Tom Cowart and Denise Orr never liked their grapefruit tree that much. So when the state said it was infected with citrus canker and the cutting crew came to remove it in December 2000, they didn't protest.
"I was really nice to them," Cowart said. "I even gave them sodas."
But when a crew came to take their tangerine tree last February, things weren't so cordial.
Cowart asked for a search warrant. The cutters said they didn't need one.
Cowart told them to get off his property. They said they didn't have to.
The best solution is to make each of those thugs famous. Their faces and names should be posted in high resolution on the Internet, which never forgets.
In canker war, common sense becomes a casualty
Published February 4, 2003
Tom Cowart and Denise Orr never liked their grapefruit tree that much. So when the state said it was infected with citrus canker and the cutting crew came to remove it in December 2000, they didn't protest.
"I was really nice to them," Cowart said. "I even gave them sodas."
But when a crew came to take their tangerine tree last February, things weren't so cordial.
Cowart asked for a search warrant. The cutters said they didn't need one.
Cowart told them to get off his property. They said they didn't have to.
A tense standoff ensued on the front lawn of Cowart's Fort Lauderdale home, with Florida Department of Agriculture officials and Broward Sheriff's Office deputies being summoned. It ended with Cowart pepper-sprayed, pinned to the ground by three officers and arrested.
"They put him in the back of the cruiser, made him sit there for something like three hours," said Judy Budinger, a neighbor who witnessed the events and whose husband, Gene, photographed them. "They didn't leave until the crew had cut the tree down to its stump and put it through the grinder."
Cowart spent the night in jail, charged with resisting arrest without violence and obstructing justice.
"Over a citrus tree," Cowart said. "My neighbors were like, `Tom, I can't believe what they did to you.' It's like something out of a Stephen King novel."
His nightmare isn't over. A judge dismissed the two misdemeanor charges in November, but the state has filed a motion to reinstate them. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 13 before Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren.
The war on citrus canker drags on. Common sense has been a casualty.
That this case got to this point shows how emotional the fight has become.
Many South Florida homeowners say they don't trust the Department of Agriculture and its ham-handed campaign to eradicate a disease whose threat might be overstated. State officials say South Florida homeowners are naive and don't realize how serious a threat the disease is to the citrus industry.
Cowart declined previous offers to have the charges basically dropped, because he sees this as a matter of principle. He feels as if the state trampled on his rights, even if his tree was infected.
"The way they marched onto my property, you'd think they owned it," said Cowart, 50, a fence contractor.
Jim Facciolo, Cowart's attorney, said, "I don't know that there's a citrus canker exemption to the U.S. Constitution. Even if everything the state says is factually correct and the tree was infected, there's no reason why the Department of Agriculture couldn't get a search warrant."
Mark Fagan, a Department of Agriculture spokesman, said state law mandated an infected tree's removal, even without a search warrant or the owner's consent. "We'd be breaking the law if we didn't remove the tree," he said.
At the time, the state's policy of removing "exposed" trees within 1,900 feet of infected trees had been halted by a court order.
Fagan was called to the scene last Feb. 7 and witnessed the confrontation. He said there have been only a handful of arrests in connection with the eradication program, which began in early 2000, and Cowart's might have been the first involving pepper spray.
"He became very argumentative," Fagan said. "It took three officers to bring him down. He's a big guy."
"They had no right to do that to me," Cowart said. "I was on my property. It was pretty Gestapo-like."
According to the arrest report filed by sheriff's Deputy Armando Enrique, Cowart was "making threats at Department of Agriculture" employees. But Cowart said he never threatened anyone.
"I didn't hear any threats," Budinger said. "All I heard him say was, `Where's your warrant?' and `If you don't have a warrant, get off my property.'"
In her November ruling dismissing the charges, Judge Lerner-Wren wrote: "The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution ... does not allow the warrantless entry into property by the Department [of Agriculture]."
Cowart said he didn't fully understand the circumstances that put his tangerine tree on the cutting block. He said he received a report on Jan. 3, 2002, indicating his tree had canker, but he never saw an inspector take a leaf sample.
"I didn't consent to anything," Cowart said. "The tree looked the same as it always did for the last 10 years. It was loaded with fruit."
Fagan said Cowart had received an "immediate final order" in January notifying him that the tree had tested positive for canker and was subject to removal after 10 days.
Cowart said he received the order on Jan. 14, but it said he had 30 days to fight it. He said his girlfriend called the state's canker hotline a week later to request a pathology report. He said the report didn't come before the cutting crew did.
Fagan said the Jan. 3 report was the pathology report and that he "tried to explain it to [Cowart] in layman's terms" on the day of his arrest.
Cowart said nothing was clearly explained that day.
"Fagan was running around like King Kong, saying, `We're going to cut your tree down.' I'm a reasonable guy. I've complied with this before. If he just said, `Here's the pathology report, your tree's infected and we have a warrant to remove it,' I would have felt like I'd exhausted all my legal options."
Said Budinger: "They could have easily had a conversation instead of a confrontation and come back another day."
The battle goes on.
Michael Mayo's column is published Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. He can be reached at
mmayo@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4508.
Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Questions or comments? | Paid archives | Start a newspaper subscription | How to advertise | Privacy policy
Copyright 2003, Sun-Sentinel Co. & Sou
FYI. Another case of LEOs ignoring the higest law and following "orders". Ominous.
I've seen reviews of "the ballad', I don't know if I want to make a hero out of folks who snap and go on rampages though...
