LAKELAND LEDGER May 22, 2005 ILLEGAL, BUT ESSENTIAL Migrant Workers Find Jobs Easily in Polk County and Across Florida By Diane Lacey Allen
The Ledger First of six parts
Samuel is a 28-year-old Mexican who has worked a decade in Florida's citrus groves, mostly in Polk County.
Like thousands of other immigrants in Polk, and many millions more in the United States, Samuel entered the country illegally.
But as far as his day-to-day life is concerned, his legal status is of little consequence: He is able to find work easily and, short of committing a crime, will likely never be sent back to Mexico.
Today, The Ledger begins a six-day series that takes an in-depth look at the dilemma of immigrant labor in Polk County.
Today, we examine: Polk's Mexican-born population is exploding as more immigrants come here seeking work, often in construction and other non-farm jobs. Enforcement of migrant worker protection is split among state and federal agencies, which have a relative handful of investigators. Farm labor contractors, who supply workers to harvest crops, are at the center of the political storm about illegal farmworkers.
The new federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws typically does not look for illegals unless it receives a call from another agency.
MEXICAN INVASION
With its vast citrus groves and booming economy, Polk is a magnet for immigrant workers, who, like Samuel, are mostly from Mexico.
They quickly find jobs even though both the employer and the worker are breaking the law because it's illegal to hire an undocumented immigrant and it's a crime to enter the United States illegally.
Even with the roiling debate in Congress about cracking down on illegal immigrants and implementing tougher border controls, it is highly unlikely this stream of workers will suddenly be shut off.
"Some want to send every one back and build fences," said Greg Schell, managing lawyer for the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project. "But even the Republicans know that's `not good for business' as they say. It's not good for the economy.
"If these guys (immigrant workers) disappeared, the economy would grind to a halt very quickly," he said.
Polk's lawmakers are particularly attuned to the dilemma because several have strong ties to agriculture. State Sen. J.D. Alexander and Rep. Baxter Troutman are heirs to the Griffin family citrus and cattle fortune. State Rep. Marty Bowen is a grove owner.
In Polk County, the demand for workers trumps the demand for immigration reform.
U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, whose family is in the citrus and cattle business, says most Americans won't spend their days toiling in citrus groves or doing other menial work.
"In many cases they (immigrants) are taking jobs that Americans don't want," Putnam said.
Immigrants willingly fill that void and little is done to stop them.
"In this country, when we don't enforce laws, it's because the general populace doesn't want them enforced," said Jim Griffiths, a grower from Lakeland.
The 2000 Census revealed the Mexican influx. The 13,402 first-generation Mexicans living in Polk County was five times more than the 2,667 in 1990.
Florida had about 300,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers, including 16,525 in Polk County, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey in 1997-98, the most recent county-by-county data available. Add family members and Polk's number increases to more than 24,000.
And while a new migrant -- one who moves from crops to roofs, not following the crops from state to state, during the year -- may be emerging, today's workers are mostly young, male, largely undocumented and overwhelmingly Mexican.
According to the recently released National Agricultural Workers Survey, foreigners made up 72 percent of all workers in their first year of farm work.
They come for a better life or at least one that pays more than $5 to $10 a day, common wages for a laborer in Mexico. To do it, they're willing to make a treacherous desert crossing and pay a human trafficker known as a "coyote" up to $2,000.
Once here, they will even commit fraud and buy fake Social Security cards to get a job.
But for all their efforts, migrants remain among the lowest-paid workers. They are vulnerable to employers, landlords and people who say they will get them proper documentation.
The average farmworker makes between $10,000 and $12,499 per year.
A migrant picking oranges this season made an average of about $8 a bin. A very good day brings $80, but the work is not year round.
"I stay here because I need work. I need the money," said Samuel, who is at the high end of the grove worker hierarchy, making $300 to $400 weekly driving the "goat" truck that puts bins of fruit on a trailer.
Samuel, who will migrate north with the crops, pays $300 a month for a single-wide mobile home built in 1975, one of about 25 homes licensed as migrant housing in Polk County. He shares the place with his brother when he is here. It is practically a Hilton compared with the unregulated options, where young men are charged $100 a head for a place with holes in the walls and broken plumbing fixtures.
