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Politics


STATE SENATE CANDIDATE REBUKED FOR "HOMOPHOBIC" CAMPAIGN AGAINST GAY FOE

Jessica Lipscomb February 26, 2020 10:49AM

Miami Gardens Councilman Erhabor Ighodaro Photo via City of Miami Gardens

Six candidates are vying to become the next state senator in Florida's 35th
District, a territory that includes parts of northern Miami-Dade County and the
southern portion of Broward. At a campaign event last Thursday, Miami Gardens
Councilman Erhabor Ighodaro, a Democrat, made his pitch for why he's the best
option for voters.

"We still have people who have values in the Democratic Party. And we have
values — we're gonna fight for our families, yes," he told supporters. "There is
an image that God says a marriage should look like, that families should look
like. And that's what we're gonna fight for."

Critics say the remarks seemed to be a response to Ighodaro's most formidable
opponent, state Rep. Shevrin Jones, the first openly gay black lawmaker elected
to the Florida Legislature. Yesterday the LGBTQ Victory Fund — a D.C.-based
political organization that works to elect LGBTQ candidates — admonished
Ighodaro for his comments and said they are representative of a larger
"homophobic" campaign against Jones.

"What we are seeing from Erhabor Ighodaro is not simply a homophobic record or
remark but an entire campaign aimed at inspiring hatred toward his opponent
because of his sexual orientation," Annise Parker, president and CEO of the
LGBTQ Victory Fund, stated in a news release. "Frankly, it is one of the most
homophobic campaigns we've seen from a Democratic candidate this year."



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The group posted a video of Ighodaro's speech on YouTube. The comments about
"family values" begin after the five-minute mark:
Ighodaro did not respond to emails from New Times last night asking him to
clarify his remarks and whether he would commit to protecting LGBTQ rights at
the state level if elected.

In addition to criticizing Ighodaro's comments at the campaign event, the LGBTQ
Victory Fund claims the candidate's "Family First" campaign slogan is an antigay
"dog whistle." The group says it is aware Ighodaro's campaign staff has
questioned voters in the district about "whether a gay candidate should
represent them."

Jones tells New Times he's aware of an Ighodaro "whisper campaign" targeting him
for his sexual orientation.



"I know this was a knock on me," Jones says. "And my advice to Councilmember
Ighodaro is if his plan is to represent the people of Senate District 35, focus
on what you're going to do for the people. Don't focus on me. People are looking
to somebody to go to Tallahassee to be their champion, not their judge."

Jones, who is a Christian, says Ighodaro's remarks about marriage are
"dangerous" in today's political climate.

"Those type of comments have no place in public service. We see enough of it
coming from Washington, D.C.," Jones says. "I mean, people are being murdered
and killed because of who they are."

Jones and Ighobaro are two of five Democrats in the race for Senate District 35.
Former state Sen. Daphne Campbell, of Scientology pizza-party fame, is also in
the mix. Josue Larose, a serial candidate who has been cited for more than 2,000
violations of state election law, is the lone Republican vying for the seat.

To date, Ighobaro has raised a little more than $67,000 in his run for office.
Jones leads the pack with nearly $211,000 in campaign contributions.
KEEP MIAMI NEW TIMES FREE... Since we started Miami New Times, it has been
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way. With local media under siege, it's more important than ever for us to rally
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Jessica Lipscomb is the former news editor of Miami New Times.
Follow:
Twitter: @jessicalipscomb



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Crime


DISBARRED ANTI-VIDEO GAME ATTORNEY WANTS TO SAVE THE PARKLAND SHOOTER

Joshua Ceballos April 20, 2022 9:00AM

Disbarred attorney Jack Thompson believes Nik Cruz's video game habit played a
role in the Parkland shooting. Photos via Broward Sheriff's Office, Youtube
screenshot

You know that person who doesn't know when to leave the party, long after
everyone has expected them to hit the road?

