Today's News

Naked in the streets. How long has it been since you've read those words? Let me guess. Sometime seven or eight years ago I bet, in the Cedar Key Beacon. Those words marked the heading of a long-running weekly column written by Van Proctor. The heading featured a picture of Van wearing a broad-rimmed straw hat, a hat few have ever seen, at least not in public. Van was a standard of sorts. He wrote whatever he wanted and he got away with it.

With its thrilling juxtaposition of Miami Vice and the Irish Troubles, Pierce Kelley's latest legal thriller, A Tinker's Damn! may be his best work yet.

Kevin Coffee, Kelley's latest protagonist, is an Irish immigrant growing up in New York City when the story begins. Poverty and prejudice lead him into the criminal world for the benefit of his family. With no father and no outside help, he learns to steal food so his family can eat. As an adult, he develops a morally ambiguous worldview, moving to Mariel boatlift-era Miami to become an opportunistic drug smuggler.

In the wake of the April 28 Taser incident on Dock Street, police admit that residents are talking amongst themselves. They for their part, are waiting to see if complaints roll in.

Since the night two weeks ago when area fisherman Danny Beckham was subdued with a Taser in an altercation about a friend's traffic stop, police chief Bubba Castell says he has waited for phone calls and complaints about his officers, but so far has received none.

No formal ones, anyway.

Cedar Key residents say police are out of control. Police say the most recent polarizing incident started over a misunderstanding. But the outcome leaves police and citizens on either side of a widening divide.

On April 28, Cedar Key fisherman Danny Beckham, who resides in Archer, was drive-stunned repeatedly with a Taser following a vociferous dispute with police over his double-parked vehicle. Beckham was charged with resisting arrest without violence and obstruction, and also with resisting arrest with violence.