"I'd like to do something where I made more money if I could," Samuel said. "But I haven't tried because I've gotten used to it (farm work). . . . Physical labor would be OK. I'd be falling asleep if I wasn't doing anything.
"I like to work."
WHO IS WATCHING OUT FOR THEM?
To protect migrants from abuse, various state and federal laws are in place, including the federal Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act that was passed in 1983. It covers child labor and requires employers to provide a safe work environment and give specific information about wages to workers.
Although the laws' intentions are good, enforcement is split among several state and federal agencies that combined have a small number of workers to police a vast industry, advocates say.
In fact, the 245 labor contractors certified to recruit and hire farmworkers in Polk County are more than double the state and federal investigators responsible for the entire state. The breakdown of enforcement agencies: The U.S. Department of Labor has about 75 investigators in Florida, working everything from construction to agriculture, where they concentrate on growers. They look for wage and hour violations, and make sure workers get written explanations of deductions from their pay. The Department of Health has one investigator in Polk County to check on licensed migrant housing or camps. He also spends his time inspecting places like tanning booths. Florida's Department of Business and Professional Regulation has 15 farm labor investigators who do only farm labor inspections. Two are "assigned" to Polk, although others may work in the area. Their jobs typically involve overseeing the state's 2,848 farm labor contractors, commonly known as crew chiefs. They look for child labor, field sanitation and the safety of transportation.
STRAW MEN?
Migrant advocates say farm labor contractors, who are overwhelmingly Hispanic, are merely buffers for growers.
"They are the middlemen at best and straw men at worst," said Lisa Butler, farmworker project group leader for Florida Rural Legal Services.
To improve pay and working conditions, Schell, the migrant lawyer, says the growers, not the contractors, should be punished.
"You put some white people in jail, you fine white people a lot of money. This is what it's all about. All these labor cases, any white people paying a fine? Any white people going to jail?" Schell asks.
"No."
Statistics show that enforcement is heavily tilted toward contractors.
DBPR cited 81 farm labor contractors from Polk County with 158 violations from 2002 through 2004. Not all of the violations resulted in fines -- 24 were warnings, seven cases were dismissed and one case was determined to be unfounded.
The contractors were assessed a total of $56,550 for violations such as lack of vehicle insurance, not being registered as contractors and child labor infractions.
During the same period, the Department of Labor conducted 12 investigations involving 10 Polk County growers. Parts of the reports were blacked out -- including the type of complaint, type of investigation and recommendations -- because of privacy issues or disclosure of information that the department said might hamper "the deliberative process within the division."
Documents from those investigations show 16 violations ranging from not posting working conditions to using unregistered farm labor contractors. The fines had a possible total of $2,675, but none of the Polk growers were assessed a monetary penalty.
Rep. Putnam said growers place their trust in the labor contractor. But he would also like to see Social Security create a secure, possibly encripted, site where employers could check to make sure a name and number match up.
Putnam likens the issue to someone trying to build a house. He says a homeowner wouldn't ask a plumber or electrician or a drywaller for proof of citizenship.
"You hire someone to perform a service or task for you and you have a reasonable assumption that they are licensed, bonded and permitted and all the things that go along with doing due diligence," Putnam said.
"You are assuming they are complying with the law, paying minimum wage, following health and safety laws and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulations."
Griffiths, the citrus grower from Lakeland, says hiring workers is not his job. "I wouldn't have the slightest idea who any of them were or where they are from."
He also said he's never had any interest in checking to see who is working.
"Theoretically, you can be fined or penalized for that (illegals). But it doesn't matter to me because I don't ever see them or know anything about them," Griffiths said.
"I think that would be true for most growers. That's the responsibility of the guy (the labor contractor) hiring them to determine whether they're legal or not. The liability goes back to him."
Last year Sen. Alexander successfully pushed enactment of a law to increase protection of farmworkers. It upped fines from $1,000 to $2,500 and made it a third-degree felony to employ someone who acts as a crew chief but isn't a registered farm labor contractor.
Advocates say the law didn't go far enough.
"It is a food chain . . .," said Butler, the migrant advocate. "You need to get to a level of business entities, which in fact make the profit here, and have the ability to structure the workplace."
But growers such as Will Putnam, brother of Rep. Putnam, say they are an easy target.
