Strange holiday trip to town hall adds new chapter to this mayor’s recent troubles

Last week, a Broward inspector general’s report concluded that Pembroke Park Mayor Ashira Mohammed violated election and ethics laws in ways that could have criminal implications.

Now, amid a tumultuous stretch for the small South Broward town, Mohammed finds herself in the nexus of a separate investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a since-fired parks supervisor’s cellphone.

As part of that investigation, the Broward Sheriff’s Office is reviewing surveillance footage that shows Mohammed, her assistant, and the parks supervisor at town hall on the night of Memorial Day, one day before the phone — which was being requested in a lawsuit that alleged the supervisor sent sexually harassing text messages to one of his employees — was reported missing.

In the footage, Mohammed and her assistant are seen trying to open a locked office door, first with a key and then by trying to remove a hinge. A little while later, the parks supervisor, Chris McKine, arrives at town hall with keys to the Public Works area, where the keys to the locked office the mayor wanted to enter were stored.

McKine is seen using a hammer — to knock the hinge back into place, the mayor’s attorney said Tuesday. After he leaves, Mohammed and her assistant, Joy Brown, walk in and out of Brown’s office and the Public Works area carrying stacks of papers they had photocopied. Town records show they made over 2,000 photocopies that night. They were at town hall for over three hours, leaving after 10:30 p.m.

The Public Works area is also where McKine’s phone had been stored. Earlier that morning, another employee — Stephanie Woodbury, who was responsible for safeguarding town-issued cellphones and who also has a child with McKine — is seen entering town hall and walking into the Public Works office before leaving a couple minutes later.

All of that footage is now part of a Broward Sheriff’s Office review of how the phone went missing. The town reported the phone as stolen property worth $199.99 on June 16, and while the sheriff’s office didn’t initially appear to be investigating, deputies have recently started interviewing town employees, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Woodbury declined to comment to the Miami Herald, and Brown and McKine didn’t respond to requests for comment. Town Attorney Chris Ryan and Town Manager J.C. Jimenez also declined to comment, citing the criminal investigation.

But an attorney for Mohammed, Joe Geller, said the mayor’s involvement is innocuous and unrelated to the missing phone.

The mayor’s explanation

Geller said the mayor was at town hall on Memorial Day to make copies of official town records, which were related to what she believed were “improper personnel practices” in the hiring process for a new town manager. The administrative office that Mohammed tried to get into, Geller said, was home to a photocopier and may have held records the mayor wanted to copy.

Because there was a town commission meeting scheduled for the following Wednesday, Geller said, Mohammed wanted to provide the relevant documents to the Broward inspector general’s office before the meeting took place. According to Geller, Mohammed hand-delivered those records to the inspector general’s office Tuesday morning, May 26.

The inspector general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Mohammed in fact delivered those records.

“It was a time-sensitive matter,” Geller said, adding that Brown, the mayor’s assistant, had failed to make the copies days earlier when the mayor had asked.

As for McKine’s missing phone, Geller said, the mayor “didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Time sheets for Brown and McKine don’t reflect that they did any work on Memorial Day, despite the fact that they typically record their hours and would have been eligible for overtime on the holiday. Geller said Brown is a salaried employee who “rarely put in for hours over and above” her regular time.

McKine, Geller said, was already on duty the night of Memorial Day locking up the parks, a task for which he received compensatory time. Plus, Geller noted, McKine had the keys to the public works office because his significant other, Woodbury, was the keeper of those keys.

“Admittedly, trying to remove a door from the hinges probably looks a little odd,” Geller said.

Who took the phone?

The day after Memorial Day, Woodbury reported that the phone belonging to McKine had gone missing. Just five days earlier, the town attorney had told Woodbury the phone was being requested as part of a lawsuit against the town involving allegations against McKine.

