DAYTONA BEACH -- As much as city politicians and affluent movers and shakers with access to taxpayer-funded advertising for promotion of their works are splashed on the front pages of the Daytona Beach Neews-Journal, there is the ugly relality that continues to plague the municipipality, but relegated to the inside pages with little reporting emphasis: Daytona Beach has rampant unemployment, a deteriorating infrastructure, a visible corridor of homeless and mentally ill street walkers, panhandlers and prostitutes.
With that backdrop is an even deeper underbelly of drug dealing, guns and violence accentuated by three unsolved high profile unsolved murders in the last several weeks that TV camera-loving Police Chief Michael Chitwood has done his best to dance around. The reason? The homicides are starting to age and he has nothing of strength to use in the media to flush out three or more cold blooded killers. That's clearly the case in two of the three slayings where his agency announced rewards. Whether that means an arest is immiminent in the third homicide is speculation.
Rewards are being offered in the beating death of a transient whose bloodied and nude body nude body, with the exception of a pair of socks, was found Nov. 11 on the roof of the Peabody Auditorium by a maintenance worker. And a reward is being offered in one of two shotgun slayings in the street since the beginning of the month.
Chitwood spoke to the News-Journal Thursday about rewards being offered in two of the killings, but made no mention of the third murder and nothing was mentioned in a generic story posted online by the newspaper with Chitwwod as its sole voice.
The police chief is not speaking to Headline Surfer out of spite because the 24/7 Internet newspaper received two of its four journalism awards of excellence from the Florida Press Club for an investigative story last spring into his promotion of a patrol supervisor Jim Newcomb to captain despite past lleged mistreatment of women cops who remain under his command to this day. When the awards wrre announced early last month, Chitwood had his PIOs eliminate Headline Surfer from its press release distribution list for several weeks before the Internet newspaper threatened litigation at a city commission meeting. Chitwood was ordered by City ManagerJim Chiholm to restore Headline Surfer to the list.