"Any time a group gets together and wants to make a point, they're going to go after who has the deeper pockets," Putnam said.
Putnam said that profits are not what they once were for the citrus industry.
Land prices have skyrocketed, he said, along with higher costs for fertilizer and chemicals.
"I don't think people realize the situation we're in at all," Putnam said. "I don't think our pickers recognize the situation we're in . . ..
"Brazil controls the world's orange juice market, and as long as they control it -- and they always will -- you will never see citrus as profitable a business as it once was," he said. "Ultimately, you'll see it as the reason for all the beautiful groves in Florida being (housing) developments."
A labor contractor said he is doing what he can about illegal workers.
"They give us Social Security (numbers) and visas," said Tomas Barajas, a crew leader for Holly Hills groves. "That's what we need for them to work. . . . We don't ask whether they are illegal or legal.
"That's what they give us, that's what we require and that's what we write down."
Often these documents are bogus.
The Polk County Sheriff's Office busted a counterfeiting operation earlier this year. Other people arrested for having fake IDs said they needed them to get a job, according to police reports.
Crew chiefs' hands are further constrained by privacy issues. A person's residency status is not public record, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services.
FEDERAL AGENCY LAYS LOW
Despite demands by many Americans to send illegal workers packing, there is no federal agency equipped to do that.
After Sept. 11, 2001, border patrol and immigration services merged to form Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is now known as ICE.
The Tampa ICE office, which is the closest to Polk, would not say how many agents it has in the field. But ICE typically does not go looking for illegals unless it receives a call from another law enforcement agency.
"We don't have the manpower to do that (go into groves randomly)," said Pamela McCullough, public information officer for ICE in Tampa.
Recently, ICE did go to fields in Ruskin, where it picked up 14 farmworkers. ICE was following up on the reported abduction of a migrant girl.
"We had a reason to be there," McCullough said. "That was where that abductor of that little girl was. That's where he was living and working. We raided that camp."
The farmworkers were illegal immigrants. "Most likely," McCullough said, they will be deported.
ICE, though, tends to seek out those who pose the greatest risk to communities. They put a "detain order" on foreign-born criminals while in jail and begin putting them through the removal process once they serve their time.
The U.S. Attorney's Office Middle District, which handles the Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville and Fort Myers areas, also concentrates on safety issues. One of its big concerns is human trafficking, according to a spokesman. Another is people without proper documentation -- often workers -- found in sensitive areas such as airports, ports or at the Kennedy Space Center.
But there is a way for workers to get jobs without violating laws or possibly becoming the target of law enforcement.
Employers who can demonstrate they have a need -- and can't find them from a U.S. pool of labor -- can use immigrants as part of the guest worker program known as H-2A. Those employers must handle transportation and housing for workers.
Florida currently has only about 1,000 certified guest workers, said Walter Kates, director of the division of labor relations for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association. None are in Polk.
These guest workers are a tiny fraction of the estimated 300,000 farmworkers in the state.
"It's not very popular anywhere in Florida because of the cost and bureaucracy you have to go through," Kates said. Woman, 23, Spent 9 Years of Her Life Working in Fields By Eric Pera
The Ledger PLANT CITY -- You'd expect calloused hands, creases at the eyes, some hint of endless days beneath a punishing sun, plucking ripe strawberries at a furious pace.
But no. Hilaria is just 23. Despite nine years in the fields, she has smooth, flawless skin, and a boyfriend three years her junior.
Born in Mexico, Hilaria first stole across the border at 14. She says age was not a barrier to employment on the strawberry farms in Dover and Plant City.
Like her older sister before her, Hilaria was just another brown face to melt into the agricultural community.
No one questioned her credentials, no one expressed outrage over a child laboring outside of the classroom.
Now, single and the mother of three, ages 6, 4, and 7 months, Hilaria dreams of the day she leaves farm labor forever.
But she has few skills and can barely speak English. Through an interpreter she said she's an illegal immigrant, which limits her options even further.
The Ledger is not using her full name because she's in this country illegally.
A lot of employers require a Social Security number, which isn't available to undocumented immigrants.
Some illegals find employment anyway, and Hilaria entertains hope.
"I would like to find a job that is secure," she said. "I thought about working in a restaurant or a factory -- a job that will be secure in a sense that it will be every day and all year long."