In Florida's legal world, that person is John B. "Jack" Thompson, a Coral Gables
attorney who was disbarred for professional misconduct in 2008 and is now
attempting to insert himself into the sentencing phase of the trial of
23-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people and wounded 17 others at Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Valentine's Day 2018. Last year Cruz
pleaded guilty to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted
murder in the mass shooting.

Dating back to the late '80s and early '90s, Thompson was a frequent topic of
coverage in New Times as he mounted a legal assault against Luther Campbell's
rap group the 2 Live Crew and tried to ban the album As Nasty As They Wanna Be
from music-store shelves on the grounds that it was obscene. He has also waged a
decades-long battle against video games he considers to be obscene and violent
and which he contends are responsible for indoctrinating young people to
re-enact the violence they're simulating — and, in extreme cases, to become mass
shooters.

In a nutshell, Thompson asserts that Nikolas Cruz's Halo habit played a
significant role in the Parkland shooting. He seeks to assist the defense team
in order to spare Cruz from the death penalty.



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In 20 court documents filed since March of 2018, Thompson has petitioned the
court to enter the case as amicus curiae — a legal term that translates from the
Latin to "friend of the court" — portraying himself as an internationally
recognized expert on school shootings. Thompson has requested to introduce an
expert witness on violent video games' alleged link to mass shootings and to
interview Cruz himself. (A copy of Thompson's initial motion is attached at the
end of this article).

"I've asked to meet with [Cruz] and ask if the reports of him playing violent
video games are true," Thompson tells New Times. "I want to ask, 'Did you feel
you were acting out the game?'"

Some context: In 2017, the American Psychological Association Task Force on
Violent Media concluded that exposure to violent video games is linked to
"increased aggressive behaviors, thoughts, and emotions, as well as decreased
empathy" but that there was insufficient evidence to determine "whether violent
video game exposure was linked to criminality or delinquency."

Regardless, Broward Public Defender Gordon Weekes, whose office is defending the
shooter, doesn't want Thompson's help and tells New Times he has little to say
regarding the self-proclaimed expert's repeated attempts to enter the case
unasked.

"I have nothing to add on outside individuals trying to insert themselves into
this case and into the pains that this community has endured moving forward,"
Weekes says.

In 2008, the Florida Supreme Court recommended that Thompson be disbarred for
attempting to harm his opponents' reputation "with utter disregard to the
administration of justice and complete indifference to the consequences his
conduct would have on their lives," as Miami Circuit Court Judge Dava Tunis put
it in her recommendation to disbar him. Thompson reportedly sent gay porn,
swastikas, and renderings of an actual kangaroo court to the Florida Supreme
Court and badgered an Alabama judge by sending documents to his office up to
five times a day.

After he was stripped of his law license, Thompson enrolled in a seminary and
became a Bible teacher in the Florida prison system.

Disbarment hasn't stopped Thompson from pursuing his crusade against violent
video games — which he refers to as "murder simulators" — and repeatedly
inserting himself into the legal process even after being told no. He has been
attempting to insert himself into the Parkland case for the past four years.
So incessant were his attempts, in fact, that in November of 2018 the state
filed a motion to bar him from filing any more motions with the court.




"Mr. Thompson has abused the process by filing frivolous pleadings in this
matter, where he has no standing, and has no authorization to file any
pleadings," assistant state attorney Joel Silvershein wrote in a motion to
Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Scherer.

While Scherer didn't bar further filings from Thompson, she denied his request
to enter the case after he voluntarily withdrew his motion after failing to
elicit a response.

Nevertheless, he continued filing motions to enter the case and requested to
submit expert testimony as recently as February of this year.

Speaking to New Times, Thompson says he didn't remember withdrawing his motion
and didn't receive the judge's order. Upon being notified of the denial, he said
he has decided to withdraw the motion again and focus on helping with Cruz's
appeal process after the sentencing phase of the trial is over.

The basis for his appeals argument? Gaming.



