Like an alligator.

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Well, they are weapons. So what is weaponized pool noodle?

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So basically, it was a take on... Because there weren't the American gladiators where they're nitro and ice, they were the judges. So basically like the American gladiators where they were able to... Yeah, they jouced in a mud pool to knock each other out or knock each other down. So with the pool noodle, I didn't expect this at all.

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So basically, this was the joust in American Gladys. Yeah.

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It was the Florida Man Games Coliseum, which was a massive above-ground pool because Florida-I love ice, by the way.

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I had a crush on her.

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Did you have a crush on ice? I did. Who didn't?

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She's very nice, by the way. She's cool. Oh, yeah.

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The number two event at the Florida Man Games this year, they get better. This is one of the best top fives ever because they actually do get... Sometimes we just put them in random orders, but these legit get better. I'm going to say this out loud, and I'm never going to live this down. It's going to haunt me for the rest of my life. The eat the butt challenge.

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Oh, yeah. Yeah. Roy, what What was that last event called again?

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I believe it's called the eat the butt challenge is what they call it.

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It is. It is, in fact, the eat the butt challenge.

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Yeah.

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What is it? I got to… This is my job. I've got to ask you, what the hell is the Florida Man Games' Eat the Butt Challenge event?

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By the way, that was one of the ones that was added that I wasn't expecting. But yeah, so basically, it was an eating contest, but the had to eat three pounds of pork, but whoever ate it the quickest. At some point, everybody was just chant to eat the butt, burn it loud. It was a lot of fun, though.

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Should we do it? Roy, should we chant? The meat I use is called the Boston Butt. It's a delicacy. I eat butt all the time. Should we chant, Roy? Should we start to chant? Eat the butt, eat the butt, eat the butt, eat the butt, eat the butt. Wix, was this a bait and switch? Would you not have participated as the emcee of the Florida Man Games? Had you known there was an event called the Eat the Butt Challenge, or were you cool with it?

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No, I was cool with everything.

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I would have been there either way. I've seen your social media. You're cool with everything. I know. Yeah, I was in the butt all the time. Roy, we have reached the pinnacle of Florida Mandum. Mullets, Blackbears, and Meth, oh my. The number one event at the first ever Florida Man Games in St. Augustine last weekend, the Evading Arrest Obstacle Course. This is the most Florida man of things. Wix, tell us about it.

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That was my favorite event because they mixed the throwing the Alligator through the window. Then they got to ride through the Wendy's drive-through. They threw it through the window. Then they got to run away from the police. That's a weapon, yeah. Yeah, they got to run away from the police. Then they got to ride an Alligator down in Muddy, slip and slide and jump in the water and save the iguana. So, yeah, it was fantastic.

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Yeah, there is no part of that that I don't love. Wix, who were the three teams and who won?

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Well, there were more than three. I believe there were eight. I believe there were eight teams, but the winners were Hanky-Spanky, which were the names.

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Hanky-spanky. Hanky-spanky. Should we have done a top five of the best Florida Man games team names as well? What were some of the other great team names? Yeit, Butt, all the time.

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So it was Hanky-Spanky. There were Cooter Commanders, Screaming Eagles. There were Bureau boys, which there were some normal ones, but for the most part, they were wild. But I know Hanky-Spanky was the one that stood out to me at the beginning, and then they ended up winning.

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Now, was it like a clean sweep? Did they win every challenge or just they came the highest rated? I don't know. How did the scoring work?

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Well, it was actually them and Storm Surge. It came down to, I guess, the evading police obstacle course, and they ended up losing. I can't remember Storm Search. I believe Storm Search was a team that the guy actually won the obstacle course, but he forgot to save the iguana. So he ended up losing by a lot. So it put them behind. But I believe they could have won. If they would have grabbed the iguana, they would have worn it, basically.

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Can you imagine? It's like getting the answer right on Jeopardy, but not doing it in the form of a question. It's like he got right there and then just forgot the last rule of the game, which is to save the iguana.

