TL;DR — So when you sit behind your anonymous Reddit account, your fake Facebook profile, your little moniker — and you mock Rod Brimlow for holding out on his contract for 30 days — maybe pump the brakes. You don’t know what it costs to do this work. I do.
When I started going after BSO, when the City of Deerfield Beach decided to part ways, people came to me. Not publicly — quietly. High-ranking former officials, people who knew exactly how this machinery worked, pulled me aside and said: be careful.
One of them put it plainly: you could be driving down the road, get pulled over for nothing, and five minutes later there’s a pound of cocaine in your backseat. Twenty years. Gone.
This wasn’t gossip. This wasn’t paranoia. This was a serious warning from serious people who had seen it happen.
And they weren’t wrong to be concerned.
I have been shot at.
Bullet holes in my car. Not a metaphor. Actual bullet holes.
My dog was poisoned.
Two days after Sylvia Portier went to jail, someone poisoned my dog. Thirteen thousand dollars at Coral Springs Animal Hospital (the doggy ER). My dog. Because I wouldn’t shut up.
I’ve been doxed.
They went after my livelihood.
Someone called a former employer of mine — the meatball rocket company owned by Uncle Sam — to poison the well. Did their best to make sure I couldn’t work. Make me choose between the truth and paying my bills.
And you wondered why I bitched slapped you into oblivion?
My records. My history. My 20+-year-old police report, courtesy of Dave Cody, plastered around for the world to see. Payback for sending his Auntie, Sylvia Poitier, to jail. Fine. I did what I did. Alcohol, autism, and two toxic people is a recipe for disaster — and that’s exactly what it was. It was over two decades ago. I’m 20 years sober, one speeding ticket since, and I’m still here. That bitch literally ran me over — cops showed up, threw her in jail. That was on top of the two felony charges already on her rap sheet. And when that wasn’t enough, she sent a thug to inflict some real pain. In person. She’s a horrible person. Do your worst.
I’ve been libeled. Slandered. Harassed.
Terry Rats-burger and her pal Jerry showed up at Baja Cafe at 12:30 on a Saturday AM looking for me. Who does that? Who shows up at a tequila bar in the middle of the night unless they want more than a conversation?
Then — in a move that would be almost funny if it weren’t so chilling — BSO called me out of the blue: your life is in danger. We have credible threats. We’re putting a deputy in front of your house. Two weeks they sat there.
Don’t believe me? Ask BSO. Pull the records.
Terry “One Twinkie Away From Diabetic Coma” Scott offered to cut my head off and serve it to my mom on a silver platter if I didn’t stop blogging about him. I wrote a story about that incident an hour later.
Say what you want about Caryl Berner, but she doesn’t let life get between her and a good box of wine.
All that said, I’m still here.
So when you sit behind your anonymous Reddit account, your fake Facebook profile, your little moniker — and you mock Rod Brimlow for holding out on his contract for 30 days — maybe pump the brakes.
You don’t know what it costs to do this work. I do. I’ve paid the bill, installment by installment, for three decades.
Mock me if you want. But you have to admit one thing:
He stands up for what he believes in.
I take every inch of the First Amendment and I use it. That fabric — sacred, battered, inconvenient — is mine as much as yours. More, maybe, because I’ve actually bled for it.
I’ll still be here tomorrow.
Chaz Stevens | REVOLT Insights | revolt.training
