Burning rubber and Tupac: The Tradrick McCoy papers
Riviera Beach council unleashes unusual attack on one of their own, releasing police reports and HR complaints about Tradrick McCoy dating back years.
When Tradrick McCoy got reelected to the Riviera Beach City Council in March 2022 he celebrated after midnight by burning rubber outside the campaign headquarters of Shirley Lanier, a fellow council member who had backed his opponent.
"I Wonnn," he shouted from his white Ford Crown Victoria before getting out, doing a dance and yelling "Who got something to say?"
The account is from a police officer’s body cam footage, reported in one of eight complaints against the two-term council member released last week after Lanier went public with her concerns.
Lanier reminded the council that McCoy had carried a gun to council meetings and said she feared for her safety following the Jan. 24 fight between McCoy and Council Chairperson Doug Lawson after a meeting. She recalled the 1978 murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by a former supervisor.
Many residents viewed the complaints as politically motivated attacks to silence a council member who has fought on their behalf, recently over the city’s failure to report a contaminated well, and five times since 2019 by suing the city.
The council voted, with McCoy absent, to send complaints from several city employees, including Lanier and council member Julie Botel, to the governor’s office and the Florida Commission on Ethics. The governor can remove City Council members.
Among those complaints released last week: The police report that resulted in no charges over the events outside Lanier’s campaign headquarters at 2701 Obama Highway after midnight on March 9, 2022.
Riviera Beach police officer C.D. Tate wrote his account after reviewing the body cam footage.
"Anybody got something to say!?!" and “You mad?" McCoy yelled.
A woman responded, "Yeah, I’m big mad."
McCoy began playing Tupac Shakur’s “Hit Em Up." He sang along with the opening lyrics, substituting Riviera for “West Side.”
"First off, f*** your b**** and the clique you claim — Riviera."
McCoy approached the campaign office yelling, "Is that all you got? I pay 67,000 dollars! F*** you mean, y`all going come for me? Y`all want a job? Come see me, man, I`m hiring $15 an hour."
He walked back to his vehicle and continued to repeat the lyrics of the Tupac song, the police report said. As he left, he said, "I`m out here, they love me bruh!"
‘Did you just sigh?’
One name left off a list of 19 people with complaints against McCoy was KeAndrea Davis, an assistant city attorney. She filed a complaint after McCoy lashed out at her during a meeting after she took a sip of water and sighed.
“Did you just sigh in my f***ing meeting?” McCoy asked, a statement backed up by others in the room. “You don’t have to bring your ass back in my meeting.”
Davis left the room but approached McCoy in the parking lot. She said she calmly requested that he not speak to her that way.
“Don’t come out here like you’re checking me,” she said he responded. “You’re my employee.”
In the investigation, McCoy did not provide a statement, but the city attorney said he told her that he felt physically threatened by Davis.
In her complaint, Davis spelled out McCoy’s unsuccessful efforts for months to date her.
Likewise, then-Treasury Manager Mikeria Foreman said her September 2019 complaint about McCoy’s interaction with her employees came after he tried to date her. She believed he violated policy by talking directly to workers. Her complaints were deemed unfounded after an investigation by outside attorneys.
A March 2021 verbal clash between McCoy and Public Works employee Ricky Sapp resulted in findings against Sapp. A hearing officer wrote that “Mr. McCoy’s behavior was equally if not more inappropriate in comparison to Mr. Sapp’s behavior, but only the discipline relating to Mr. Sapp is before the hearing officer.”
The process server
McCoy had a process server, accompanied by a city police officer, serve court papers on Lanier during a March 2023 council meeting when she went into a secure council-only area to use the bathroom.
Lanier complained that she no longer felt safe in the presence of that police officer, who continued to provide security at City Council meetings. An investigation found her complaint insufficient.
Lanier pointed out in a March 2023 email to the city manager and city attorney that she had filed four previous complaints for “harassment and intimidation” against McCoy and worried that the city would be liable if he hurt someone, a complaint she repeated last week.
Tears in Tally
Also in March 2023, Council member Botel said McCoy’s behavior toward her in Tallahassee brought her to tears.
At a reception, she said he harassed her verbally.
The next day, in a packed Governors Club dining room, her aide, Mary Small, asked McCoy a question. He “responded in a very hostile, menacing manner,” Botel wrote.
She quoted McCoy as asking: “Do you know what happened to the last aide who talked to me like that?”
On March 9, 2023, Botel wrote that McCoy screamed across the length of the hotel dining room “Hello, Julie!” Later, he leaned over her table and yelled, “Hello, Julie. Hello, Julie.” McCoy’s aide told Botel that McCoy was trying to make amends.
“Over the two days I had managed to fight back tears at his taunting but at this episode I began to shake all over and cry,” Botel wrote.
She called his behavior “displaced aggression.”
“My concern is that his anger and aggression will continue to build and violence will follow,” she wrote.
Clash in the clerk’s office
McCoy’s behavior in the city clerk’s office on Nov. 21 became a factor in Botel’s lawsuit to get on the March 2024 ballot.
McCoy had been waiting for the clerk’s office to turn over responses to his request for public information. The clerk remained behind closed doors, saying she was checking with the city attorney to make sure the documents were properly vetted and exempt information redacted.
While McCoy waited, Botel went past him into the clerk’s office to get a copy of a form she needed to meet the deadline to file on time.
“Mr. McCoy started to yell and scream at me!” wrote Arndrea Joseph, an assistant in the clerk’s office. “Mr. McCoy’s behavior became so irate that a security officer had to come to see if things were OK. Mr. McCoy screamed and demanded that I open the door or I could lose my job.”
Botel claimed in her lawsuit that McCoy’s actions blocked her from meeting the deadline.
“Councilperson Tradrick McCoy was at the clerk’s window and upon seeing Dr. Botel enter the office to collect the forms necessary for filing her application, began to scream at the clerk’s staff and shout racial slurs at Dr. Botel,” the lawsuit said.
Later, the check she produced in her rush to get on the ballot was deemed improper. But Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Scott Kerner ruled Jan. 10 that she met the requirements to be on the ballot, calling her removal in his written order, “an ultra-sensitive, Draconian reading” of the statutes.
Botel’s opponent, Glen Spiritis, has appealed.
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