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He had a good celebration of everything. He did the whole celebration. He threw his glasses, and everyone on his team is yelling for him to get the iguana, but he was too busy celebrating to get the iguana.

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I love that. I'm guessing that the competitors that they chose from each team for the Evading Arrest Obstacle Course Challenge had a lot of practice and a lot of training in that department, I'm thinking.

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Well, you would think that only three of them actually got away from the police. Everyone else got tagged, but only three got away.

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In real life or just in the game?

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In the game. All right.

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In the game. Josh Robinson at OMG. It's Wix. Thank you so much for being here. We cannot wait for or next year will be... This is a pet peeve of mine, Roy. Whenever someone says the first annual something, you can't be first annual. That is grammatically incorrect. You have to be the first ever or the inaugural. But next year will be the second annual Florida Man Games, and I think we ought to make a Because Miami trip up there. Maybe we need to have a live correspondence or something. What do you think, Roy?

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Sure.

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I was trying to get you to volunteer yourself, Roy. Oh, you're not going?

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You're goddamn right, meatball. There you go.

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Omg, it's Wix. Thanks so much for being here. Please come back and visit us. Of course.

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Thank you all so much. You all have a great one.

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I eat butt all the time.

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Roy, the Florida legislature, back on their bullshit. Oh, damn it. Doing their worst in the 60 days they have to do the work of the people of the state of Florida. One of the One of the great ideas that has come up is to eliminate local civilian oversight boards of police departments. Here in the city of Miami, for example, and in fact, at the county level as well, we have something called a Civilian Investigative Panel. It has a different name at the county, but it's a similar idea. There's 21 of these, I think, throughout the state. Rodney Jacobs is the executive director of the city of Miami's Police Oversight Board. He is also running for Florida State Senate to represent West Broward in district 35. Rodney, you have been a part of the so-called CIP, Civilian Investigative Panel in the City of Miami for a lot of years now. Tell me, what is it that you do? Why is it important, and why should the State of Florida not get rid of it?

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Well, thanks, Billy, for having me on. I think one of the biggest reasons why our department is necessary. Well, first and foremost, just as a background to our department, has been in the city of Miami since the early 2000s. We were tasked taking in complaints from community members or just from any visitor that has an unfavorable interaction with the city Miami police officer. We take those investigations in as a professional staff. We investigate those cases, and we take those cases then to our selected panel members. Based on the facts that are presented, we create a recommendation to send over to the police chief to hold the police officers accountable for misconduct or in some cases, change departmental policies. So we've been here for quite some time doing really great work over the the last few years to help innovate the police department. I think one of the biggest reasons of the work that we do is this notion that we call procedural justice, is the idea that when participating within a process, you perceive that as fair. And so if you perceive the system as operating with fair components and with equal amount of due diligence, you are more inclined to then trust the police department.

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So I really feel like one of the biggest things that civilian oversight brings to any community is trust within law enforcement.

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In many cases, or in fact, most cases, you do clear the officers of wrongdoing.

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Yeah. There's a good percentage of the cases that we have that we do exaggerate officers of wrongdoing. In the cases that we don't, obviously, those are egregious situations. Obviously, in cases that are criminal in nature, those go to the state attorney. But by and large, a lot of the cases that we do get are discourage these and improper procedures, a lot of which are exaggerated, but there's a lot of sustains as well. I think in doing that, we create a collaborative effort between us and the police Department to really be the best police department that they can be. Really, it's those two functions, both the trust and innovation that civilian oversight is all about.

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The Florida legislature, in its infinite wisdom, has been working to destroy labor unions and public unions. One of the unions they didn't touch, of course, was the police union, which is obviously very much against the existence of these civilian panels. They're a proponent for this bill at the Florida legislature. Let me pose one of their arguments, which is that why should civilians be providing oversight? Don't you want professionals in law enforcement or in the law to provide oversight? Obviously, at this point, we just have the police policing the police, which I think we've learned in the case of South Florida, Miami Dade in particular, where the state attorney, Katherine Fernandez-Rundall, has not prosecuted a law enforcement officer for an on duty killing during her entire 30 years in office. That is since Janet Reno left to be attorney general for President Bill Clinton. Kathy Randall has been in power and not prosecuted a police officer or any law enforcement officer, I should say, for an on duty killing. But they would say, Don't we need professionals? What was the example that one of the union bosses made was, We don't have plumbers disciplining dentists or doctors, for example.

