Well, good morning, everyone.

Today is Wednesday, June eighteenth, twenty twenty-five.

Uh, we are here for a special city commission meeting uh to interview candidates for city attorney here in the city of Hollywood.

Uh, as we all know, we have four candidates to interview today, uh, Doug Harrison, Alexander Boxner, Angel Rosenberg, and Demaris Henlin.

The interview schedule was provided to us with forty-five minutes of an opportunity for each candidate, plus a ten minute break uh in between.

Um, some interviews may or may not uh take the whole forty-five minutes, uh, depending on the clarity that the city commission feels uh they have one way or another.

And so uh our first candidate, please let's welcome uh Doug Harrison, everybody.

I'm sorry.

Um, okay, roll call, please.

Uh, with your work here uh and familiarity here with uh in South Broward.

So uh please introduce yourself and summarize perhaps your legal experience uh relevant to municipal government.

Um I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you folks.

Um you guys have a bunch of uh candidates, a group.

That's very good.

And um, I'm thrilled to be here, and I'm excited, and I think this is um awful.

So I um grew up here in Broward County down the street in Pembroke Pine since 1977, went to all public schools, then uh went to uh Cooper City High School, uh University of Florida, University of Florida law came back.

I was a violent crimes prosecutor in Dade County ultimately uh for about six and years three months.

Um did a bunch of litigation.

Uh I was known as a trial guy, tried anything.

Um my wife's a police officer of Miami Dade County of 34 and a half years.

That's the first time I've never I've been accused of being um low.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Meet our city clerk, Pat Saran.

Yes, ma'am.

Hi there, ma'am.

And um my wife retired um after 34 and a half years in uh in December.

Um we met when I was a prosecutor.

Uh so I defended police officers for a long time in various capacities.

Um ultimately I was hired here at the city of Hollywood as a litigation counsel in July of 2013, although I'd started working, I think in June.

Um Mr.

Sheffield at the time wanted to make sure I actually knew what I was doing, apparently.

So I worked for like a month for free.

It was good times though.

Um during that course of time, I tried um several cases in state and federal court.

Um the city of Hollywood had never tried cases before.

Uh well, that's not true for a little while before there was a fellow that was there earlier, and a bad result had happened with a case, and uh so there was a little bit of a shyness as to try cases.

So I tried uh two federal uh cases, uh civil rights violations, uh one both of them.

One was a full defense verdict, uh where the uh jury came back in our favor.

Second one was um in the middle of the trial, uh plaintiff's attorney asked if we'd settle the case while I was doing uh examination of two of one of our officers.

The other case was a um case where in state court where woman crashed on a motorcycle in the uh city of Hollywood, and that was um was then recruited to the city of Miami as uh senior trial attorney, went there, one of the members of the team.

Um we worked on, I was the lead on something called Pottinger.

Pottinger was a 30-year homeless case that the city of Miami had to basically take care of all homeless people uh for the whole county.

Comes out of a case uh ACLU put together.

We worked with the ACLU.

Uh we put together a case in front of the federal judge who'd been handling it for about 20 years.

Case started about 30 years.

It was a consent decree that the city of Miami was in.

Uh some of the opt-out cities were Miami Beach, Sunny Isles, and Val Harbor.

Um due to that Pottinger agreement, the city of Miami literally had to provide homeless throughout the um throughout the entirety of Miami Dade County.

During the pendency of that case, I uh with uh Forrest Andrews, who's over at Lidecker now, uh, and Tom Scott, who uh we brought on board at the end stage of the case.

We're able to show that there was a continuum of care that was provided to the homeless in this uh Miami Dade County through Camilla's House, University of Miami, Jackson, all the doctors, the needle giveaways, etc.

That were able to show.

And that was a big presentation using the communications group from our office, uh, the city um to make a presentation and bring folks in and show that worked with Ron Book on that and and to show that we could provide services to the homeless in Miami Dade County and that we're on top of our jobs because many times you I know me, I'm a city employee, I'd be somewhere, I'd see a city of Miami car in like Homestead or in Durral, and I'd be like, why are they here?

And then later on during the pendency of this case, you're like, you mean to tell me our guys have to or what we call green shirts have to provide homeless care all the way down?

You know, we have issues when you're on a place like Hollywood.

This is where you'll see homelessness just because of the proximity of traffic expectations and um such as the same with the city of Miami.

Um while I was there, I tried federal civil rights cases as well.

Knock on wood, got full defense verdict on those.

Lost one, ran somebody over with a police car.