A few years ago when a tourist was enjoying breakfast on her beachside hotel balcony she watched a Key West policeman kill a man. The tourist took to social media and shared the sighting. The man was homeless and she clearly saw four policemen sit on him and one in particular shoved his face in the sand. And he died.

The cops in Key West are out of control and particularly nasty to the homeless, who they pick on with an evident savagery. Predictably they denied all wrongdoing of the homicide on the beach and since they are protected by their conch brethren nothing will happen. Largely, tourists only see the glittery sunshine in Eden. Since long before I came to town there has existed an evil that dwells scarcely beneath the surface.

Something all the tourists see is Mr Chapman, a colorful man often around town on a bicycle outfitted like a mobile disco with flashing lights and loud thumping music, a local attraction. A man with a blissful smile, dark skin and a white beard. A conch, as the locals call themselves, albeit of Bahamian descent. The Chapman family have owned their own home for a couple of generations, in a house on Chapman Lane. 

Mr. Chapman is exactly what one would hope to find in Paradise. When he wasn’t on Duval Street pedaling his boom box bike, he could be found outside his home, comfortably reclined and with a cold one in his front yard. Mr Chapman has a grandson and you’ll see them both on Duval Street in the afternoon, the little boy following on his own miniature boom box bike, following his grandpa, charming as a duckling.

Everyone here knows this family. Making it all the more befuddling when local Law Enforcement found it necessary to destroy Mr Chapman’s ancestral home.

Allegedlly there was a perpetrator the police were looking to apprehend and they believed he was hiding out at Mr Chapman’s. They could have knocked on the door. Instead, they smashed their way in.

Twenty-one officers, a fully armed SWAT team, lobbing a couple of flash-bombs despite being notified there were two small children sleeping in the house. The house was partially demolished. The younger of the two children is now deaf.

Human rights abuses need to be addressed. Except it’s a losing battle on this conch-strangled near-lawless island.

I haven’t left my home in two weeks. Depressed after seeing the fangs of the snake.

Image: Amy Badass©