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What do you say to that argument?

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I think there's two positions to be here. First and foremost, obviously, if you're a police officer, you're operating within a public capacity. Therefore, anyone that's in a public space, whether it be myself as a city director, a police officer, an elected official, we're held accountable by we the people. But what's more is this. Last time I checked Billy Corbin, juries were still a real thing. And juries hear cases of malpractice all the time. And usually on those juries are members of your peers, right? So on those juries that hear malpractice cases all the time, they make findings in fact to make determinations on people's careers. I think it's really important when we look at that procedure, the jury system in America, it's not only a bedrock of democracy, but it's something more when we look at accountability. I think for police departments, when they're operating in male practice, whether that be criminal or whether that be to be held accountable for lower issues of civil natures or of discouragey, they need members of their peers that operate within these communities to hold them accountable because the last time I checked, most people don't commit crimes directly in front of police officers.

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For Police officers to do their actual jobs, they need community participation to come forward with information and evidence, but the community won't be able to do that if they don't trust the police officers. I really push back at this notion that no other industry is held accountable by other people. When we have juries in America, and usually in public capacities, you're held in check by with the people.

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Those juries have to usually analyze. I've been on a jury before, analyze some pretty intense legal matters and interpret the law. I will go one step further for the sake of intellectual and legislative honesty and consistency. Going back to the point I was making, or similar point I was making earlier about how the legislature has gone after labor unions and particularly teachers unions, but left police unions alone. Not a lot of teachers unions are defending teachers who are responsible for maiming, killing, permanently injuring civilians citizens or citizens. But let me do this. The legislature wants all kinds of involvement of lay people and parents in the educational process. What the hell do parents know about teaching, about libraries? We have professional educators, very well-educated and trained librarians who do this as a professional for a living. But yet they want parents to be able to come in and tell these folks, these professionals, these well-trained, well-educated professionals, tell them how to do their jobs. Why is it that suddenly there's this firewall here where civilians cannot get involved in a very important public-facing job in our communities, people who have the ability to deprive us of life, liberty, and property who are out there on the streets interacting with our children and our families and who could deprive any of us of life, liberty, and property.

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I just don't think there's a lot of intellectual and legislative consistency and honesty there. What say you on that?

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Yeah, I think it's slightly intellectually irresponsible. When we look at how police departments and police unions have navigated over the years, police unions have always taken the position of defending police officers no matter their conduct, which I think is a part of the major issue. I think, and I've spoken to a number of police union members over the years, I think they're their own worst enemy. When you look at policing in and of itself, it is a job. Now, we can talk about the whole existential piece of your jobs as a part of you and things of that nature. But at the end of the day, there's just certain jobs certain people aren't good at. Rodney Jacobs will not be a good open heart surgeon, so I'm not doing that profession. When you really boil it down to that, there's a lot of good people that just aren't good cops. Therefore, they need to be invited to another place of business. I think when we look at that and if the union took that posture, they would be a lot more beneficial because of it.

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I don't think there's anything more dangerous for good cops than bad cops. It makes the entire profession more dangerous. It makes the relationship with the community more dangerous dangerous when there's that lack of trust, as you were describing earlier. I want to say this, I have seen justifiable uses of force. I've even seen examples of justifiable use of deadly force. The problem with the police union is, they've never seen an unjustifiable use of force or an unjustifiable use of deadly force. That's the problem. They defend the good and the bad, and they wind up looking like mob lawyers, which, again, is to me, a danger to all police officers.