“The iPhone 6s was inside the box where I keep all the old town cellphones,” Woodbury wrote in an email to a human resources consultant for the town. “Today the phone is not there. I am not sure what happened or who could have taken it.”

In her email, Woodbury recommended that the town review its surveillance footage for “Thursday afternoon and Friday to see who came in and out of the Public Works office.” She added: “Please note that the old cellphones are kept inside my office in the closet and it is normally left unlocked.”

But surveillance footage during the time frame Woodbury suggested didn’t show any activity in the Public Works office, according to a summary created by the information technology director and later provided to law enforcement. An expanded review of town hall footage, however, showed lots of action a few days later, on Memorial Day. Town officials provided that footage to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

The latest scandal in Pembroke Park

The BSO investigation is adding fuel to an already tumultuous stretch for the town of about 6,700 residents and its longtime mayor.

Last week, a report by the Broward inspector general’s office alleged Mohammed illegally used town employees and photocopiers at town hall to do work for her law firm over several years. The report also said she improperly had a campaign staffer posting as the mayor from the town’s Facebook page, and that she failed to timely resign her seat as mayor to run for state representative.

Mohammed’s trip to town hall on Memorial Day came four days before the deadline to submit her resignation as mayor in order to qualify as a candidate for Florida House District 101 in the August Democratic primary. Mohammed, an attorney and the mayor since 2011, finished third among three candidates.

The inspector general report found probable cause that Mohammed violated election and ethics laws, including by submitting campaign qualifying papers that swore she had properly resigned as mayor. Mohammed “willfully swore a false oath” related to an election, a third-degree felony, the report concluded.

The report has been referred to the Broward State Attorney, the Florida Elections Commission and the state’s Commission on Ethics for further review and possible discipline.

Investigators also found that, by having a campaign employee post as the mayor from a town Facebook account, Mohammed violated the state’s Little Hatch Act which regulates the political activity of public officials, a first-degree misdemeanor.

Mohammed denied wrongdoing in her response to the report, saying it had “inaccuracies large and small.”

Now, town officials are split over whether Mohammed should still be in office. The commission voted Sept. 9 on whether to pursue litigation by asking a judge to remove her based on her failure to properly resign, but the vote was deadlocked, 2-2, with the mayor recused from voting.

Mohammed has indicated she will remain in office until the day after the November general election and then resign, as is allowed under Florida’s resign-to-run law. Some town officials say she should resign immediately because she didn’t properly qualify to run for state representative.

McKine terminated years after first complaints

The missing phone adds a troubling layer to an already painful situation for the town.

McKine was fired in mid-September after an internal review found he had sent 74 inappropriate text messages to his coworkers, including Robert Patterson, who reported directly to McKine and sued the town over the alleged harassment in November 2018.

The messages included content that was “pornographic, sexual, disparaging, offensive, bullying, and vulgar in nature,” a human resources consultant said in a July 29 memo to the town manager.

“There are numerous other text messages that are questionable in nature and consist of derogatory comments to Robert Patterson,” wrote the consultant, Yolanda Menegazzo.

Patterson first flagged his concerns to the town in May 2018. Later that month, he filed a discrimination complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations, detailing bullying and pornographic content McKine had sent him and alleging that McKine once threatened him with a handgun.

McKine and Patterson were both briefly suspended with pay in June 2018 after the concerns came to light, and Patterson was ultimately fired after he failed to return to work. But an investigation into McKine’s conduct wasn’t initially conducted, Menegazzo said, and McKine wasn’t disciplined at all until his eventual firing.

A story by WSVN in July detailed Patterson’s lawsuit and troubling allegations. The memo from Menegazzo to Jimenez, which recommended McKine’s firing, came two weeks later.

During discovery in the lawsuit, Patterson’s attorney requested to inspect various records including McKine’s town-issued cellphone, now the subject of the BSO probe. But the lawsuit was resolved before the phone’s disappearance became an issue in court — the town commission voted Sept. 9 to approve a settlement.