The hope of stability fuels Hilaria's dream for a better future, where thunderstorms don't cut into a day's pay, where summers aren't spent working crops 1,000 miles away in Michigan.
Hilaria said she averages between $200 and $250 a week picking strawberries. She earns $1.50 for each flat of fruit, the equivalent of 12 pints. So on a good week she picks 30 or more flats a day.
She and her boyfriend each pay $15 a week to live in a Plant City labor camp, sharing a threebedroom mobile home with two other families -- six adults, seven children in all.
Not wishing to upset her roommates, who also are undocumented, Hilaria declined to be interviewed at home, preferring a nearby park pavilion. While her children played on swings, she breast-fed her baby and described how it is to be a migrant in the land of opportunity.
"It's very hard," she said. "There are a lot of people in the camp and we don't make enough money to rent (better housing).
"I wish I could stop working in the strawberry fields."
Each May, Hilaria packs a few belongings and drives with her family to Michigan, where she spends the long summer days picking strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and apples.
In Michigan, the housing camps are crowded but rentfree, she said, and, unlike Florida, food stamps are dispensed with no questions asked.
If she had a choice, Hilaria would avoid the apple orchards, and the tall, wooden ladders necessary to reach the fruit.
She recounts how, at 15, she slipped from the top rungs and fell to the ground, injuring her back.
She said no one insisted she seek medical help, even as a precaution, and she was too young to ask.
"I didn't know what my rights were," she said. "I kept on working. I didn't think I'd have problems in the future."
Weeks later in Florida, a stabbing pain brought Hilaria, four months pregnant, to her knees in a field of strawberries. Her boyfriend at the time, the unborn child's father, rushed her to a hospital.
"They couldn't do anything about the baby," she said, her voice a whisper. "He was a boy. . . . I stayed home for about two weeks, and then I went back to work."
TROUBLED CROSSINGS
Her migratory life isn't exactly the future she'd bargained for in 1997 while still living at home in the Mexican state of Hidalgo.
One of seven siblings, Hilaria said Mexico held no future, no promise of a job in a poor country where few children go beyond sixth grade.
After that, Hilaria said, she was expected to find work.
So that's why at 14, in the company of a handful of villagers, including her uncle, she caught a bus to the Rio Grande, the river that separates Mexico and Texas.
Arrangements were made in advance through a coyote, a person who smuggles people across the border into the United States. His $900 fee was to be paid by Hilaria's sister and brother-in-law upon arrival in Florida.
At a desolate stretch of river, buoyed by an inner tube, Hilaria floated at night to the Texas shore. She walked through scrub for five days and nights, she said, undetected.
Water and food were scarce, she said, and one woman succumbed to the heat and "couldn't walk anymore," she said. "The other men helped carry her. In the desert there's not enough water, the little we had we would save it for her so she wouldn't die."
Upon reaching a road, the group of a half-dozen caught a bus. The guide paid everyone's fares in American dollars. But the ride was cut short.
At the first bus station they were met by officials, perhaps Border Patrol or INS, checking passenger identification.
After a few hours behind bars, the bedraggled group was escorted back to the Mexico side of the river.
Hilaria said they followed the lone highway for some miles until a bus overtook them, picked them up and headed home. A week later the same group, except for the weakened woman, made another crossing.
They barely got a mile or two before they were found by the Border Patrol.
Two nights later they gave it a third try, and almost made it all the way.
But not before wandering for a week, drinking from cattle wells, snatching an errant sheep and cooking the meat.
A bus that was to meet them at a prearranged mountain destination never showed, Hilaria said, so they again headed home, on foot.
Hoping they'd be picked up by police or other officials and escorted home, they followed well-traveled roads. They didn't have to wait long for authorities to catch them and take them to the border.
It would be five months before Hilaria attempted another border crossing, this time with a different guide, along a different route, with almost no walking.
She eventually made it to Dover in Hillsborough County. Her sister loaned her the $900 travel fare. She felt free, exhilarated, filled with a sense of adventure.
All that soon faded.
"I didn't know how to pick (strawberries)," she said. "I didn't know the colors. I felt bad. I felt like coming back to Mexico. But they had let me borrow the money and I had to pay it back," she said.
