In its broad strokes, Dougans story meshes with the superficial features of the 2016 election leaking. One person on the list told The Daily Beast hed been laying low after working as a contractor for the CIA. While Bradshaw has not officially announced his candidacy, he told me today, I feel good, and Im going to run.. A Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office deputy was forced to open fire on a knife-wielding man who charged at him, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw says. The book offers a bold twist to the BadVolf mythos, one hes begun peddling on conspiracy-themed YouTube interview shows and podcasts, where he receives a warm and credulous welcome. Dougan was in Moscow in time to witness Putins landslide reelection victory this year, after his most viable opponent, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was hit with dubious fraud charges and barred from running. There must be real news with real photos on the front of the site so the fake story blends in and becomes believable.. Researchers see rise of 'Constitutional Sheriffs' as threat to democracy. And this is where his story hits another snag. It reached the mainstream by way of a since-retracted Fox News story, and then on the back of Fox personality Sean Hannity. State law already creates a process for this where deputies have a review board they go in front of. 1290 WJNO - The Palm Beaches' Home for Mudd, Beck, Hannity, Clay & Buck, Levin & Noory. His campaign slogan and key commitment is Citizens Before Politics., My opponent likes to say that I dont have the 50 years of experience that he has, Diaz told the Town-Crier. Memes He has served as sheriff for 16 years. But Dougan hadnt yet updated Chapter 32, which offered an altogether different account of the trip. In October 2009 he was fired from the Windham police force for sexual harassment. Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who faced blistering criticism for granting Jeffrey Epstein liberal work-release privileges while the sex offender was serving time in the county stockade, has . At the time of the Lewis catfishing episode, Dougan had been to Moscow two or three times, staying for a month on each visit. Public safety is about a quarter of Palm Beach Countys 2020 fiscal year budget. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Orders Epstein Criminal Probe - Breitbart I have served in nearly every position in law enforcement, from patrolman to police chief. A former Marine gunner, Dougan wanted to do real police work, make arrests, solve crimes and help people. Seven months later, an Internal Affairs probe concluded there was no excessive use of force by the men. Its just that simple, Bradshaw said. A second county department maintained a different public dataset called SITUS, which listed every address along with land survey data, but that one had no names at all. In 2004, Bradshaw worked hard as a sheriff to fix problems he inherited, but has now become an experienced politician and working the system to his benefit and the benefit of the democrat party, not the benefit of the community. He has served as sheriff for 16 years. He also wants to teach and raise awareness about scams and identity theft, ensure fiscal accountability by seeing that tax dollars are spent responsibly on programs that improve the safety of all citizens, and keep citizens informed and updated on all threats and emergencies. We hope that four more years will bring even more progress. Sheriff Ric Bradshaw Undergoes Heart Procedure Freeman denied the allegations. We contract with an inmate health care provider and ensure that all possible CDC guidelines are followed. I am your sheriff, he said. Shinjuro is an accredited domain registrar that does its own registrations). Finally, we must mention the case of Jeffrey Epstein. He replaced the Excel spreadsheet with a user-friendly web interface, and then began dumping more confidential addresses from other Florida counties. Ric L. Bradshaw -- profile on Know Your Candidates - The Palm Beach Post If the contract makes it difficult for supervisors to discipline officers, what can and should the sheriff do? By the end of the 40-minute call Lewis and Rodriguez had agreed to do some paid freelance work on Jessicas behalf and obtain her gold-diggers private Facebook messages and web browsing history. Sheriff Ric Bradshaw - Sheriff - Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription. (The Daily Beast turned up no evidence of a link between Borodin and Flyman.). Gov. The final report nine months later evinced little interest in the hacking boasts by Lewis and Rodriguez, but found that Lewis had broken department regulations by divulging PBSO business to Jessica.. Dougan moved back to Palm Beach County with a burning sense of injustice. It was just awful.. National For Political Parties; In a majority-Democratic county, Bradshaw is a Democrat who enjoys support from key Republicans. He stepped out to investigate, and a dozen FBI agents jumped out of the car and the nearby bushes shouting at him to drop to the ground. Sputnik News ran a lengthy piece on him highlighting his daring escape to Moscow. (A spokesman for the FBIs Miami office declined comment.). But he has become a typical self-serving politician. Please explain. Former West Palm Beach police chief. Would you support the creation of a civilian review board to review complaints about deputies? Obscure as those details are from the outside, theyd likely be well known to the person who set