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Yeah. I don't know how they are going to change that behavior. Once again, like I said earlier, I think in some cases, in a lot of cases, they're their own worst enemies. Every now and then, you'll see the tides change. We saw that with Derek Chauvin after the George Floyd situation. You saw then that the fix was in when the police chief was being deposed and everything else. But outside of a few situations like that, it's just denied defend. And really, it doesn't have to be this way. No one's requiring this to be But the standard here, police officers would have still great paying jobs with individuals that want to sign up and do the right thing without this mentality to tackle unqualified immunity. I'm not sure why we've turned this corner here with the police profession, but I think it does a huge disservice to, like you said, a lot of the police officers that want to do the right thing, a lot of police chiefs that want to have more influence within the ranks and things of that nature. I think it just puts us in a really tight space It's from the legislator on down.

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Before we go, you are running for State Senate. That is jacobsforsenet. Com. I think I got that website right. I want to ask about a couple of the bills working their way through, not working their way through the legislature. We just have 30 seconds for each. But let me ask you, social media ban for teens under the age of 16 past the legislature is headed for the governor's desk. Thoughts?

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Yeah, listen, I think this one is going to be a conundrum of source. As you said, it passed as legislator. It seems to have bipartisan support as quietly as it's been kept. I think right now, really, what you're going to find is that, you mentioned this earlier, you see that the legislator wants to give a lot of rights to parents and how they run their families, and yet here we are legislating another issue that seems that it will fall into the hands of parents.

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What happened to parental choice, right? Parental choice.

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I think, once again, this is one of those situations where in Florida, we legislate issues that aren't real issues. I I think that's one of the reasons why I decided to run is because I wanted to get back to legislating the issues, the things that really ensure that we kept food on people's tables. One of my major positions is what I'm calling economics for the dinner table, where we talk about not only the table that's in your house, but the roof over your head. I can say in the Jacob's family, when we sit down to eat dinner, my wife and I talk about, How are we going to pay daycare this month? Real issues that affect people where they are. I think this is just another situation where we've created an issue where no real issue exists, and then we legislate it. Which therein lies the rub that now we're probably going to get a lot of constitutional challenges moving forward when we talk about First Amendment rights for individuals. So when we create issues where no issues exist, we tend to have a snowballing effect thereafter. I think that's unfortunate for everyone that calls for their home.

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Well, that is the problem. We legislate and then we litigate. We pay these legislators money to go and create these issues, these problems where there are no problems. Although I will say maybe kids shouldn't be on social media, but I think that's up to parents to police that. Not Big Brother, not big government. But then, I should say, a lot of these legislators are lawyers. They know better. They know this is unconstitutional. They know it's going to be challenged, and they know we're going to spend $800 an hour to hire their friends as outside counsel to defend this nonsense.

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Well, I think what the most confusing thing is, and I don't know if people are really speaking about this much, but what is social media anymore? Because last time I checked, Metta owns WhatsApp. There's a whole host of other things that we do on our phones that are considered social media adjacent. So at what point do you draw the line? And I think a lot of these big social media companies are going to fight it using that vantage point, not only from a constitutional perspective, but where do you draw the line? I think where there's no clear line and you throw it to the courts, a lot of times you get decisions and opinions that aren't good for public policy.

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Can we just mention again in terms of intellectual and legislative consistency that they're passing all these child labor laws, making this while where kids can go and work on school nights and for eight plus hours a night and all this nonsense. When a lot of young people make a living at home on social media as influencers, safely in the comfort of their home with their parents supervision. Why is it okay for some kid to go work at McDonald's or out in a field or somewhere when they could be at home safely on social media? What am I? I'm just getting myself worked up, Rodney. Rodney Jacobs, thank you so much for being here. Please come back again and visit us on Because Miami.

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Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Billy. I appreciate your time.

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Joe for Royales Home could be yours for the right price.

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The Miami City Commissioner's house is going up for auction to help pay for the 63 million dollar judgment against him.

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But the Miami Commissioner is saying, not so fast. He's fighting this.

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Corroyo insists he can keep the home.

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The law says that I have homestead.