"I stayed and I got used to it." Worker Protection Law Covers Duties of Labor Contractors By Bill Rufty
The Ledger LAKELAND -- In 2004, the Florida Legislature passed the Florida Agricultural Worker Protection Act, a law that Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, hailed as "clearly the most important piece of legislation passed this decade." Many of its provisions are aimed at the labor contractors who provide workers to pick fruit.
Some migrant advocates say that although the law is a good step, it needs stronger enforcement and added restrictions.
Among the law's provisions: Farmers are required to protect workers from pesticides and to give them information about the chemicals used on the fields before workers enter them. Pesticide information must be posted in English, Spanish and Creole. Labor contractors must provide information about the fields to workers and keep workers out if recently treated with pesticides. It imposes fines for failing to do so. Labor contractors are prohibited from requiring that their workers purchase goods and services solely from the contractor or his agent. Labor contractors must keep accurate records of the hours each worker has put in and how much each was paid.
The law also provides a hot line for worker complaints and prevents a labor contractor from taking retaliatory action against anyone who has filed a complaint.
Enforcement of the act's provisions is scattered among several agencies.
The state Department of Agriculture, for example, oversees the pesticide protection and information portion of the act, department spokeswoman Liz Compton said.
"The act gave us four new positions: three additional field inspectors, and for the first time, a person to coordinate education of laborers and other farmworker advocates about rights guaranteed under the pesticide notification rules."
The migrant hot line is handled by the Agency for Workforce Innovation, which sends the question or complaint to the proper agency.
"For example, a complaint about hours or not being paid properly would go to the Division of Business and Professional Regulation," Compton said. "Concerns over pesticides would go to the Department of Agriculture."
Compton said one of the act's greatest successes is the outreach program, teaching advocates in the community who then can inform farmworkers of their rights to receive information about their working and living conditions. They are also told about the hot line.
"One problem has been getting detailed information in a timely fashion. The evidence is the pesticide and that dissipates after a while and sometimes we get the information weeks later. We also need the location," she said.
The Agriculture Department is working on new information programs for workers to tell them about their rights, she said.
Karen Woodall, who lobbies for several farm labor groups, said getting the information to migrant workers and getting the state to begin tough enforcement are problems with the law, which is less than a year old.
"Our labor groups are getting together this summer to plan how to mount an information campaign so that workers know the law and know how to get in touch with someone when they feel it is being broken," she said.
The hot line for farm laborers, while working now, has been infrequent in its operation, she said.
During the legislative debate of the bill, Alexander was particularly tough on unscrupulous labor contractors. He gave an impassioned speech about reported incidents of laborers being kept in near bondage by contractors.
Woodall, the farm labor lobbyist, said: "The whole focus on that bill last year was holding the labor contractors responsible for the treatment of the laborers and the information about pesticides. We were able to get that bill through with J.D.'s help."
"We believe this is a good interim step -- if the enforcement is increased, which it is hard to tell in the first months. But ultimately we need a bill to hold the employers (grove and farm owners) accountable for the treatment of the farmworkers," she said.
Alexander said the advocates' push to hold grove owners and farmers responsible for the actions of contractors would be unfair and ineffective.
Alexander is from a powerful agricultural family. He is the grandson of Ben Hill Griffin Jr., the late citrus and cattle magnate from Frostproof. His father, John R. Alexander, is chairman of the board and CEO of Alico Inc., an agribusiness company that is a large citrus grower.
J.D. Alexander is CEO of Atlantic Blue Trust, which owns two large citrus groves, a cattle ranch and 48 percent of Alico's stock.
Alexander said many growers sell their fruit to processors, who supply the harvesters and transportation for the produce.
"Many of the smaller grove owners, in fact, are absentee landowners who contract with what we call in the industry `bird doggers'," he said.
A "bird dogger" is a person or company that contracts with groves for their fruit, then takes care of the harvesting and the selling of the fruit to the processors at the best price and pays the owner.
"In my mind, it just would not be workable because most growers don't employ the laborers," Alexander said. "My whole family, for example, doesn't employ the first person."
Alexander said the best protection afforded workers came from the pesticide notification clause. The bird dogger statutes dealing with tougher regulation on the labor contractors, who have face-to-face contact with workers.
His only disappointment this year, he said, was the failure of a bill to name the act after the late Alfredo Bahena, a veteran farm worker advocate.
