Item: Last Thursday police arrested 15 people at Tampa’s Mirage nightclub. Charges ranged from drug possession and probation violation to felon with a firearm.
Item: The week before two Mirage patrons were shot and hospitalized. The arrested suspect was accused of pointing a gun at an officer and trying to run over another.
Item: From August 2008 to August 2009, there were 137 calls from Mirage for police help.
Item: The after-hours Mirage scene is so disturbing — and so predictable — that TPD officers have been regularly assigned there for the last year.
Question: This magnet for mayhem is still open? TPD officers have to police it? And be at risk? And not be somewhere else protecting the, well, innocent?
Response: To usual bureaucratic answer is that filing a complaint with the city’s nuisance abatement board – anarchy abatement board, anyone? – can be a laborious and Byzantine process.
Conclusion: Had one of those officers who was fired on two weeks ago been wounded – or tragically killed – a way would have been found to scissor the NAB red tape. So, why wait?