Clown Replaces Busted Hallandale Beach Mayor
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Hallandale Beach City Hall has a new clown on top as a result of the felony corruption arrest of Mayor Joy Cooper: Vice Mayor Keith London
London takes over the dais at the next meeting and promised the Sun-Sentinel that he would bring unity to City Hall.
Don’t count on London living up to his pledge based on his history of immature, divisive antics.
Hallandale Beach’s sharply divided Commission needs a statesman to run it smoothly. That’s not London, unless you consider the Three Stooges statesmen.
Browardbeat.com is not exaggerating how unhinged London has acted. Look at the video below from Hallandale Beach Commissioner Annabelle Taub’s Facebook page of London harassing his political opponent Cooper during a recent meeting.
This is what I go through in my meetings. Tonight, a very dangerous man, Keith London, moved from intimidating me and the Mayor, to intimidating and harassing members of the public. Not sure what recourse there is….
Posted by Anabelle Taub on Wednesday, 10 January 2018
It’s hard to believe this, but London is an adult with a responsible elected job.
Larry, Moe and Curly got paid for having no self control.
In Hallandale Beach, London may be rewarded differently. He is expected to run for mayor in an election eventually held to fill Cooper’s seat. And he has a good chance of winning.
After all, this is Hallandale Beach….the best show in town. But far from the best government.
XXXXX
My predictions at this point on the charges against Joy Cooper. The caveat is that I have only read media reports of the arrest and not the court documents and eventual evidence:
(1) Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper cops a plea. Would she risk a trial when the FBI has her on video? She is through in politics because even in Hallandale Beach it would be hard to recover from the sleazy details of the case.
Or,
(2) The case is so weak that Cooper walks, or just gets slapped on the wrist.
The Satz office record of winning these type of cases is not great. The details of the charges reported in the media are shady, but is it a crime? It appears the transaction could have been legal bundling?
Also working in Cooper favor is her hiring attorney Larry Davis, who has successfully defended numerous politicians against charges of wrongdoing. Davis helped former Tamarac Mayor Beth Talabisco get a not guilty verdict in May 2015 after she was charged with corruption stemming from campaign contributions.
Most of all, I wonder why the FBI passed on the case and turned it over to Satz?
We will see what direction this is going when more of the details are revealed.
January 26th, 2018 at 1:27 pm
Larry Davis to the rescue..He will state entrapment.He will state the rat Koslow set her up.He will state This disgraced lawyer,lobbyist orchestrated the whole thing to get in good with the Feds etc.Make no mistake Cooper is in trouble.I say play it out.Draft up a plea and be done with it.The power of money.For what 10g in play money.I bet her husband talked her into it.Throw him under the bus.One strategy.Either way Joy is in trouble.
January 26th, 2018 at 1:49 pm
Is that a Sachs Media crisis communications flyer on the dais?
January 26th, 2018 at 3:28 pm
Uh, a Mayor of a City gets arrested for multiple felonies and you decide to blast the VM? Seems childish. Cooper must have known for quite some time she was in trouble which might explain her erratic behavior and inability to lead her Commission.
Moral of the Story, don’t ever accept money in a doughnut bag…its been recycled by people partial to fried dough.
January 26th, 2018 at 8:55 pm
To note.Cooper here is not the only one going in cuffs.There is more.Unrelated.Different city.Same county.Again there more elected officals going out in cuffs.To the SAO what is taking you so long with above stated reference.Talk about slow.Get moving with the others…
January 27th, 2018 at 10:22 am
Robert, never in a million years is Satz going to file on charges on Mckenzie before he tries to get reelected in 2020. He already has little or no support in the black community, he won’t risk it. Remember, Satz sat on the Ritter campaign stuff for years before flushing it.
January 27th, 2018 at 2:44 pm
I haven’t seen a political circus like Hallandale Beach since Tamarac a few years ago. Man, I’d give anything to be covering those meetings.
FROM BUDDY:
Broward has a long history of circus-like City Halls, which seems to rotate from place to place.
Some of the problem appeared in the 1960-70s with the influx of new faces from the Northeast on City Commissions. The newbies fought with the Broward commissioners of the more-rural past.
There were brutal City Hall fights over the pace of growth.
Some Commissioners in the 1970s seemed awed by the rich developers flooding into the area and the bags of money they threw around. Invited to fancy restaurants and parties and given outright gifts, a handful of commissioners quickly became mouthpieces for developers. Other commissioners fought them and a circus-like atmosphere developed.
(What kind of gifts?
I interviewed a West Broward commissioner in his house in the late 1970s. I noticed that the floor in every room was covered with a different pattern of tile. I asked him and the reply was, “I got it as a gift from (he mentioned a major developer) who had some left over from different projects.” Yes, I wrote it.
