Showing up to a Miami-Dade County Commission meeting a little hot under the collar, seething over a local government decision? Not unusual.
Threatening bodily harm to elected officials — and pointing at them while doing so? That’ll get you arrested.
Jose Antonio Fernandez, 54, found that out the hard way Tuesday when he stepped to the microphone and warned that if the county were to take his property, he would have “the right to shoot every one of you.
“Shoot ’em,” he said.
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Fernandez, sporting a prominent beard and a T-shirt that read “No to United Nations Agenda 21,” accused the commission of “confiscating the land of small farmers.”
“You confiscated my land already,” he said.
“Now you want my house. I came here to tell you in public, if you sell my house, the ‘bleep’ is going to hit the fan,” he added, apparently more comfortable making threats than cursing. “And I’m going to board the entire house with me inside.”
Fernandez lives just outside a rural South Miami-Dade enclave locked in legal battles with county environmental regulators over wetlands violations. The small nurseries and farms just east of the Everglades and west of Krome Avenue in the Las Palmas community — known as the 8 ½ Square Mile Area — have repeatedly run afoul of the Division of Environmental Resources Management.
A judge ruled in 2011 that Fernandez’s nursery — which was on a separate property from his home — owed the county $316,000 in restitution that Miami-Dade has yet to receive.
Speaker declines to curse, but threatens to shoot Miami-Dade politicians - Miami-Dade - MiamiHerald.com
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