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Jim Walker of Walker & O’Neill Maritime Lawyers

WESH-2: Worst News Station in the World Broadcasts Arrest of Mother of Two Children, Returning From Disney Cruise, Over $85

When I commenced this blog, I included a section where I award cruise lines and cruise executives the title “worst cruise line in the world” for the company or person in the cruise industry engaged in the most outlandish conduct.

Some months it has been hard to award just one cruise line or person because there have been so many outlandish things happening lately in the cruise industry. When the Costa Concordia disaster struck, I discontinued the practice because there were not enough award trophies to pass out.

But today I determined to come back to the “worst in the world” award after reading a news account involving a woman arrested after cruising with her family because of $85 in court costs which she didn’t pay twenty-two years ago.

The story involves a forty-one year old woman from Connecticut who sailed on the Disney Fantasy cruise ship with her hubby and two kids. When the cruise ship returned to Port Canaveral today, the Brevard County Sheriff’s office was waiting to manacle her and haul her off to jail.

It turns out that the woman, whose name I will not mention because she has been abjected enough, owed the state of Florida $85 in court costs for an misdemeanor arrest for the theft of a pack of cigarettes in one thousand nine hundred ninety one when she was eighteen years old.

Over the last two decades, she became married, paid for college, received a degree in architecture, had two kids, and is gainfully employed designing jet engines for a major aircraft manufacturer.

A cruise for four aboard a Disney cruise ship is a pricey ticket. And I bet she is a good mom who planned to take her kids to Disney World as well. Certainly the economy of Florida benefits from her paying for the cruise out of a local port, flying into a local airport, renting a car or taking a taxi, paying tolls, buying food and staying in hotels.

But instead we’ll let the taxpayers pay for her to sit in jail in the Brevard County jailhouse which will not let her post bail because the court costs were levied in Orange County and she has to be transferred from Brevard County before she can be bonded out. It looks like she may spend as long as four or five days in jail before she is transferred to Orlando and released.

Arresting a mother of two for non-payment of $85 in court costs is ludicrous. Why not arrest grandmothers for library books returned late? Yes, individual accountability is significant but an arrest for $85 in court costs after twenty two years given the significant amount of violent crimes on cruise ships today?

I thought about providing the “worst in the world” award to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office because it does such a poor job arresting child predators and rapists on cruise ships. The port police and sheriff’s department in Brevard seem to look the other way when foreign squad members steal jewelry and iPhones and computers from passengers on the high seas.

But I thought that the award should go to the news station, WESH-2 in Orlando, which ran the preposterous story. In addition to its article on line which you can read here, the news station aired a sensational chunk demonstrating the woman’s mug shot, movie of the woman in hand-cuffs, pictures of her being placed in the jail cell, photos of barb wire and high fences of the jail house, and the woman sobbing in contrition.

In a cruise industry with an alarmingly bad record for drunken shipboard violence and un-prosecuted hook-up crimes against women and children, we have the act team at WESH-2 grilling a mother over $85 dating back to when she was a teenager.

The news station included movie of the news reporter, Dan Billow (resembling Will Ferrell in his role as Ron Burgundy in Anchorman), chastising the poor woman in jail with these comments:

So, you know, isn’t that just raunchy luck? This is your, er’, problem. Uhm, I mean, you’re the one who did this . . .

Billow finishes the nasty little segment with a friendly reminder to his viewing audience:

So it’s worth remembering, before taking a cruise, pay any unpaid traffic tickets or any other outstanding legal matters, or a wish vacation might wind up like ****’s.

Thanks Dan, asshole!

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