"There was some opposition from somewhere, but I will file it again next year. We will get that bill passed and the act renamed," he declared. 2 Agencies Take Different Paths to Enforcing Laws By Diane Lacey Allen
The Ledger The U.S. Department of Labor and the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation share the duty of enforcing migrant labor regulations in Florida.
Both agencies are willing to reduce fines and broker deals to correct problems, but they differ about going into citrus groves to interview workers.
DBPR investigators go into the groves; Labor Department employees do not, fearing it could spread canker.
Canker is a bacterial ailment that can weaken trees. Polk dealt with a nursery strain in 1980, but hasn't had an outbreak of textbook canker since 1916.
But canker was very likely discovered last week in a 14-acre nursery in Frostproof. The results of laboratory tests to confirm the outbreak will be available Monday.
Case files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act regarding Polk County growers found references to field inspections that were not done because of canker worries. One file said inspections "were not possible since the Department of Labor has agreed with the Florida Agriculture Association to not enter the fields to avoid the possibility of infecting or spreading citrus trees with canker."
Checks of registered lobbyists, corporation and association lists found no such organization named the Florida Agriculture Association.
"I have no idea how that got into a report," said John McKeon, regional administrator for the wage and hour division of the U.S. Department of Labor.
The department, however, does have a regional policy that investigators do not go into groves in canker areas because of the possibility of spreading it, McKeon said.
McKeon said individuals can be disinfected, "but things like our files can't be." As a result, Department of Labor workers conduct interviews outside the groves.
Greg Schell, managing lawyer for the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, says the problem goes beyond who does or doesn't go into groves.
To find out what's really going on, he says, takes "good, truthful interviews with workers, when they're not fearful, when no one is looking over their shoulder."
"Unless you get those interviews, on paper everything looks fine," Schell said. "I think for all sorts of reasons, the Department of Labor generally doesn't do that . . .
"(They) seem to be under pressure to get a lot of cases done," he said. "Rather than spending time to go back at night or arrange to meet on an off day. They try to move as many files as they can."
The federal agency mainly investigates possible wage and hour violations.
Schell is sympathetic to what investigators are up against. "In fairness to the Department of Labor, every year their budget gets cut," he said. "They are not a favored agency."
The DBPR has stepped up its investigations since breaking off from the Department of Labor and Employment Security in 2002.
Statewide for fiscal years 20022003, it conducted 3,326 inspections and found 157 violations varying from child labor to transportation safety. For 2003-04, 3,893 inspections turned up 1,198 violations.
Task force sweeps, where inspectors fan out to look for child labor or safety violations and cover more than one county over a few days, have increased from 15 in 2002-03 to 73 in 2003-04.
Since The Ledger began its look into migrants earlier this year, there have been two sweeps in Polk County. One in January found 16 violations. Another last month found 53 violations, including two for child labor.
A long-standing tradition exists that fines are negotiable with farm labor contractors, who are held responsible for violations.
Records show that when a labor contractor is cited for a violation, first-time offenders usually receive a decrease in their fine by asking for a hearing.
Fines have traditionally been cut in half.
Even with state legislation last year that increased child labor fines from $1,000 to $2,500, first-time offenders may still receive a break on fines.
Since July 1, 2004, $224,675 in fines had been assessed and
$138,852 had been paid as of April 30.
Francisco Rivera has worked for both the Department of Labor and Employment Security and the Department of Business and Professional Regulation since 1989. A lawyer for the state's farm labor and child labor program, he said DBPR takes into consideration a crew leader's history.
"We try to get people to comply," Rivera said.
The reasons DBPR works with contractors is the difficulty finding witnesses in a transient workforce and the costs of pursuing a civil penalty.
"Sometimes it costs us more to do a hearing than it is for a fine," Rivera said. "It goes every which way sometimes. But the consistent fact is that repeated violators will not be getting fine reductions."
Rivera says a lot depends on the violation and how many witnesses are available.
"We would be more willing to settle a case if witnesses go away," Rivera said. "Sometimes we have legal reasons. It depends on the circumstances of the case."
Rick Morrison, director of DBPR, prefers to look at what his department can do to make a difference.
"If we have a solid case, we're going to proceed to the full extent," Morrison said. "We're not in the business to give them a break if we have a solid case." |