Posted on 04/14/2006 8:10:05 AM PDT by Elle Bee
BY CHRIS TITTEL Citizen Staff KEY WEST - There was no evidence to send former Public Works Superintendent Gilbert Suarez to jail or force him to pay back thousands of dollars detectives suspect he stole from parking meters over a four-year period, prosecutors said Thursday. After Suarez reached a plea agreement with the State Attorney's Office, Circuit Court Judge Mark Jones sentenced him on Monday to five years probation on grand theft charges for stealing change from parking meters on May 15, 2005. Suarez, 44, also was sentenced to two years probation on drug charges for cocaine, marijuana and paraphernalia found during a search of his home. The sentences will run concurrently. Suarez agreed to forfeit about $11,000 in vacation and sick pay from the city as restitution. Without proof that Suarez took large amounts of money, however, Chief Assistant State Attorney Jeff Overby said there is no way his office could have built any better case than it did. "The city's own records do not support conclusively how much money, if any, is missing," he said. "If admissible evidence were to come to our attention that Mr. Suarez committed other crimes , we would prosecute him for those crimes." Suarez was arrested on May 15 after police officers, responding to a tip from one of Suarez's co-workers, placed marked quarters in meters along Whitehead Street. Officers said they watched Suarez empty the meters on a Sunday and return to his home. When detectives interviewed him at his home a short time later, they found $2,078.66 in coins in Suarez's work truck, including $28.75 in specially marked quarters. They also found unused quarter wrappers, small amounts of drugs and some drug paraphernalia, according to the arrest warrant. Tellers at a bank and a credit union told detectives that Suarez, his wife, Rhea, and his mother, Belkies, would bring about $2,000 in quarters each week and exchange them for cash. According to the State Attorney's Office, neither of the financial institutions keeps records on coins that are exchanged for cash. Without records, Overby said, prosecutors would have to rely on the tellers' memories of the dates, times and amounts involved in the coin exchanges. "While anyone may suspect that Mr. Suarez took other quarters, we have no admissible evidence to prove that he, in fact, misappropriated any other monies," Overby said. Chief Assistant State Attorney Catherine Vogel said that she called City Manager Julio Avael in late March to ask for city financial records that would show the amounts of money that had been lost. "I wanted to be sure there was no stone left unturned," Vogel said. "Julio Avael told me that the city could not document the losses." Without knowing the amounts lost, Vogel told Avael that the best they could hope for in terms of restitution would be to get Suarez to forfeit his right to accrued sick and vacation time, valued at $11,379.25, as part of a plea deal. Avael recalled the conversation with Vogel. "She told me they were after $11,000," Avael said. "I told her: 'We need more.' She said: 'We need proof.'" Avael said city officials who scoured financial accounts could not find any significant fluctuations in meter revenues during Suarez's tenure. "We check on a day-to-day basis how much money was deposited," he said. "We were looking at it every which way we could. We couldn't find any difference." Avael said that city Finance Director Roger Wittenberg then advised that all that the city could hope for in restitution was the $11,000-plus figure. On March 22, City Attorney Bob Tischenkel signed a one-sentence letter to Assistant State Attorney Val Winter that the city would seek $11,379.25 in restitution. On Thursday, Avael told Bill Becker on U.S. 1 Radio's Morning Magazine that although he felt the amount of restitution should have been much higher, the amount ultimately was "an area that we don't have any control over." "I was consulted early on and gave my recommendations," Avael said. "Certainly, my recommendations were not heeded." Avael said on the radio show that he had discussed jail time for Suarez and a minimum of $50,000 in restitution. He later told The Citizen that he had not made that recommendation to Vogel of the State Attorney's Office. "I did not talk to Catherine Vogel about the amount," he said. "That's a situation that has to do with the attorneys and the court system, which I was not a part of. Certainly, the attorneys, the ones who made that decision, obviously it had to do with the type of case that we had." Avael told The Citizen that he wanted to seize property that Suarez had allegedly bought with city parking meter funds and set restitution at $100,000. He also said that the city has no plans to rehire Suarez. Suarez's sentence of five years probation on third-degree grand theft charges is the maximum probation he could get without having to go to prison. According to the State Attorney's Office, Suarez was not eligible for prison under a points system reserved for those who are tried on felony charges. The system takes into consideration the suspect's primary offense, additional offenses, whether or not a victim was injured and any prior record that the suspect might have. Points are assigned to each factor. It takes 44 points to send a suspect to jail: Suarez scored only 17.6 points. Of the 17.6 points, 16 were assigned to the primary offense, possession of cocaine, while 0.2 points were assigned to each of the additional offenses of possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia. The additional charge of grand theft yielded 1.2 points. ctittel@keysnews.com Suarez case tough to prosecute
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ASA "Bend" Overby couldn't make this case
[Key West City Manager Julio Avael] also said that the city has no plans to rehire Suarez.
This was a consideration??
Anyone want to apply for the open position of Coin Collector in Key West? There seems to be an opening.
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I can't see why they couldn't trace the marked quarters to the bank and shore up the case. It all sounds rather slap hazzard. While it's probable he did it, I'd hate to be arrested there.
With no city records and no prosecutions I would imagine that a lot more has gone missing over the years
You would think the IRS would be interested.
What about the wife and Mother in law?
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Conviction on stronger charges would have probably required too much work for happy hour prosecutors here in the Keys.
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<soapbox>
I think incompitence is an esencial part to the natural economics balance here. If homes spike up to a million and the workforce leaves, few will continue to pay that to live in such a screwball place, and the price of houseing either theoreticly goes back down or wages go way up.
But instead we elect people who scramble to direct taxpayer money to "low income" houseing that interfears with the natural process at great expence. That won't stop (paying bureaucrats to try to correct a self-correcting economic system) until we can educate a better generation of eloctorate.
</soapbox>
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No way...
Is it in the papers?
the corruption down here is no Joke ...here's another .... they actually made this cop chief of the Key West Police Department after he was fired as a deputy sheriff for having sex with a minor in his patrol car and his house ... the kid was a sheriff's cadet
It’s Okay For a Cop (the New Key West Police Chief) To Have sex With a Minor (17 yr old boy)
give me a moment and I'll dig up an even better one
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Convicted on FBI Tapes @ Nudist Bar, Key West Bag Man Gets Only Probation From Retiring Judge
You can't make this stuff up
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Hey, I’ll look into those two stories when there’s more time. But are you sure that they hired Saurez back after stealing 200k? That just seems so improbably that, well, I want to have a little fun with it if it’s true..
different job same corrupt city government ... I'm told he is also in the substidized city housing authority
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