up DC Leaks and secured its hosting. Yes, in Palm Beach County 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016. Opinion ", If the meeting was about adoptions, that detail didnt make it into the GossipExtra story that first broke the news of the power lunch. Palm Beach Sheriff hospitalized, but returning to work 'soon' after two Little was known about BadVolf. Voters here in 2002 cast ballots in support of making the races for Sheriff, Property Appraiser and Supervisor of Elections non-partisan. In June, Dougan self-published his autobiography, BadVolf: The true story of an American cops retaliation against a corrupt system of justice and politics, forcing him to seek political asylum in Russia. Bradshaw is the most politically powerful persona in the county. Its absolutely the best nightlife of any city Ive been, including New York, he says. Rodriguez did not respond to repeated emails and phone messages). Its easy to envision Dougan bluffing his way into a meeting with an important Russian and then leaking it to a friendly gossip site, if only to make his enemies wonder. Sheriff Getting Proposal Together For Boynton Beach Regarding Merger www.co.palm-beach.fl.us/. They were letting these guys get away with murder, and they were fucking over the citizens they were getting paid to protect.. Knife-wielding man shot by Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy - Yahoo News But now that the recordings were public by way of his BadVolf persona, he could use them freely. For these he turned not to property records, but to a similar vulnerability in the states voter registration rolls. The Palm Beach Sheriff's Office has come far under Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who is seeking his fifth term. (This is wrong. But his story is full of holes. This falls race for Palm Beach County Sheriff has four-term incumbent Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, a Democrat, being challenged by former Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office Capt. Sheriff Ric L. Bradshaw is a career law enforcement professional responsible for leading the largest law enforcement agency in Palm Beach . Special work. In interviews with The Daily Beast, Dougan insisted there was no other purpose to his frenzied drive to the capitol. May 1, 2023 at 10:31 AM. Bradshaw is seeking his fifth term in the Aug. 18 Democratic. I serve in this position because of my experience and the trust that I have earned from other national and regional law enforcement agencies. It was too small a case for the FBI. While acknowledging the optics are real bad, Bradshaw said it really wasnt a big thing at the time. The catfishing caper had been easy for Douganone of his many startups involved building business telephone systems. 0:00. We have strict disciplinary rules that work at removing officers who do not uphold our values and mission. You would think that they would notify people, especially police officers and judges and shelters and things like that, says a woman who manages a shelter for domestic abuse victims. Bradshaw took 61 percent of the vote to Freemans 39 percent. Now he has a business crafting and selling stylized computer tables with built-in high-performance computers. During our interview, he seemed more concerned about the potential loss of evidence from a search than the idea of harming someones life over a potentially needless arrest. West Palm Beach, FL 33406 But that day in the spring of 2016, his hoax backfired spectacularly, with FBI agents raiding his home and carting off his computers. The only reason conspiracy mongers fixed on Rich, rather than any of hundreds of his fellow DNC workers, is because he was killed. Comment Policy As told in his book, and elaborated on in interviews with The Daily Beast, Dougan went straight to Shinjiru in April 2016. Given what we now know, this is a poor response. Once theyd patted him down and confiscated his cell phone, they told Dougan he was free to go. In truth, DCleaks.com was registered at a family owned hosting firm in Romania called THCservers, which also features in a number of identified GRU hack attacks. The hacker turned out to be Anthony Rodriguez, a social media specialist in PBSOs media relations office. An Internal Affairs lieutenant named Dean Johnson was eventually charged with four felonies for allegedly leaking information to and about Dougan (he later copped a misdemeanor plea), but Dougan himself emerged unscathed. A New Decade, A New Era And A New Culture of Law Enforcement, his campaign website proclaims. But Dougan was an unusual cop. Its evident, though, that he was floating a version of the story in his BadVolf guise as early as September 2016. The Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office has six departments Legal Affairs, Law Enforcement Operations, Community Operations, Corrections, Support Services, and Administrative Services. Im putting everything out there.". The thumb drive was loaded with about 700 private emails taken from the DNC, the story goes. While the district continues to recruit and fill vacancies within its own police force, the pending agreement with Sheriff Ric Bradshaw would provide 20 deputies and two sergeants at a cost of $100 per hour and $136 per hour . The Daily Beast asked Dougan about the discrepancies. Mr. Epstein was allowed to engage in sexual behavior with underage girls. BS Degree, Human Resources Management, with honors, Palm Beach Atlantic University, MS degree, Administration, with honors, Specialization