The Bad Karma Motel

Though she did appear as scheduled at the January 25 NAB hearing, Sandy never got a chance to testify. This was due in part to Schwartz's time-consuming questioning of police investigators, but also to Assistant City Attorney David Forestier's sudden announcement that a police lieutenant had overheard Vivian Rolon threaten the CI's life. The police witnesses and Sandy were immediately dismissed. At 12:30 a.m. the five-and-a-half-hour meeting was adjourned and the matter put off for one more month.

For Sandy, it wasn't a pleasant wait. In mid-January she had moved out of the Camelot and taken up residence in a small rental cottage farther north, just off Biscayne. Having fallen out of favor as a confidential informant, she says she was unable to find other work. Instead, she resorted to calling her supervisors in the Miami Police Department and demanding to be paid to give her testimony. When they refused, she threatened to not show up.

Then, on the evening of Sunday, February 19, three days before the rescheduled hearing, Sandy went out to walk her dogs. She hadn't thought to bring her jackknife, but it wouldn't have done her any good. As she later told Assistant City Attorney David Forestier, two men grabbed her from behind and dragged her behind the unlighted row of cottages where she lives. While one held her down, she said, the other used a small knife to carve shallow Xs on her cheeks and a deep slash on her left arm. After that they allegedly raped her and kicked her in the ribs. She recognized one of the assailants as a denizen of the boulevard. She would later tell NAB members that the men warned, "Don't show up Wednesday" and "This is what happens to snitches." (Sandy also made a statement to Metro-Dade police, but the alleged attack is still under investigation and the file has not been made available to the public.)

David Forestier introduced the assault into evidence at the meeting that Wednesday A as a way to stop Jonathan Schwartz from announcing the informant's real name in a public forum. When the ploy didn't work, Forestier vowed to pursue sanctions against the attorney for violating the privacy of a rape victim.

Hoping to put a stop to Schwartz's time-consuming litany of objections and questions, the board had prepared a list of guidelines for attorneys' conduct during hearings. (Schwartz has taken issue with the process, a civil procedure whose rules are more relaxed than those of criminal trials; among other things, hearsay testimony is allowed, as is the introduction of new evidence the other side hasn't yet had a chance to examine. "It's taking away people's property without due process," the Mesas' lawyer fumes.)

Once more, the ski-masked CI testified from behind the partition, recounting the procedure she and the detectives had followed for each undercover drug deal: Sitting in an unmarked police car, she is outfitted with a voice transmitter, searched, given ten dollars in city money, and sent off to make a buy. Afterward she walks back to the car, turns over the crack, is searched again, and gives a description of the person who sold her the drugs if the transaction wasn't videotaped or observed by a detective. Then she is given another ten dollars and makes another foray. The $35-per-buy fee she earns is paid later.

She told of how she turned down one dealer because the crack rocks he was trying to sell were too small, of a man named Cemetery who'd stopped her on the Metro's front doorstep to offer his wares, of a "very organized" crack dealer in Room 15 who packaged his five-dollar rocks in blue plastic bags and his ten-dollar rocks in green ones, and who had two prostitutes taking the drug orders.

Schwartz repeatedly brought up Sandy's criminal past, taking every opportunity to brand her a liar and claiming she participated in Operation Brothel solely in order to receive a reduction of what he calculated to be 70 years of prison time that she faced as a result of her 1994 grand-theft arrest. (At this David Forestier scoffed, "Cop killers don't get 35 years!") He alleged that her technique was to simply summon "her scumbag friends" wherever she wanted so she could simultaneously do her job and give her friends business with no risk of arrest. (Far from being her friends, Sandy retorted, the dealers "would have blasted me with little holes" had she told them she was working for the police.) Schwartz also questioned Lawrence Lewis, who for a time had lived next door to Sandy at the Metro; Lewis told the board Sandy had stolen from him and the Mesas and had tried to get him to sell her drugs, and that he'd seen her smoke marijuana and was told she smoked crack.

When Schwartz asked Sandy about her meetings with him and brought up the alleged bribery attempts, she wasn't permitted to answer because the matter was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. This led Schwartz to complain, "These ongoing investigations are just a ruse to keep her from answering questions!"