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Jeff Gutchis is the attorney for the plaintiffs, the owners of Ball and Chain Property Owners in Little Havana who won last year a 63.5 million dollar corruption judgment in federal civil court against Miami Commissioner Joe Correlio. Now, they are trying to collect. Jeff Gutchis is with us now. Jeff, is that true? What Commissioner Correlio says there that his house in Coconet Grove is homesteaded, and as a result, under Florida law, the state constitution, you cannot seize that and sell that out from under him at an auction on the courthouse steps next month.

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So I think what's undisputed is the house has not been homesteaded since October 2016. And Correo's claim that it is now, once again, homesteaded is that after the trial started in this case, and he saw the testimony against him, he moved out of his home in Little Havana and moved back to Coconet Grove, all of a sudden claiming that that was his permanent residence and protected by Homestead.

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This is basically a litigation tactic because Florida is famous for this. O. J. Simpson moved here so that when he lost the civil case, the wrongful death case in California against the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown, that they could not take his house in West Kendall. The Enron executives, of course, fled Texas and moved to Florida to be protected by this law. You have filed a response to this homestead claim that is pretty devastating, not only in that Joe Correo seems to have almost defrauded or is attempting to defraud the state with this homestead claim, but also this matter has been previously litigated where he swore to a court that he did not live in this house, and now he's trying to have his pastalitos and eat them, too.

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Absolutely. In fact, in April, when the trial started, he paid his rent in April, and it was only after the trial started that he gave notice he was moving out and moving back to Cocona Grove.

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That's how well the trial was going. I remember that break in the trial, and there was pretty devastating testimony that clearly... I mean, if you had to score the thing, it was clearly going the plaintiff's way at that point. So that was obviously why he got desperate. But also there's a further allegation in your motion. Which is absolutely stunning. And I tried to bring this to people's attention in real-time back in 2022. But as Roy would say- No one's listening. Nobody's listening. So the redistricting process in the city of Miami, really redistricting process anywhere, is a pretty sacred process. Drawing the lines of where your house is or where your house isn't, who's going to represent you, who you get to vote for, who you don't get to vote for. This is the ultimate work that the government does to either franchise or disenfranchize. It seems here you're alleging almost the entire redistricting process in the city of Miami, which has already been found by a federal judge to have been racially gerrymandered, and it's now waiting another decision from a federal judge about that. But you claim that that entire process, much like your claim in the trial last year that Joe Correo weaponized and corrupted almost the entirety of these government agencies, but you're saying he also corrupted the redistricting process, not for the good of the community or the city or the constituents, but for his own personal financial gain.

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Right. He manipulated the maps, had the maps drawn specifically so that his house in Cocona Grove would be taken out of district 2 and moved into district 3 through a little weird triangle in the map that came down just to get his house. It was literally the last house in the map and pulled him into D3, specifically so he could move back in to claim Homestead if he needed to when the case went to trial.

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In fact, what Joe Correo did was he split up Coconut Grove, which, Roy, is the oldest neighborhood in Miami. Not just the oldest neighborhood, it is older than the city itself. It existed pre-incorporation. That's what he did just his benefit. Suddenly, a line that cruised perfectly along US One all of a sudden jumps down a few blocks to net his house in there. Also, disenfranchizing his neighbors who have forever lived in Coconut Grove and been represented by district 2. It's just an amazing piece of corruption. Speaking of which, I saw this reported. You, Jeff Gutchis, you said that you were compensated about $2.6 million in this case to win 63.5 million. But the city of Miami spent somewhere upwards of $15 million to lose $63.5 million. What is going on with the disparity in these attorneys' fees here?

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I don't know the exact figures. My understanding is that $15 million figure encompasses two cases, the second Madrum case with the ball on chain. My understanding was the Croyo case is somewhere around $8 million, which is still a lot of money. But obviously, there are a lot of law firms and lawyers in town that are making a very nice living out of defending what a federal judge has called an abuse of process, shocking to the conscience, reprehensible behavior. And it's amazing that the city is still paying all these lawyers to defend this conduct that's already been found to shock the conscience.