in Emergency Management Lynn University, Administrative Officers Course at the Southern Police Institute, University of Louisville. As told by Baer, Borodin was one of two top Russian officials who tried to get a back-channel message to Bill Clinton in late 1995 offering financial support for his reelection campaign. His message to voters: Who do you trust to keep you safe?. Bradshaw asked Governor Ron DeSantis to have FDLE conduct an investigation and his agency has also been looking into whether any policies were violated. Youd think they would give you some kind of warning so you could be more on alert., A retired cop says he knew about the incident from news reports, but did not know that his name and address were on the list until contacted by The Daily Beast. On March 13 he sent Dougan a tranche of files over Tor, says Dougan, and Dougan agreed to put up an anonymous website to present them to the world. I couldnt stick around out of fear I would be missed, so I drove straight back to Palm Beach County before they realized I had taken my little trip.. Vote-USA | Ric L. Bradshaw | Currently Elected Palm Beach County While law enforcement agencies across the country have employed body cameras, PBSO deputies still dont have them. The change came about this year, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled in a case involving Orange County that state election law prevents counties from deciding to hold nonpartisan elections. Jessica had contacted Lewis for a planned home renovation project, but she quickly took an flirtatious interest in the 56-year-olds personal life, peppering him with questions and flattery. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw challenged by Alex Freeman in He could easily see being arrested now, and if he was thrown in Palm Beach County Jail he doubted hed ever make it to trial. He told Jessica that Borodin was related to a shadowy figure called Flyman. For about a decade ending in 2007, Flyman had led the Russian Business Network, a notorious cybercrime group that operated its own server farm. Finally, on Dec. 29, 2008, Dougan resigned from the force, firing off a flurry of pseudonymous emails to department brass on his way out, with screenshots of the Facebook posts and a photo of Raban in his punishment cap. About two weeks after the leak, Palm Beach County shut down its public feed of the SITUS dataset, according to logs kept by an open-source cartography site. We hope that four more years will bring even more progress. Lewis read a lot into the Borodin lunch. In October 2017 Dougan posted a story to one his fake news sites claiming that Ric Bradshaws second-in-command was a white supremacist nursing fantasies about killing a black man or a Jew. The post was widely circulated, and proved convincing enough that the genuine news outlet RawStory picked it up and ran with it. His Muscovite girlfriend traveled to Florida about as often, he says. In 2012, Dougan revealed that Bradshaw had spent nearly $1,000 of taxpayer money taking campaign donors to lunch, a revelation that earned Bradshaw a rebuke from a state ethics commission. Leaks from George Soros Open Society Foundation were also displayed prominently at the websites launch, with some of the documents reportedly altered to create the appearance the foundation was secretly financing Russian opposition candidates. A reporter from Gawker interviewed BadVolf over online chats, suspecting at first that he was actually talking to Dougan, but eventually falling for the hoax as thoroughly as Lewis fell for Jessica. Bradshaw said hes proud of how his deputies handled the protests. Sheriff Ric Bradshaw - Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Dougan kept up the conceit that BadVolf was hacking into county networks and stealing the secret address data, and his notional Russian hacker starting attracting national attention. Lewis told Jessica all about his career. For over 50 years, I have committed my career to public safety in Palm Beach County. He would look at females breasts, lick his lips, and say umumumum, wrote Nelson. It was a simple one-line database query, once hed loaded all the records, which reduced a list of 700,000 addresses down to the 4,114 that were never supposed to see the light of day. During a recent online forum, Bradshaw, 72, amplified his pitch. Since then hed been many things to many people. There an entire day can pass as he works the drills and punch presses. In early April he borrowed a car from a friend and a wig from his mother. A lawsuit filed by Officer Danielle Nelson describes months of bad behavior toward female officers, ranging from inappropriate comments to repeated unwanted touching and misogynistic slurs. Sheriff Bradshaw has a successful track record of forty-nine (49) years in law enforcement. Dougan made clips from the juicy parts of the recordings, and, in BadVolfs broken English, wrote it all out as a narrative. In the months and years that followed, Dougans website became a consistent source of insider dirt: a leaked affidavit about a former SWAT commander accused of stealing painkillers from a dying deputy; purchase orders showing the office spent nearly $80,000 on barbecue grills; a photo of officers posing with a topless woman on a Palm Beach golf course. Endorsement: Easy call in Palm Beach County, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Endorsement: Easy call in Palm Beach County Sheriffs race: Ric Bradshaw, Key things to know about Floridas pending abortion ruling, DeSantis oversight