While I am happy to accept her claim that she was not contacted by Carollo or his staff, the evidence does point to the fact that starting shortly after Fuller's press conference on May 9th, there were on-going discussions involving City Manager Emilio "Colonel Klink" Gonzalez, to try and decide how to deal with Fuller's allegations in a politically safe way, and it was those discussions that eventually led to Troutman being instructed to go and meet Carollo at his house.

It cannot be emphasized enough that all has played out against the persistent rumors that Carollo has wanted to get his fellow commissioners to go along with his desire to fire the Colonel.  

The confusion about the inspector knocking on the door of Carollo's house and no one answering alluded to in the article was because that comment was taken from the report written by Inspector Troutman after she and others went to Carollo's house for the 2nd time on May 20th.

The writer of the article was obviously unaware that Troutman had made an initial visit on May 13th, which is the meeting that Carollo refers to and is supported by Inspector Troutman's initial email of that visit.

So, not only did Colonel Klink arrange for Carollo to be at his house to meet Troutman on May 13th, he assured Carollo, "there would be no problem."

That would probably have been the end of the investigations had I not written my story, because even though Code Compliance Director Adele Valencia had claimed in her email to me that the investigation was "on-going," the fix was obviously in place by then, because if it hadn't been, and if Inspector Troutman had actually done her job of doing a real visual inspection of what she could see of the property on her initial visit, she would not have ended her email with a claim that, "...no violations found at the time of my inspection," because if nothing else she would have actually seen and cited Carollo for the loose tiles on the roof above his door.

Just like on her first visit, neither Troutman or any of her team got past the front door to "inspect the property, and in fact, as you can see in the Notice of Violation below, she had to make a correction to the boilerplate language that makes up part of every Notice of Violation.

The violations are not the outcome of a visual inspection inside of Carollo's property, but rather of "documentation" and a "physical inspection" conducted by standing on the street and trying to look over the fence.

That's the first evidence that supports the claim that this was just a bullshit exercise created to bamboozle the public and the so-called news media into believing that this was a serious raid, with serious consequences.

The second piece of evidence that this was an exercise in bamboozling was the fact that there wasn't a Notice of Violation after this 2nd visit issued for the removal of the rooftop above the doorway and the cut down of the tree just inside the doorway.

This removal was done WITHOUT a permit, because the time period for obtaining a permit would have taken longer than the time from Thursday when I posted my story with the photos of the loose tiles, and the following Monday when she and her team arrived for their "joint inspection."  

MY BEFORE PHOTO TAKEN ON MAY 17TH

MY AFTER PHOTO TAKEN ON MAY 21ST

I also recall having commented to him during the time that he was the City Manager of Doral, that now he was making money he'd be able to fix up the house, and he agreed, telling me that he was working on it.

Now, I haven't a clue as to when the house was damaged, or what hurricane did the damage, or what the damage was, but as Fuller managed to establish in the documentation that he provided at his press conference, Carollo has never applied for any permits to do work on the house that could be identified as having been caused by a hurricane.

The last revelation that supports my claim this so-called inspection rope-a-dope is just bullshit, and that Carollo is receiving special treatment is the absence of Rene Diaz, the Director of Unsafe Structures from any involvement in these inspections.

Rene Diaz is another city bureaucrat who never makes a decision without making sure that he's got political cover.

I've had my own run-ins with the Unsafe Structures Department, starting with this story I wrote back in 2013, and it was obvious from then until now that the Unsafe Structures Department has always been subject to manipulation and political influence because the power they welded could ultimately result in the seizure and destruction of people's property, and in a political culture where the Family and Friends Plan thrives, you know that little moves forward expeditiously if it involves a property owned by a member of the Plan.

The issue with Carollo's house and Unsafe Structures is that Fuller has always alleged that Rene Diaz and his department have been at the forefront of most of the investigations into Fuller's properties prompted by Carollo?