"I think [Scherer] is going to sentence him to death, and there will be an
automatic appeal," Thompson explains. "I'm going to concentrate on assisting the
appeal counsel on the basis of the failure of this court to consider the video
game issue."


PDF — JACK_THOMPSON_INITIAL_MOTION.PDF


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defined as the free, independent voice of Miami, and we'd like to keep it that
way. With local media under siege, it's more important than ever for us to rally
support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in
our "I Support" program, allowing us to keep offering readers access to our
incisive coverage of local news, food and culture with no paywalls.
Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1.

Joshua Ceballos is staff writerfor Miami New Times. He is a FloridaInternational
University alum and a born-and-bred Miami boy.
Contact: Joshua Ceballos
Follow:
Twitter: @JoshCeb



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Longform


WRECK BAR MERMAID SUES BROWARD SHERIFF'S OFFICE FOR INVASION OF PRIVACY

Bob Norman April 20, 2022 8:00AM

Whitney Fair in full mermaid regalia at the Wreck Bar in Fort Lauderdale Photo
courtesy of the Aquaticats

Finding herself vilified on TikTok by a self-styled witch and spotting a Broward
County sheriff’s lieutenant literally climbing her wall, Whitney Fair was at her
wits’ end.

She had no idea being a mermaid could be so stressful.

The trouble had nothing to do with the actual mermaid shows she performs at the
historic Wreck Bar on Fort Lauderdale Beach. The 41-year-old Fair enjoys
swimming in what’s billed as America’s only underwater burlesque show.

She likes to hear the audience when she swims past the pool’s portholes in her
costume fishtail. The fact that she can’t see the bar patrons through the glass
relieves some of the pressure of performing on often-packed Friday and Saturday
nights.






The part-time job at the iconic ocean liner-shaped B Ocean Resort, formerly
known as the Yankee Clipper, also provides her and the other so-called
Aquaticats a regular social outlet.

“I’m a bit of a homebody and an introvert,” confesses Fair, who also works as a
voice actress and yoga instructor. “So this job has allowed me a consistent way
of dressing up and being around people once a weekend.”

It was from the social side, however, that her misery came, specifically in the
form of a fellow Aquaticat named Mia Mellies. “Mermaid Mia,” as she called
herself, joined the cast in 2015, two years prior to Fair, and had ascended to a
leadership role in the group. The two had a falling-out and ultimately Mia was
fired in August 2018.

Mellies’ departure began what Fair describes as a three-year nightmare of
harassment and conflict that now is on its way to a federal courtroom.

click to enlarge
Broward Sheriff's Office Lt. Jeff Mellies
WSVN-TV (Channel 7) screenshot
It began with online attacks from Mia and her husband Jeff and became worse when
the couple moved in next door to Fair’s home in Fort Lauderdale. More than once,
her security camera captured video of Jeff Mellies on her property, including a
clip that shows him climbing up a ladder on the side of her house and tampering
with said camera. Another clip shows the couple accosting her at the foot of her
driveway, where Mia Mellies later can be heard screaming, “I hope you fucking
die.”

Fair says the scariest part of it all is that Jeff has the power of the badge:
He’s a lieutenant with the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

“How do you call the cops on the cops?” she asks.

It didn’t make it any less unsettling that Mia spoke in her TikTok videos of
placing spells on her enemies and claimed she and Jeff were “practicing pagans”
who performed nude rituals in their backyard. A Coral Springs firefighter by
trade, Mia has also described herself as an “initiated first-degree witch in the
Celtic tradition.”


> Fair says the scariest part of it all is that Jeff is a lieutenant with the
> Broward Sheriff’s Office. “How do you call the cops on the cops?” she asks.
> 
> tweet this

Fair eventually went to the police, but the harassment continued. She consulted
local attorney Gary Kollin, who suggested she put in a public-records request
for all searches made by police and other officials for her state-protected
driver’s license information — something all Floridians have a right to find out
about themselves.