[00:32:24]

Now it seems you're going to litigate it all over again. There is a new complaint, not only against the city itself and Joe Corrello, but against another 10 individual city employees who, in their various capacities, City Attorney Victoria Mendez, City Manager Art Noriega, Assistant City Attorney Rachel Duhly, You have the zoning director, Dan Goldberg, the building director, Ace Morero, and various others who, according to the evidence that came out in the trial last year, all these people were part of this weaponization and this apparent conspiracy to target these specific property owners in a political vendetta that Joe Correo targeted them for. Now, this is a 124-page complaint that reads like a RICO indictment against the city. There are some bombshell evidence, I mean, smoking gun evidence, emails from former police chiefs, an email from the building director himself talking about meetings and specific targeting of your clients and these property owners. Tell me a little bit about this new complaint. It also seems like all of this evidence has already been litigated. Is that what happened here? This was all born out of what you learned from that last trial?

[00:33:40]

Yeah. Really, what's amazing is the first case was filed in 2018 by Bill and Martin, and they just sued Correio individually, and they didn't sue on behalf of any of their companies. And they were just saying, Look, this conduct is outrageous. It needs to stop. We asked a federal judge to stop it, and we didn't get that order. And then they moved to dismiss our complaint that was denied, and they appealed it and moved to stay the case. And they did that twice. And so we were under a stay for literally four years until right before trial, a month before trial, the stay was lifted. And I said, fine, we'll go to trial without any discovery and just call these witnesses. And that's what we did. And what was amazing is once we started calling the witnesses, we learned all this other stuff, all this other evidence about all this other wrongdoing and how it had become. After Emilio González was forced to resign by Correo for refusing to weaponize the government against Bill Fuller and Martin Penilla, a new city manager came in, Art Noriega. And Art, within months, literally had the meeting you referenced with the building director, where they in the entire city attorney's office, and the director of code, and they brainstorm ways to tighten their policies to go after Fuller's properties and shut them down.

[00:35:02]

And that's literally in the text message. The next day, you start seeing official city emails going around with a list of the properties. Within months, they had changed the ordinances, and they had shut down Ball and Chain. They eventually shut down Takaria's. The testimony from the police chief, Acevedo, he was shocked when he came to Miami for the first time and met with the city manager himself, who was hiding around the corner from in our areas when there was a full-fledged police raid going on. He had never seen that before. And that all came out at trial. And so during the trial, I was saying, Holy cow. Not only are we going to win this case, but We need to sue the city because the city became not only involved, but you have to prove an official policy of the city to target somebody. We had testimony from the Chief Kalina that it became an official policy. Correio admitted it became an official policy. It was in the text messages saying it was an official policy. Then we had evidence of widespread and pervasive customer practice. Once we had that evidence from the trial, we had to file a new lawsuit on behalf of all the entities.

[00:36:20]

What's extraordinary about this is if you read this complaint, also if you read your reply to the Homestead claim, it appears as though over the last four, five, six I guess since about 2017, 2018, the entirety of Miami government, whether it was hiring a new city manager or building director or zoning director or promoting people internally or forcing people out of the government or redistricting the city. This all seems to be in furtherance of this personal political vendetta that Joe Carreo has against these particular property owners and business owners who just made the terrible mistake of exercising their First Amendment rights in supporting his opponent in the 2017 election. But it appears that all of the Miami government was corrupted, almost part and parcel of this conspiracy. Is that accurate?

[00:37:13]

Yeah. If you didn't play along, you were forced out. I think there's a lot of city employees who did not play along and have been demoted or pushed aside while others who willingly joined in have been promoted.

[00:37:27]

Which is why we call it a Miami Mafia. You, of identify it as the Coroyo Cabal, with a very helpful Riko-like exhibit, a family tree that shows exactly how the corruption plays out in the city of Miami, which is incredibly helpful for any of you playing the Because Miami Home game. This is a really simple guide, an easy guide for you to understand how the Miami Mafia really works. Jeff Gutches, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for what you're doing. I know you'd probably rather not be doing this. I would With this show and having to prosecute these kinds of cases, but it seems inevitable in this town that we need this help. Jeff Gutches, Access Law Firm. Thank you.

