Visit to Courthouse

Our class visited the Hillsborough County Courthouse and met with a few people. The first woman was an elderly woman by the name of Pat Frank.  Well, that elderly woman happened to be a very important person. Pat Frank is the Hillsborough County Clerk of Courts and the county comptroller.  Those are two huge positions and I commend Miss Pat Frank for her wide variety of responsibilities.

We also met with Doug Bakke, who is the Director of Family Law at the Hillsborough County Courthouse.  Doug was fun. I chose to go in his group for the tour and we had a great time.  He was funny, and just seemed like one of us.  We had a smaller, more intimate group so we were able to do more 'behind the scenes.'

We went through the foreclosure office and behind the desk were the millions of files throughout the years.  Some students took pictures, my memory happened to be full at that moment.  Of course.  There were dozens of cubicles with paperwork piled high. This county is just screaming foreclosure.  Made me realize something needs to be done with this economy.

We also walked through the long line of people in the traffic department.  I was nostalgic of Orient Road Jail when the inmates were staring at us.  Felt the exact same.  Pissed off people looking at new meat to intimidate.  I was just waiting for someone to bark...

So finally, we crossed over to the other wing of the courthouse.  We were brought into the evidence room. Well, not actually brought into. They allowed us to stand on one side of the doorway.  No one is allowed in the evidence room, for obvious reasons.  Some crazy USF student could have tampered with the one knife and the one picture that was in there.  Nothing interesting is going on in that room either.  A knife and a blown up picture of a Google Earth map.  No fingers like we heard about.

So, after that evidence room, we left.  My roommate and I decided to go to our favorite dive bar, Gilligan's, in downtown Tampa.  That was the highlight of my trip.