The results showed that Jeff had used his BSO computer to run Fair’s name on the
Driver and Vehicle Information Database (DAVID), a confidential state database
accessible only by police and other public officials. The frequently abused
DAVID system contains driver’s license photos, vehicle information, driver
history, social security number, and other restricted personal data.

Federal law forbids public officials from accessing driver-license information
for anything but official purposes and provides civil recourse to anyone whose
information has been improperly accessed.

And it wasn’t just Fair. State records reveal that Jeff Mellies, who has a large
tattoo of his BSO badge on his right bicep, also ran DAVID checks on Marina
Anderson, who owns the mermaid show, and a fellow performer named Janelle
Smiley. All of those searches were conducted in 2018, while Mia Mellies was
still swimming at the Wreck Bar.

The lieutenant listed “criminal investigation” as the reason for the searches.
State law enforcement records also show Mellies ran a restricted criminal
background check on Smiley; Fair suspects he did the same in her case. BSO began
an internal investigation of Fair’s allegations, according to the agency’s
correspondence.

On February 22, Kollin filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on behalf of Fair
and Smiley that alleges Jeff Mellies violated the law and the plaintiffs’
privacy rights when he conducted his DAVID searches. Also named as a defendant
is Broward Sheriff Greg Tony, who Kollin claims has failed to properly monitor
the agency’s DAVID use. (A copy of the complaint is embedded at the end of this
story.)

New Times' request for comment from Sheriff Tony was expressly rejected by BSO.
“The Broward Sheriff’s Office makes it a practice not to comment on pending
litigation,” emailed sheriff’s spokesman Cary Codd.

Kollin's complaint also alleges that Jeff Mellies brought Fair and Smiley “into
public scandal with great humiliation...in the form of shame, degradation,
mental suffering and...damaged reputations.”

Messages left on Mia Mellies’ cellphone for comment from her and her husband
were not returned. New Times also unsuccessfully sought comment from Jeff
Mellies through the BSO's media relations department. A detailed voice message
left with the lieutenant’s attorney, Tamatha Alvarez, also went unreturned.

To understand how the clash of mermaids became a federal case, though, it helps
to return to the edge of the Wreck Bar pool and a 2018 squabble between the two
women that troubles the waters to this day.




A POOLSIDE SQUABBLE

Like most of her fellow underwater performers, Fair doesn’t take the mermaid
aspect of the show very seriously. For Mia Mellies, though, being a mermaid was
a lifelong dream.

That’s how she characterized it when she was featured in a 2014 Sun-Sentinel
story about “merfolk” — those who revere the fictional creatures and celebrate
“mermaid culture.” The article came out a year before Mia began performing at
the Wreck Bar, but she was already working parties and events as “Mia Mermaid.”

A cosplay enthusiast with her husband, Mia told the newspaper her mermaid
persona was an offshoot of her pirate re-enactment group. She said she’d been
fascinated with mermaids since she was a little girl in Puerto Rico — so much so
that she “almost drowned” in a pool at the age of 10 after putting duct tape on
her feet to emulate a tail.

“I think all girls are fascinated with being a mermaid,” Mia told the
Sun-Sentinel. “It’s the mysterious woman who’s unobtainable, who’s alluring to
men.”

She was surely a head-turner at the mermaid show. Fair says it wasn’t just Mia’s
striking bleached-blond hair, full figure, and expertly applied makeup that made
her stand out, but also an unmistakable charisma.

While Mia identified with a fiery Puerto Rican persona, Fair cultivated an
aesthetic more of the California variety (a state where she lived for a year
after growing up in the Midwest). Whereas Mia was into Wicca, Fair engaged a
secular spiritual side. She believes wholeheartedly in karma and tellingly chose
the name “ZenDen” for her recently established Airbnb company.

The two women got along fine at first. Fair says it wasn’t until a year into her
tenure, in July 2018, that the two came into conflict. It began in earnest when
Fair left an informal group chat led by Mia. She felt the texts, filled with
criticism of Anderson and other Aquaticats, had become toxic.