[00:38:09]

Thank you.

[00:38:22]

You thought I was going to do a spit take there, didn't you? Yeah, I did.

[00:38:27]

A lot of electronic stuff in there.

[00:38:29]

I think I heard the sound of the Because Miami Wheel of Despair.

[00:38:34]

Yeah, we dusted it off. Literally had dust on it.

[00:38:37]

What are the categories there, the topics today on the Wheel of Despair?

[00:38:42]

Okay. I don't have papers, so I can't do the wrestling thing, but on my phone-I want all that butt.

[00:38:49]

Great. Oh, I should have used that one for the first segment with OMG, It's Wix. I forgot about that.

[00:38:56]

I eat butt all the time. We have, It's the Marijuana. It's spring break, blank checks, and the measles.

[00:39:07]

Oh, the measles are back. Much like the Wheel of Despair. Florida has brought the... We're making America great again by Bringing back the measles, which we eradicated in 2000. That's right. Unbelievable. So let's spin the wheel, Roy.

[00:39:25]

It's back. The measles.

[00:39:30]

Since I was already all fired up about it, let's run the clip. Breaking news on the measles outbreak in Brouwer County. There are now nine confirmed cases right here in our community. We could tell you another confirmed in Polk County. Florida State Surgeon General Joseph Ladopo offered guidance saying it's up to the parents to decide if their children continue attending school. Today, doctors say this advice is dangerous, and Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is calling on Florida's top physician to do better. But his decision not to to declare a public health emergency and to leave all of the burden of deciding whether to send their children to school if they are unvaccinated on parents is grossly irresponsible. Wasserman Schultz is also calling for the termination of Dr. Ladopo. I don't know what to say about this. There's nine kids in an elementary school. The Florida Health Department is not answering any questions about it. Is it spreading because they're siblings of the infected kids? Also, how did this 10th case pop up somewhere else in Polk County? How... And Ladopo, the surgeon general of the state of Florida, is telling parents, You make a decision about whether or not your kids go to school.

[00:40:43]

But the truth is that if someone's not vaccinated and has no immunity, nine times out of 10, they get exposed, they're going to get the measles. This is highly contagious and very dangerous. And thanks to modern medicine and science, we eradicated this back at the turn of the century, 24 years ago. And it is back here in Florida, and the state of Florida is not giving anybody information, is giving advice that is in direct contravention to science and all medical experts. For a legislature that represents right to life and children and their rights, kids are going to die because of this science denial and this irresponsability.

[00:41:29]

Kind a gross sterile lection of duty by the surgeon general here in the state, right?

[00:41:34]

I mean, it's homicidal, Roy. It's homicidal. I'm glad we kicked off the Wheel of Despair on the most despairing note. Let's just roll it, please.

[00:41:52]

You would think you're getting better with this topic, but it's actually not. It's spring break.

[00:41:58]

By the way, it's not It's been spring break yet. Oh, it's still the winter. But the city of Miami Beach is already back on their Jim Crow bullshit. They just don't know how to govern. They're so bad at it that they just immediately resort to demogogery and stereotyping and racism and scapegoating and finger-pointing. So they've got all sorts of crazy ideas. They want to shut down for two weekends in March. They want to shut down most of the public parking lots. The ones that they keep open, the garages. They want to charge $100 a car for. Of course, I don't even know what to say, but here's the thing. It's February, and Miami Beach is already out of control.

[00:42:45]

You can hear audio of what sounds like several gunshots fired after 8:00 PM Sunday night. Ninth Street between Ocean Drive and Collins Ave. It was all part of an especially violent weekend as spring break approaches. An off-duty cop had to take down Christian Gutierrez Sunday morning when police say he drunkenly fired his gun on 14th in Washington. Then they say he spit on a cop in a separate incident, 19-year-old Brian Rodriguez was arrested Sunday for attempted murder in the shooting of a 14-year-old boy.

[00:43:20]

Two things that I noticed here as my phone was going off on vibrate. Nobody's running. They're gun shots, but people are standing, turning around and watching what's going on. There's no running. Second of all, it sounded like the most egregious thing there was the spitting on the cop, according to whoever was the Yanker there.