board votes to sue Disney, Known for laughs, White House Correspondents dinner takes a turn and spotlights risks to journalism. Bradshaw is a politician, not a sheriff. Dougan claims his involvement mostly ended at that point, but that he sometimes logged into the server and saw the whistle-blower and his friends uploading additional files. Ric Bradshaw 'feels good' and 'is going to run' for sheriff in 2024. This time hes claiming he had a hands-on role in the most notorious computer espionage incident in history: the 2016 leak of thousands of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. This list came from your government, he wrote. As a bonus, hed been treated to a full briefing on the departments quest to silence his website and throw him in jail. In one incident that year, one of Rabans deputies, Michael Woodside, pulled over a woman named Maria Paul, put her in a chokehold and slammed her to the ground, according to a subsequent lawsuit that the county settled, before dragging her in handcuffs to the back seat of his cruiser and punching her repeatedly in the face and body. Dougans trick was to cross-reference that number against previous versions of the data, stepping back month by month until he found the same voter not yet protected as confidential. . That includes this election cycle. They didnt have an arrest warrant, and no charges had yet been filed. The building is home to professional service. The records of Jeffrey Epstein's grand jury remain sealed for the time Like a bad version of Miami Vice, he wrote, where you drive a blacked-out Toyota Corolla and dont catch any of the bad guys.. They can maybe try to say I encouraged it, but Im not worried about that. Dougan also claimed hed sold the PBSOtalk website to a Russian businessman (he changed his domain registration first, to make it look good) and that he no longer had control over what was posted there. Antisemitism has been on the minds of local authorities as the number of incidents being reported has been going up. She broke into an elaborate story about a suspicious woman whod become involved with her wealthy father, and asked Lewis if he could help investigate the woman. We arrest somebody that lives in the county that we live in, we want to keep it private. But they dont feature at all in Dougans story. We are constantly evaluating our hiring practices. On the other hand, what can be done to improve relations between PBSOs command staff and road-patrol deputies? Prosecutors want to investigate whether Krischer's office has ever told the grand jury the full scale of Epstein's crimes, or whether the prosecutor's office is interfering with the judiciary . The book now includes both the embassy visit and the claimed thumb-drive handoff. Once in Moscow he came to appreciate the city almost as much as the woman. Over the previous weeks, someone had been systematically targeting federal agents, judges, local cops and intelligence agency workers throughout Florida, posting 14,000 of their home addresses to the web, all of them specifically exempted from public records because of their sensitivity. Publicly, he claimed BadVolf was a friend hed met in Russia, but he disclaimed responsibility for the putative hackers actions. Barbera's statement said Bradshaw has. "We're confident at the end of the day that we're going to come out on the right side of this. Dougan expected nothing but ass-covering from the sheriffs office anyway. Sheriff Bradshaw was first elected to office in the first year that the race was non-partisan, 2004. Bradshaw notes the expense of servers to store all the footage from 2,500 cameras, adding that he already cut 10 percent from his original budget proposal for next year. Are you a member of any civic groups? Now I see a sheriff leader in American government trying to be dictator like Stalin.. He too fell down some stairs last night, and his medical clearance took a while But like a good batterer I know the areas that hide the marks well.. I would love to run into him in a dark alley, said Lewis. In Palm Beach County there were about 4,000 homeowners availing themselves of Floridas address confidentiality laws. Ric L. Bradshaw, Currently Elected Palm Beach County Sheriff, Palm Beach County, Florida: Picture, bio, position statements and social media links | Vote-USA $ Donate. He was fired in 1998 for lying during an internal investigation, but he later won his job back after a hearing officer determined that the firing could not be justified because the police departments lawyer only relied upon hearsay evidence. The feds had evidently bought into Dougans game. Bradshaw has earned praise from many for keeping crime down, but that praise hasnt been universal. Issues: Argues it's time for a change in leadership at PBSO, citing community distrust of the department and its handling of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Palm Beach County Sheriff Speaks Out On Recent Antisemitic Acts Ric Bradshaw 'feels good' and 'is going to run' for sheriff in 2024. And if there was any mistakes made eleven years ago, if there's anybody still here that was working eleven years ago, then we'll address that.". We refer throughout this opinion to "Deputy Lin" and "Sheriff Bradshaw" individually, as each pertinent issue and defense pertains to these defendants separately. What I dont have is 50 years of experience in reckless spending and arrogant behavior, such as providing special treatment to convicted pedophile sex offenders, like [Jeffrey] Epstein, or like losing important evidence in critical cases, or abandoning the troops to move to a high-priced executive office building to lead from the rear instead of the front, all on the backs of the taxpayers and their hard-earned money., Diaz added that Bradshaws leadership is based on political influence more than experience. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw is running for re-election in Florida's August 2020 primary election. Palm Beach County Sheriff candidates Ric Bradshaw and Alex Freeman. To a sizable number of fringe conservatives, it goes without saying that the Clintons order hits on the people who get in their way. Using his web skills, he began erecting revenge websites like WindhamTalk.com, which claimed to have the real scoop on corruption in the town of Windham and featured a prominent photo of Nelson with the caption Liar at the top. But its not my fight here. Id just had a little girl, my daughter, he recalls. In this contemporaneous telling, Dougan had gone to Moscow to do business. Sheriff Ric L. Bradshaw (D) West Palm Beach Education Lake Worth High School; BS degree, human resources management, with honors, Palm Beach Atlantic University; MS degree, administration, with honors, specialization in emergency management, Lynn University; Administrative Officers Course, Southern Police Institute, University of Louisville. With his shaved head and stolid build, he looked every inch a career police officer, but his eclectic job history also included stints in horse transportation and database design, and he was a licensed pilot. For 10 days in the summer of 2015 romance was in the air. School board eyes hiring of 20 sheriff's deputies through May 2023 He panders to the leaders of the left and special interest groups. It was an unusual movenobody volunteered for Belle Glade. Sometimes called Muck City for the slimy run-off from the local sugarcane farms, Belle Glade is best understood as a developing-world-style shantytown plunked down 40 miles west of Mar-a-Lago. If so, please explain. Then he laughs. It was like the Wild West meets New York City, he says. The FBI agents in charge were the same Dougan had met with just months earlier, he saysthe ones whod refused to pursue a hacking case against the PBSO. PBSO's Ric Bradshaw seeks fifth term as sheriff against rival he beat Fearful that hed be arrested and wind up in the custody of the very cops hed been battling, Dougan fled to the only place he felt safe: Russia, where Vladimirs Putins government granted him asylum status. Richs grieving parents have faced threats and smears for debunking the speculation, and struggle daily with what Richs mother has described as the pain and anguish that comes from seeing your murdered son's life and legacy treated as a mere political football.. He won temporary political asylum in February 2017, and last December the Russian government made his status permanentan honor not even granted to Edward Snowden. Sports agent Marc Roberts, a Miami nightclub owner and developer, and his family have poured $16,000 into Bradshaws campaign. Epstein, a well-connected billionaire who was found hanged in a Manhattan jail cell last year after federal officials charged him with additional sex crimes, paid for the deputies who monitored his movements while he was out of jail. A recent case from Baltimore illustrates the potential benefits of mental health teams. His first job in law enforcement was on a small-town police force in Mangonia Park, Florida, where he distinguished himself by writing more traffic tickets than the other 11 officers combined. Do you support or oppose cash bail for misdemeanor charges? Like the version he ultimately published, the draft opens with a tease about a Washington, D.C., meeting with a whistle-blower. It was a former high-ranking Kremlin official named Pavel Borodin. The Incumbent, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, is running in a Democrat primary next August, facing only Alex Freeman for nowthough the qualifying deadline is months away. The two exchanged photos and texted frequently, and before long they were talking until 1:00 in the morning. Sometimes called Putins mentor, Borodin had been Boris Yeltsins top aide. Is there anything about yourself that we didnt ask about that would embarrass you if an opponent found out? The investigations surround claims that the money manager was allowed to arrange for sex while on work-release at his West Palm Beach office. None of the DNC emails did. The best known victim of that attack was John Podesta, and a handful of documents from Podestas Gmail account appeared on the site four months before WikiLeaks published the whole inbox. Thats not the kind of experience I have or ever want to have, or the kind of leader I am.. The city is dealing with community outrage over the death of a 13-year old boy on a dirt bike as he was running from police and the Florida Highway Patrol has found the officer was not at fault. His enemies were on a frantic hunt for a Russian hacker who didnt exist, and investigating computer intrusions that never occurred. By the end of his campaign, Dougan had released roughly 14,000 protected address records from at least 20 different Florida counties. All rights reserved. Dougan says hes now on a track to citizenship. Lauro Diaz, the Republican nominee. The change came about this year, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled in a case involving Orange County that state election law prevents counties from deciding to hold nonpartisan elections.