But leaving the chat only raised the tension. Fair found herself arguing with
Mia over little things — like part of a costume Fair had retrieved when it was
left behind after a show. Mia, who organized the costumes for the team, texted
Fair to drive it over to her house in Plantation right away. Fair refused,
saying she’d return it before the next show.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” Mia texted.

“Are you threatening me?” Fair replied.

Mia texted back “lol,” before writing, “No snowflake I’m not threatening you,
I’m just stating the obvious.”

On July 18, 2018, Fair tried to reconcile with Mia via a 13-minute, 45-second
voice memo.

“We’re getting each other hyped up about the wrong things, like about negative
things,” Fair says on the recording, which she saved. “Constantly complaining,
which again I’m guilty of, we’re all guilty of. ...It’s something that I don’t
want to be a part of.”

In rehashing the issues, Fair told Mia that Jeff, who accompanied his wife to
the shows and often videotaped her performances, had been uncharacteristically
unfriendly and had filmed Fair while she introduced the show to Wreck Bar
patrons in a way that she felt was “intimidating.”

In her own voice-memo reply, Mia claimed her husband “never came from a negative
place.” On the contrary: He cared about the Aquaticats and watched out for them
during the show.

“Jeff is extremely protective of all of you,” Mia contended.

click to enlarge
Mia Mellies, erstwhile Aquaticat
Screenshot via TikTok
Fair says the tension only grew, leading to a poolside altercation at the edge
of the pool.

As they were about to start a show on August 25, 2018, Fair says, she overheard
Mia talking about her nearby with another Aquaticat, repeatedly referring to her
as an “asshole.”

This time, Fair boiled over.

“I’m tired of hearing you yap, yap, yap, yap,” she recalls telling Mia.

“Well, you hate everyone here,” Mia responded.

“I don’t hate everyone here,” Fair retorted. “I hate you because you’re a
bitch.”

“That’s it, you’re done,” Mia said authoritatively.

Fair then said the words she says she has beaten herself up about ever since.

“Well, why don’t you lose a few pounds and then call me?” she told Mia.

That was over the line and all the mermaids knew it. Fair says the words came
out of her mouth only because Mia constantly spoke of “losing a few pounds.” She
says she didn’t consider Mia to be overweight, but she knew it was a verbal blow
that would land.

“I just snapped,” she says. “I’d been gaslit and bullied.”

The argument was quickly quelled, but it marked Mia’s last day as an Aquaticat.
Anderson, the owner of the mermaid show, fired her for what Fair says was an
accumulation of issues. Anderson declined to comment for this story.

Mia herself recounted the blowup and her firing in a video posted last year. She
claimed Fair, whom she routinely called “Crazy Eyes,” was a “twist” who had
instigated the dissension in the group. She said Fair made the weight comment
knowing that she has body dysmorphia, a condition that causes its sufferers to
obsess over perceived flaws in their appearance.

“Fucking evil cunt,” Mia said of Fair. “Anyway, I was so pissed off, I jumped
out of the pool, and I didn’t swim. I called [Anderson] and told her what
happened. Couple days later, I was fired. That bitch is still swimming.”

After the firing, Mia and Jeff began attacking both Fair and Anderson (and, to a
lesser degree, mermaid Smiley) on social media. In November 2018, Jeff published
a Facebook post that Fair found particularly mortifying.

“And to think we had all of [the mermaids] in our home and treated them like
family,” he wrote. “We never held the fact that Whitney was a convicted-felon
drug dealer who spent time in prison against her.”

In a subsequent TikTok video, Mia claimed Fair was restricted from owning a
company because of her criminal record.

“She can’t really have a business in Florida,” Mia claimed in the video,
“because she has had previous law enforcement entanglements which required her
to spend a lot of sleepy overnights at a big institution with prison bars in
them. You know what I mean? Like, I’m not talking about ‘I got arrested on a
weekend.’ I’m talking about hard time.”