Other gifts took the form of cash in brown paper bags. I’ll keep this one vague: When I was young I worked in West Broward. About once a month, I noticed the mayor would come by and leave with a paper bag. I never checked to see what was in that bag, but I can assure you it was not lunch.)
Lauderhill was a mess when I covered it in the 1970s and it remained a circus for two decades. There was Sunrise, of course, under the colorful Mayor John Lomelo, who later went to prison for corruption surround development.
Tamarac and Margate were combative in the 70s, too.
Hollywood’s City Commission in the 1980 through the 1990s was sharply divided as long time residents fought some commissioners and the mayor over development.
Dania has always been problematic.
And so has Hallandale Beach, where the factions are just as uncivil as places like Tamarac, Lauderhill and Margate in the past. The difference is that this is the era of cell phones and social media. If you act like a jerk like Keith London, you are called out publicly.
(An aside: Unlike Tamarac and some of the other West Broward cities, Hallandale has always had a reputation for having the best zoning and permitting that money can buy.
When Mafia financier Meyer Lansky opened a casino in the 1940s, he went to a community where he knew he would not be bothered by authorities — Hallandale.
Continuing that pattern, developers got almost anything they wanted from commissioners in Hallandale for decades. The is why the city’s roads are paralyzed by traffic and the sun in the city is blotted out by concrete.)
January 28th, 2018 at 9:07 am
There has to be something wrong with the case. If it was a good one, the feds would be prosecuting it.
January 28th, 2018 at 10:22 am
@6 – The feds can only prosecute violations of federal law. State elections, including campaign finance, are only regulated by state law. If the feds can only find violations of state law, then all they can do is turn the evidence over to the State Attorney.
If the State Attorney turns out to be incompetent when it comes to prosecuting the politically powerful, then the voters should hold the State Attorney accountable for that. However, as Broward County voters have repeatedly proven, they are unable or unwilling to do so.
January 28th, 2018 at 11:16 am
Buddy I am surprised at your bias and criticisms of Keith London and I did not believe you lived in Hallandale. Your editorials historically do not stoop to the level of some commenters. I do know London is not a career politician as Cooper was and surely once he participated in the governing of HB he realized what a pay to play place it was. Sanders and Julian were her cohorts so Cooper faced no threat from London and assumed he would fade away. Sanders enriched his families efforts with votes for hundreds of thousands of dollars to the non-profits when he should have recused himself and Cooper never made a peep. Julian in recorded voice mail sunk his own ship.
Meanwhile, underhanded, questionable or illegal doings by Cooper continued, and now the charges. Either way, cleared or not, she likely will never be elected in HB again, which is good for HB. Local politics in many Broward municipalities are ugly, questionable and occasionally corrupt. Citizens and taxpayers are the last priority by many electeds. Lets see how things shake out in Hallandale before you slam what is left of the commission.
FROM BUDDY:
Mr. London’s views might be noble, but his actions are immature and childlike.
January 28th, 2018 at 2:52 pm
There is NO McKinzie Case as the ‘violations’ are bookkeeping errors basically WITHOUT INTENT and NO INTENT, NO CRIME.
January 29th, 2018 at 11:56 am
I agree with Buddy’s comments at the end. There’s a lot more here than what people are writing about.
The FBI had this on tape 6 years ago, in 2012. Crickets. Nothing from them. If there was a strong case, the FBI would be prosecuting.
The Dunkin Donuts bag of cash seems salacious. It proves that Koslow did something wrong. There is nothing illegal at all with anyone telling an elected official that they will raise them $10,000, and that it will come in a series of legal checks. That’s called bundling, it’s legal, and is accepted by most elected officials. Jeb! had a name for his bundlers, as do most Senate and Presidential candidates.
If Cooper knew that the contributions were going to be reimbursed, that would be a violation of campaign laws. Not money laundering. The news reports (never reliable) have indicated nothing about Cooper knowing that the contributions would be reimbursed.
If Cooper actually solicited the money or accepted it at City Hall, that would be a misdemeanor violation of campaign finance laws. I don’t think that if the FBI or their informant Koslow brought up the subject that this is a violation, as no elected official can ever prevent someone from bringing up a taboo topic.
If you followed the State Attorney’s persecution of Former Tamarac Mayor Beth Talabisco, they conclusively proved that they don’t understand Florida Campaign Finance laws by prosecuting Talabisco for a clearly legal contribution to a Political Committee. They may be using those same prosecutors to bring charges here for something that’s not illegal. Requesting or accepting bundled checks is legal, unless the recipient knew that the source of the money was illegal.
If there was a quid pro quo, that would be illegal. If that was the case, the FBI would have prosecuted many years ago.
January 29th, 2018 at 4:49 pm
@ # 10,
Thank you Judy for the explanation.