Days of El Portal's Lives

That still was not the end of it for Thomas, now 62 years old, a former Hialeah police officer and long-time Carol City resident. He and his new friend Michael the Black Man didn't limit their crusade to pirated airwaves. On at least two occasions this past April and May, about a dozen protesters (who didn't live in El Portal and had not applied for a picketing permit) pulled up in a van across the street from El Portal Village Hall. The demonstrators stayed on the north side of NE 87th Street, technically in Miami Shores, calling for the riddance of the "criminals" in the police department and the "evil" Daisy Black. El Portal officers and village hall workers who happened to witness the demonstrations recognized only one of the participants, Fred Thomas.

In April Thomas and Michael, both African American, appeared on a Kreyol-language AM radio station and added a new ethnic element to their battle; they accused the majority of the El Portal village council members and the police department of holding anti-Haitian views and forcing (via code enforcement, fines, liens, and so on) some Haitian homeowners to move out of the village. Two Haitian council members have been voted out of office since 2000, leaving just one Haitian on the body, and the ex-council members believe their opponents used anti-Haitian and illegal tactics to defeat them.

Sometime in mid-June, BOSS 104.1 apparently went off the air (there are unconfirmed reports Michael is broadcasting on another frequency). This followed the eviction of the station from its office on NE 125th Street in North Miami; the eviction was for nonpayment of rent, but Michael had no occupational license, FCC permit, or permit for its antenna, and violated zoning codes. Michael and Fred Thomas have now added several City of North Miami officials to their enemies list.

While embroiled in their North Miami legal complications, Michael and Thomas paid for a small ad that ran in New Times on May 23. It was titled "Democrats/KKK vs. Black Republicans" and began with the false statement, "North Miami trying to destroy the only Black owned radio station in Miami."

Back in El Portal, Daisy Black is catching less vitriol for the moment. But the political bottom line here is that ethnicity and race, while used as weapons, have never mattered nearly as much as the ability to win friends and influence people.

For instance Black was low on influence when she was forced off the council in 1995 by a faction led by yet another sworn enemy, Lawrence Kennedy, also African American. That was the year Black had just been chosen the town's first African-American mayor, but not everyone celebrated this political landmark. Lingering resentment from the town's old white guard was expected; however, Black also encountered some opposition from her own race, reluctant to acknowledge a woman as El Portal's number-one official.

Kennedy and his supporters publicized several damning (but unproven) allegations against Black, including unauthorized expenditures of public money and a rumored "sealed" police record. After that election Black filed complaints against Kennedy and two other candidates with the Florida Election Commission and the Miami-Dade Elections Department; Kennedy threatened to bring unspecified criminal charges against Black. The next year, after Black went public with Kennedy's past arrests (carrying an illegal weapon, domestic violence, and DUI, on none of which he was prosecuted), he and another foe of Black's were defeated and Black was returned to the council with the largest vote total of any candidate.

The following year Black was a target, along with two white council members, of a recall attempt. Among the recall leaders were Kennedy and Earl Carroll, Dade's first African-American commissioner, who was indicted in 1970 for soliciting a bribe and recalled from office in 1972. The 1997 recall failed. But the dramas continued.

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As was evident during the police-chief fistfight, power politics doesn't just involve politicians in El Portal. The men (and women) in blue are a big factor.

The police department, which is at the mercy of the council in funding and personnel matters, has experienced its own factionalism and instability. For a time during the mid-to-late Nineties, a series of chiefs and acting chiefs popped up and down like so many shooting-gallery rabbits.

In 1996, after police chief Zane Mason was fired and before Fred Thomas took over, Ofcr. Gari Senderoff -- whom Mason had fired in 1993 but who arbitrators later ordered reinstated -- was named acting chief. In 1997, then-councilman Mason lobbied for an internal affairs investigation of Senderoff, and then-chief Marvin Wiley fired Senderoff from the force a second time. Senderoff went to court and won reinstatement a second time. When Wiley himself was terminated in 2000, Senderoff was back for ten months as acting chief. He's still on the force, facing sexual harassment charges, but currently Sgt. Eugene Morales is El Portal's acting police chief; there's no word on when the council will hire a permanent chief.