Fair, however, does own a legal business in Florida. She’s registered to vote
and hasn’t done “hard time.” She says the only arrest in her life was a
marijuana charge at the age of 18 that involved a small amount of cannabis —
about a quarter-ounce. It occurred during a traffic stop on a road trip from
California in the tiny panhandle town of Guymon, Oklahoma, where the book was
thrown at Fair and a friend; she says both spent about a week in the local jail.

Part of the deal, she says, was that the felony case would be expunged after two
years — meaning the record is now inaccessible to the public. Law-enforcement
personnel, however, would likely have access to it via the restricted National
Crime Information Center database.

Fair suspected that Jeff used his law-enforcement status to access the hidden
information and smear her with a distorted version of it. When she requested the
DAVID information from the state last year, she also submitted a request from
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for criminal background checks
conducted on her. FDLE refused to release the results, citing an active criminal
investigation. Neither Fair nor Kollin knows what that investigation might be.


> Fair suspected that Jeff used his law-enforcement status to access hidden
> information and smear her with a distorted version of it.
> 
> tweet this

Smiley, the co-plaintiff in Fair’s lawsuit, did receive her FDLE results, and
they showed that Jeff Mellies had run a criminal background on her the same day
in March 2018 that he’d run the DAVID check.

Despite repeated online attacks from Jeff and Mia, Fair didn’t return fire in
kind. Instead, she says, she did her best to avoid the couple completely.

Then in November 2019, more than a year after Mia’s exit from the Aquaticats,
the unthinkable happened: The couple moved into a rental home right next door to
Fair in Fort Lauderdale.

Suddenly only a six-foot-high fence separated her from the Mellieses.

“I was like, this is a really bad joke, because already at this time I was
looking over my shoulder all the time because of these people,” Fair says. “I
was already scared.”

Separately, both Jeff and Mia Mellies have claimed — Mia in videos, Jeff in a
police report — that the move was coincidental, but Fair says she felt as though
she were being hunted. She initially looked for other places to live.

“This is super weird and it’s super scary,” she remembers thinking. “But it’s
clearly happening for a reason, and I’m not going to run from these people. So I
stayed.”




WHAT THE SECURITY CAMERA SAW

Fair installed a security camera on the side of her house that faced their
property, a decision that itself resulted in more conflict. Mia complained in
one of her TikTok videos that she felt “violated” by the presence of the camera,
in part because she and Jeff were sometimes “skyclad” — a tterm for nude
associated with witchcraft — while in the backyard.

“We are two practicing pagans, so we do ritual work and practice and celebrate
holidays back there,” Mia said. “Sometimes skyclad — you know what I mean.”

Fair says she never spied on the couple next door, but in August 2020 the camera
did capture Jeff on her property at night, then scrambling back over the fence
back into his yard. She says another video caught him looking over the fence in
an area near her bedroom.
A few days later, the same camera caught the BSO lieutenant not only on her
property but scaling a ladder he found there up the side of her house. The video
clearly shows the bald, white-bearded Jeff, wearing a military-style T-shirt,
climbing up to the security camera and placing duct tape over the lens.

Fair says that although she found this terrifying, she didn’t go to the police
because she feared they might protect one of their own. She did, however, remove
the tape from the camera and affix a “No Trespassing” sign to the side of her
home.

On Thanksgiving 2020, the camera captured someone on the Mellieses’ side of the
fence reaching over with a rake to knock down the sign.

That was when Fair decided to go to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department.

“I had no choice,” she tells New Times. “It was getting worse.”

The department issued Jeff a verbal no-trespass warning — meaning that if he
came onto Fair’s property again, he could be criminally charged with
trespassing. She also went to the Broward Sheriff’s Office’s internal affairs
division, which in January 2021 sent Fair a letter confirming that BSO was
investigating her complaint.