[00:43:37]

It was pretty disgusting. Well, two things about that. First of all, Bad Boys 4 is in town filming.

[00:43:42]

In Los Angeles, by the way.

[00:43:44]

Well, but it's possible that people... They were in downtown Miami and Brickle. They were in Fort Lauderdale. It's possible that folks just thought that this was Will Smith running around South Beach. That's why- He is. Joe Pantz.

[00:43:56]

Let me see what's going on.

[00:43:57]

No, spoiler alert. He's actually not- Spoiler alert. He's not a part of the franchise anymore. But anybody watching the surveillance video that Roy is talking about, you can see people just casually looking around as these gunshots are going off. But here's the thing. It's not a particular weekend. Now, does it get more crowded on certain weekends? Is it tougher to police? Absolutely. But they're not doing anything to actually address the ongoing problem that is Ocean Drive, that is the entertainment district. We've talked on this show before, Roy. I got a plan on to fix Ocean Drive. They've had ideas for 20 years, and they haven't done a damn thing about it. This is not a particular weekend. This is not a particular demographic. This is an ongoing problem that they refuse. They have no political will or leadership skills to deal with. Let's spin the wheel, Roy.

[00:44:55]

It's the marijuana.

[00:44:56]

Finally, we have landed on the actual culprit here in Miami Beach. It is the devil's lettuce, Roy. That's what it is.

[00:45:05]

I woke up today as a Christian. I wanted to label such as that. It's weed.

[00:45:13]

I will tell you, we fought so hard for progress in Miami Beach, and now they are turning back the clock. We've got the measles back. We are recriminalizing marijuana. In the city of Miami Beach, what police officers were doing for small personal quantities of marijuana, not for dealers with big quantities or people who are selling on the streets, that's still illegal. But if you have less than 20 ounces of marijuana on you, you would get a civil citation. They would write you a ticket, in no small part because the state attorney's office said, We do not have the man or woman power or the ability to prosecute simple marijuana possession cases, so don't even bother making those arrests and wasting our time. So I went, Roy, to the City of Miami Beach Commission meeting last week to try to talk some reason into them. Good Billy Corbin, business owner in Miami Beach for 20 years. In 2013, over 64% of Miami Beach voters supported a straw ballot to decriminalize possession of small personal quantities of marijuana. In 2016, over 71% of Floridians overwhelmingly passed a state constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana statewide. But in Miami Beach, it passed with 80% of the vote.

[00:46:23]

Commissioner Dominguez, you were elected with 61% of the vote. Commissioner Fernandez, 59% of the vote. Mayor Minor, 54%. Commissioner Suarez, 52.5%. That means that marijuana is more popular with your constituents than everybody sitting up there today. That's nice music, by the way. I just wanted to remind... Thank you. That's my ringtone. I just wanted to remind them of that, that their constituents like marijuana more than they like them and will vote and support marijuana more so than they will vote and support them. Naturally, this thing passed 4:00 to 2:00. One of the commissioners was absent, but she would have voted against it as well, but it still would have passed 4:00 or 3:00. But here's the bottom line. This is just a license to harass. We have 60 years of data, and we know that Black Americans and White Americans use marijuana at almost the exact same rate, but that black people are almost four times more likely to be arrested for basic marijuana possession than white people are. There's no question that this is going to be abused. The police have plenty of tools already in their arsenal. There's no reason to basically use this as an excuse to just harass a very particular demographic.

[00:47:39]

More so, we know, and we've talked about it on this show in years past, the city of Miami Beach has passed Jim Crow laws like this before, against filming police. Basically, they only got to use that unconstitutional law 13 times. I'm going to give you three guesses, Roy, what the color was of all 13 of the people they arrested on that bullshit unconstitutional, contemptive cop charge. Provo. You got it, Roy. Actually, I should say, You're goddamn right, meatball. I eat butt all the time. I want all of that butt. Cocains. Spring.

[00:48:17]

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