In working on this story I asked Fuller if he had any evidence to back up his claims, and he sent me the below text message that Diaz had circulated to varios city departments notifying them that a "joint inspection" would start at Ball and Chain, and then move on to his Mexican restaurant at 521 SW 8th Street on February 26th.

The thing to understand about this whole situation is that even though after my May 17th story Troutman returned on Monday, May 20th, as the leader of a, "joint inspection of 3230 Morris Lane along with the Building Department, Environmental Resources and Public Works," this too was nothing more than a dog and pony show done to try and cover Colonel Klink and Adele' Valencia's asses after my May 17th story.

The more that I have been able to discover about what has been going on inside City Hall since Little Havana businessman Bill Fuller alleged numerous code violations committed that were committed by Commissioner Joe Carollo at his home during his May 9th press conference at Miami City Hall, the more it has become evident that there has been a concerted effort by City Manager "Colonel Klink" and others in his administration to try and find a politically expedient way to minimize the potential embarrassment and financial pain to the Commissioner while at the same time protecting then from any possible blow back from the always combustible Carollo.

My first story detailing the city's response to the allegations that Fuller  made on May 9th, was on May 17th, and was based on a string of emails provided by Code Compliance Director Adele Valencia detailing an inspection of Carollo's property on May 13th, carried out by Code Compliance Inspector Genesis Troutman.

In an email she wrote after her first "investigation," Troutman stated that she had, on instructions from a superior, gone to Carollo's house to investigate an alleged anonymous complaint made to the NET Office, and that after talking with Carollo, his wife and a neighbor, she left, claiming that, "no violations found at the time of my inspection."

Here is that email.

I must concede that in focusing almost exclusively on Ms. Troutman's claim that she had not found any violations in that story, I failed to properly focus on the other revelations in her email.

It was only after I posted my story that the question of why and how Troutman knew beforehand that she would be meeting with Carollo became an issue among some of my readers, given that Carollo and his wife no longer lived in the house.

The email had actually answered that question. Ms. Troutman claimed  that she had been, "informed to meet with the resident, Mr. Carollo, the current City Commissioner, on site at 11:30 am to inspect the property."

Contrary to the defense of Ms. Troutman that Code Compliance Director Adele Valencia made to me in a phone call the day after I published my story that Troutman had just gone on a regular inspection visit prompted by an anonymous tip, it turned out that she knew before she arrived at the house that the property she was going to belonged to Joe Carollo, "the current City Commissioner."

In a cover email from Ms. Valencia accompanying Ms. Troutman's emails she had written:

Because Carollo's desire to fire Colonel Klink had been widely known for months, and because we know that the Colonel is no stranger to the in's and out's of political survival, I believe it is reasonable to assume that he viewed this latest Carollo problem as an opportunity to strike a deal with carollo that would mininize Carollo's problems while insuring that Carollo would rethink his desire to fire him.

It should come as no surprise therefore, to learn that Troutman's visit to Carollo's house involved more than just responding to an anonymous complaint made to the NET Office, but rather it was as a result of a decision made by Colonel Klink to cut Carollo some slack.

Why do I say that?

Joe Carollo told me.

In fact, Carollo told everyone that this is what happened in a May 22nd article in Dario Los Americas.

According to story, the reason that Troutman wrote in her email that  Carollo would be at the house to meet her was because Colonel Klink himself had called to setup the visit.

In fact, given the lack of inclusion of this violation in both of Troutman's emails and the Notices Of Violation one has to wonder just what they spent their time looking at since both the roof over the doorway and the loose tiles that were clearly visible to Troutman during her first visit, and its removal before her 2nd visit on May 20th, would have been hard to miss or ignore.

TO BE CLEAR, THERE HAS NOT, AT ANY TIME EVER BEEN A PHYSICAL INSPECTION OF CAROLLO'S HOUSE OR PROPERTY BY A SINGLE CITY EMPLOYEE!