The next major flare-up occurred on April 4, 2021, when the Mellieses confronted
Fair at about 8 p.m. at the foot of her driveway, complaining about colored
lights Fair had installed on her property.

Fair was accompanied by her business partner, Pablo Caceres, who recorded the
confrontation on his phone. When Caceres brought up Fair’s trespassing
allegation, the lieutenant went on the verbal attack.



“Trespassing is a misdemeanor, you stupid fuck,” he said. “You can’t do anything
about that. You have to show intent.”

Mia piped up, “He’s a cop, you douchebag.”

Jeff then called Fair a “nefarious fucking cunt.”

“Lying piece of crap,” Mia added. “Felon.”

“Get rid of these lights because they are bothering us,” Jeff demanded. “We’ve
done nothing to you. If you want your house to look like a fucking whorehouse,
do it on the other side of the property.”

Caceres told Jeff he was intimidating Fair.

“How’s it intimidating?” Jeff responded. “You’re a pussy. You’re a pussy. We
can’t talk amongst ourselves?”

“I can talk with somebody that is not screaming at me,” Caceres countered.

As the couple walked away, Fair’s security camera captured Mia yelling back at
Fair.

“You fucking dirty sullen cunt!” she screamed. “Oh, by the way, how was prison,
Whitney? How many months did you do in prison, you piece of shit? I fucking
can’t stand you. I hope you fucking die!”

The encounter marked the first time they’d interacted since the fracas at the
Wreck Bar pool.

The following day, Jeff approached Fair once more, this time walking onto her
property, where he again complained about the lights. When the allegation about
being on her property at night near her bedroom window arose, Jeff called her
insane and told her she wasn’t “pretty,” according to subsequent police reports.

Believing it was an explicit trespass on Jeff’s part, Fair again called the Fort
Lauderdale Police Department (FLPD). Because she didn’t want the Mellieses to
see her with the cops, she met Ofc. Kerri Hagerty on April 5 at the Galleria
mall. There she told Hagerty the entire story and voiced her opinion, then
unconfirmed, that the Mellieses had used restricted law-enforcement information
to attack those whom they didn’t like.

Fair also shared the new developments with BSO internal affairs. On April 8, the
agency issued a letter to Jeff Mellies ordering him to cease and desist from any
contact whatsoever with Fair, including on social media, and to refrain from
“personal visits, harassment, annoyance, threats, telephone calls, or
intimidation.”


> The BSO ordered Jeff Mellies to cease and desist from any contact with Fair,
> and to refrain from “personal visits, harassment, annoyance, threats,
> telephone calls, or intimidation.”
> 
> tweet this

The day Mellies received the letter from BSO, he called the FLPD to get his side
of the story “on the record.” He told police that the problem with Fair stemmed
from a motion light on her security camera that was so bright it was an
annoyance. He also claimed Fair was using the camera to record him and his wife
in their backyard.

He admitted he’d gone back onto Fair’s property and argued with her. He also
admitted he had climbed the ladder at her home months before. He said he
intended to unscrew the light bulbs from Fair’s motion sensor but noticed the
camera and decided to tape it over.

The Mellieses also had a lawyer send Fair a “cease and desist” letter of their
own. The May 6 missive from attorney Bruce Trybus demanded that Fair remove the
security lights and camera from her property because they violated the couple’s
“reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Fair responded in a letter to the attorney, asserting that her security
equipment was lawfully placed and had never been used for voyeuristic purposes.
Jeff Mellies’ documented intrusions on her property only proved the security
measures were necessary, she wrote.

click to enlarge
"I want justice," says Whitney Fair.
Photo courtesy of Whitney Fair
“I am trying to live my life without encountering daily hostility and harassment
from you and your clients,” she stated.

It was a low point for Fair. She says she’d become so plagued by anxiety that
she couldn’t eat; her weight dropped to 105 pounds, and she fell into despair.

