By Cliff Dunn
Club members at Island City Health & Fitness may recall a few days last month when their gym’s facilities (showers, bathrooms) were without water due to the theft of the backflow valve connection behind the club and its mutual backyard with the now-former location of the Poverello Food Bank. Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO) officials, headed up by Oakland Park District lead detective Armando Hernandez, say that all told, twenty four (24) thefts of backflow valves occurred in the City of Oakland Park. The suspects, Gannon Wing and John Martin, charged with twenty three (23) of the crimes, are believed to have been active in Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties, fencing their loot at a scrap business in Collier County (Greater Naples/Fort Meyers).
Wing, 20, and Martin, 29, are charged with 197 and 163 counts each, respectively. Among their mutual counts are twenty seven (27) grand thefts, twenty three (23) for criminal mischief, twenty three (23) for possession of burglary tools, and twenty three (23) for tampering with utility services. In addition to BSO/Oakland Park, the World’s Muckiest Quinella has charges pending from ten other law enforcement agencies, including BSO/Tamarac, BSO/North Lauderdale, BSO/Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale Police Department, Wilton Manors Police Department, Sunrise Police Department, Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office (PBSO), Boca Raton Police Department, Port St. Lucie Police Department, and Collier County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO).
Investigators are developing leads concerning a Miami-Dade County-area scrap yard, where the suspects may have also been peddling their stolen parts. Anyone with information is asked to contact any of the aforementioned agencies.
Friends, Lovers, Fruit Flies and Strange Bedfellows
(Or, New York Gay Marriage, Part 2)
Readers may recall from last week’s Open for Business that the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) is the organization that led the legal battle – conducted famously through the efforts of attorneys Ted Olson – a conservative stalwart, Bush-43 Justice Department mandarin and widower of a 9/11 victim – and David Boies, a Democratic power broker – which challenged California’s gay marriage ban (a trial court judge struck down the law last month, but the decision is being appealed).
As mentioned last week, an unusually large number of Wall Street whales and captains-of-industry-types have stepped up in recent years to show their support for (and willingness to donate heavily in the support of) same-sex marriage initiatives.
An event last fall in support of New York State same-sex marriage was held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Columbus Circle, and was chaired by three Republicans: Ken Mehlman, the openly gay former Republican National Committee chairman and current head of Global Public Affairs for private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company (KKR); Peter Thiel of hedge fund Clarium Capital; and billionaire Paul Singer, founder and CEO of hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation and the philanthropic Paul E. Singer Family Foundation, which supports numerous charitable works, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, the Food Bank of New York City, the New York City Police Foundation, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education Singer Prize for Excellence in Secondary Teaching.
(Singer, whose gay son married his partner in Massachusetts, gave close to half a million dollars of his own money, and raised another $500,000 to support legalization of gay marriage in the Empire State.)
The New York Times reported last year that financiers who either attended the fundraiser or made a donation to the campaign included KKR principal Henry Kravis, as well as associates Sir Deryck Maughan, Alex Navab, Scott Nuttall, John Pfeffer, Lewis Eisenberg, and David Sorkin.
“Other Wall Street executives,” The Times reported, “included Blackstone Group’s Garrett Moran; Daniel Loeb of hedge fund Third Point Capital; Jay Sammons of the private equity shop Carlyle Group; Seth Klarman of hedge fund Baupost; Nick Stone of TPG; Todd Malan, in-house lobbyist at Goldman Sachs; and media investor Leo Hindery of InterMedia Partners.”
During the AFER fundraiser, billionaire Singer related the story of paging through the wedding album of “my son and son-in-law,” after they were legally married. “At the moment they are pioneers,” he said, “although I felt like a loving father and father-in-law, not a pioneer, as we were looking at the pictures.”
Overheard
“I’d like to hear directly from the gays who love Santorum despite Santorum’s belief that gay people are no better than dog %#@!ers and child rapists, his promise to repeal the DADT repeal, his desire to write anti-gay bigotry into the U.S. Constitution, his opposition to gay adoption and his belief that consensual gay sex should be a felony. If Santorum’s gay friends love Santorum as much as Santorum loves his gay friends, I’m sure they would be only too glad to speak to the media about their love of Santorum.”
– Syndicated columnist Dan Savage, speaking about the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and 2012 Republican presidential candidate.