Now, Carollo, like every citizen has a right under the 4th Amendment of the Constitution to refuse access to his property unless served with a legitimate warrant, but bear in mind that we're talking about Joe Carollo here, a City Commissioner who not only has made a point of repeatedly claiming that he had done nothing wrong to begin with - in fact he initially claimed that he didn't even need permits because he was covered by county codes - but also that he is a self=proclaimed champion of transparency who went so far at a recent commission meeting to proclaim that, "In America we are all supposed to be treated equal. The rich and the famous have to be treated the same way as everyone else."

Of course Carollo's respect for, and expectation of how the law works is in part based on previous claims that, "I am the law."

As an example of Carollo's lack of respect for the law when he is the law, is exhibited in a video that I obtained from Bill Fuller last October at the time that I was writing about Carollo and Frank Pichel lurking behind Ball and Chain.

The video shows Carollo illegally walking onto one of Fuller's properties, without permission, followed by a handful of city employees to show them what he claimed was a code violation.

Carollo is a practitioner of the, "Do as I say, not as I do," philosophy of life.

Given that minutes after Fuller's press conference Carollo started claiming that he had not done anything wrong, and that Fuller's allegations were not true, one would think that he would both welcome, and go out of his way to prove that Fuller's claims were "fake news," by inviting the city to send inspectors to look at his property.

Instead, Carollo refused access to his property, and consequently as of this moment no one knows what real code violations might exist on the other side of the fence.

That's the second set of exhibits and arguments that underscores the fact that the so-called inspection by a "team" of city inspectors was all bullshit.

The third revelation starts with comments that Joe Carollo previously made to me that his house suffered serious damage after a hurricane, and that the reason that he had been unable to sell the house, which he claimed he wanted to do, was that he didn't have the money to make the repairs.

He made those statements to me back in September of 2011, when we were on better terms, and when he volunteered to do the below video about Tomas Regalado and Police Chief Manny Orosa at his house.

In an effort to get some clarification as to why Diaz's wasn't leading the "joint inspection" on Carollo's house, I sent Diaz, along with the City Manager, and his 3 Assistant City Managers the following email on Tuesday morning.

On Wednesday, I sent a followup request to Diaz notifying him that I had a deadline of 5:00 PM, and requested either an acknowledgement of my reuest, a response, or an admission that he had no documents responsive to my request.

I never received any response.

IN CLOSING

In hierarchal political cultures, there are written and unwritten rules about conduct involving the questioning and investigation of superiors: Beat cops don't question police chiefs, privates don't question generals, and lowly code compliance inspectors don't question or investigate city commissioners.

When I initiated the investigation of then Commissioner Marc Sarnoff for operating an illegal law firm in a house that he owned in Coconut Grove back in 2010, it wasn't a lowly code inspector who showed up at Sarnoff's door to do a walk around of that house, it was then Code Enforcement Director Sergio Guadix.

A parity of rank not only involves a showing of respect, but also sends a message about the level of importance being placed on the investigation.

These nuances are not lost on a guy like Colonel Klink who spent 30 years in the Army, and knows full well the message delivered by sending the lowest level employee he could to lead the "joint investigation" on Carollo's house. That's why Carollo felt so confident telling the reporter from Dario Loa Americas, that he expected, "no problem."

Even after the 2nd inspection and the issuance of the 5 Code Violations - violations initially revealed by Fuller, and not through an independent investigation by any city employee - Carollo still doesn't seem really concerned, first because as a City Commissioner he knows he can slow walk and keep getting postponements and continuances on the violations for a long time - he not only has his own appointments to the Code Compliance Board that can run interference for him, but he's done them favors in the past -  and secondly, because no one has yet managed to set one foot on his property, and do a real inspection of whatever hurricane damage Carollo told me the house suffered.

The real revelation of just how nasty this cover up is, will be revealed when Carollo conveniently allows his Discussion Item On the City Manager to quietly slip from view, and Carollo lets it be known that Colonel Klink is too valuable a City Manager to get rid of.

That's the way that the code compliance problems of city commissioners really gets handled.

It's Miami, Bitches!