“This is never gonna end, I can’t get away from these people,” she recalls
thinking. “I literally have to move out of state. I didn’t know what to do. I
felt stuck. You just feel helpless when this is happening to you and nobody can
help you.”

Desperate, she searched online for local lawyers with experience in police
misconduct and landed on Kollin. But after hearing Fair’s story, the attorney
told her that as terrible as it may seem, a civil trespassing case wasn’t worth
filing.

As he broke the news to Fair, he made a last-second suggestion that she
investigate whether Jeff had improperly checked her driver’s license information
and criminal background.

“That little remark at the end of the phone call changed everything,” she says.




“OKAY, WE HAVE A CASE”

In May of last year, Fair submitted her public-records requests for the DAVID
and criminal background searches performed on her. She also persuaded fellow
mermaid Smiley, whom Mia also occasionally attacked on social media, and their
boss Anderson to submit identical requests.

When the results came back in June, Fair called Kollin.

“Okay, we have a case,” Kollin told her.

The first order of business was to report the findings to BSO internal affairs,
a procedure that marked Fair’s third visit to the agency. Shortly thereafter, on
July 16, BSO sent Fair a letter informing her that her previous complaint was
being closed on the grounds that “no misconduct issues can be identified.”

Fair says she was shocked that BSO found everything Jeff had done — smearing her
on social media, coming onto her property, tampering with her security camera,
shouting obscenities at her out in the street — didn’t at least constitute
conduct unbecoming a law enforcement officer.

But there was positive news in the same letter. Broward Sheriff’s Lt. Johanna
Palacio wrote that a new internal investigation had been opened into the alleged
abuse of the DAVID system. According to Palacio, Fair would be notified when the
investigation was complete.

No word has come from the agency, which doesn’t discuss open internal affairs
investigations.

Though Jeff Mellies was ordered to leave Fair alone, that didn’t stop his wife,
who continued posting attacks on Fair, as well as on Anderson and Smiley, on
social media.

“I won’t stop talking about them and making fun of them until they discontinue
their fucking hate campaign against my husband,” Mia says in one TikTok video.
“You would think they would come after me, but that’s not what evil people do.
Evil people want the person they are attacking to suffer watching their loved
ones suffer.”


> “I won’t stop talking about them and making fun of them until they discontinue
> their fucking hate campaign against my husband,” Mia says in one TikTok video.
> 
> tweet this

In a September 4, 2021, Instagram post under the handle “fire_witch_siren,” Mia
wrote ominously that the “north remembers bitch, and it’s coming for house Zen.”

In a TikTok video, she painted Fair, Smiley, and Anderson as anti-American and
anti-law enforcement. Mia, who hasn’t been shy about her support for Donald
Trump, says in the video that she was offended that in an Instagram post that
coincided with the end of the war in Afghanistan, Fair didn’t mention the deaths
of 13 soldiers in a terrorist attack.

“They hate this fucking country and everybody that serves it,” Mia said. “We
need to stop supporting these people...and they’re fucking businesses...and the
Wreck Bar. Stop supporting them. They hate this fucking country, and they’re not
shy about admitting it.”

Fair says she counts law-enforcement members in her own family but believes
police officers must be held accountable when they do wrong. She has more
recently moved away from the house next door to Jeff and Mia, and she’s still
performing each weekend at the Wreck Bar with Anderson, Smiley, and the other
aquatic dancers.



She worries about how her ex-neighbors will react, now that they've learned of
the lawsuit.

“I’ve told people that if anything happens to me, then it was definitely them,”
Fair says. “Who knows how she’s going to retaliate? Who knows what’s going to be
online next? There’s no accountability.

"For a long time, I just wanted them to leave me alone. Now I want justice.”


PDF — FAIR_V_MELLIES.PDF


Bob Norman serves as editor-in-chief for FLCGA News, a publication focusing on
investigative reporting produced by the nonprofit Florida Center for Government
Accountability. This story was reported in partnership with the FLCGA.
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Contact: Bob Norman



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