MIAMI (CBSMiami) – When asked why he would risk his job and speak publicly, Detective Thomas Fiore considered the question carefully before answering.
“People are dying,” he finally said, “and there are so many things that are going on there that people need to know about.”
Fiore, a criminal investigator for the VA police department in South Florida, contacted CBS4 News hoping to shed light on what he considers a culture of cover-ups and bureaucratic neglect. Among his charges: Drug dealing on the hospital grounds is a daily occurrence.
“Anything from your standard prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and of course marijuana, cocaine, heroin, I’ve come across them all,” he explained.
Even inside the hospital, he says he was stopped from doing his job – investigating reports of missing drugs from the VA pharmacy. When the amount of a particular drug inside the pharmacy doesn’t match the amount that the pharmacy is supposed to have, a report, known as a “discrepancy report” is generated. Normally it was his job to investigate the reports to determine if they were the result of harmless mistakes or criminal activity. But all that changed, he said, about two years ago.
“I was instructed that I was to stop conducting investigations pertaining to controlled substance discrepancies,” he recalled.
He said he was personally told to stop investigating them by the hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Vincent DeGennaro.
“I have no idea why,” he said. “He’s the chief of staff he doesn’t have to tell me why.”
DeGennaro declined our request for an interview. A spokesman for the VA wrote CBS4 News: “The Miami VA is required to monitor all controlled substances and resolve inventory discrepancies within 72 hours. Any unresolved discrepancies are reported to the Miami VA Healthcare System Director and Controlled Substance Coordinator, VA OIG, DEA and VA Police for independent investigation.”
Fiore said he decided to contact CBS4 News following our report last month on the death of Nicholas Cutter, a 27-year-old Iraq War veteran with PTSD who died from a cocaine overdose inside the Miami VA’s drug rehab center.
WASHINGTON — From Capitol Hill to state capitals, real-life Hollywood cliffhangers are being played out over tax breaks designed to woo the motion picture and television industry.
Lawmakers are re-evaluating the generous tax incentives they provide the film industry. Many say it’s not worth the money, especially when governments are facing tight budgets and the Hollywood is enjoying a record $35.9 billion in worldwide box office receipts _ $10.9 billion alone from the United States and Canada.
“They’re learning that the incentives don’t live up to the claims of their proponents,” said Scott Drenkard, an economist for the Tax Foundation, a longtime critic of the breaks. “The main reason they are popular is they’re a little bit sexy. They give politicians the ability to rub elbows with movie stars.”
The industry and its allies are fighting back, though, saying they bring jobs and tax revenues anytime they produce a movie or TV show in a U.S. location.
“Tax incentives are creating jobs and promoting economic activity,” said Vans Stevenson, the senior vice president for state government affairs at the Motion Picture Association of America. “You see so many success stories because there is a significant return on investment, and that is true across the country.”
Nationwide, the MPAA said, the television and film industry supported 1.9 million private-sector jobs and $43.1 billion in wages in 2011, the most recent figures available.
Thirty-nine states and Puerto Rico offer film and television production incentives. Ten states alone provide the film industry with $1.4 billion a year in tax breaks, according to a report that California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office released last month.
But some states now are saying “cut” to tax breaks.
