Pembroke Park mayor sues critic who keeps bringing up his messy past in Arizona
Before he became a city commissioner and then the mayor of Pembroke Park, Geoffrey Jacobs had a whirlwind career as a pilot and highway patrolman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
To make a long, soap-opera story short: Jacobs was fired in 2009 following an investigation that he claimed was launched in retaliation after he ended a romantic relationship with the agency director’s daughter. News stories detailed various allegations against Jacobs and told of his seemingly hard-partying lifestyle. He sued the agency director for civil rights violations. And he was ultimately decertified as a law enforcement officer in the state.
Jacobs maintains he had “all of [his] civil rights violated” and was the victim of a “corrupt” internal affairs investigation, as he explained it to fellow Pembroke Park officials at an April 28 commission meeting.
But some of his detractors won’t stop bringing up his past. One man, Jacobs says, has taken it way too far.
Over the past several months, Mark Young, a resident of neighboring West Park, has posted hundreds of times across multiple Facebook accounts about Jacobs’ history in Arizona. According to a libel lawsuit Jacobs filed against Young last month in Broward County Circuit Court, Young has also posted anti-Jacobs fliers around town, including at a McDonald’s drive-thru.
Young, the lawsuit says, has engaged in “a relentless pattern of stalking and slandering” Jacobs, “damaging his reputation and inflicting great emotional harm.” Jacobs is seeking over $1 million in damages.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Young declined to comment on the details of Jacobs’ allegations against him. Calling himself a “community activist,” Young said of his feud with the mayor: “I don’t move on anything against anybody without substantial backing.”
But Jacobs says Young has distorted the truth about his history.
Young has pointed out that the Arizona Department of Public Safety investigation found that Jacobs once wrote a fake obituary for an ex-girlfriend in an effort to convince Hawaiian Airlines to transfer her plane ticket to another woman. Jacobs has said the airline suggested he do it.
Young has also highlighted a finding that Jacobs, a pilot who now runs his own charter airline company, once used a police plane in Arizona to fly over the home of an ex-girlfriend. Jacobs says the home just happened to be in his flight path during a surveillance mission.
Beyond that, Young has amplified parts of the investigation related to wild parties Jacobs reportedly threw at his Arizona home, citing details that were outlined in a lengthy 2010 report in the Phoenix New Times.
Jacobs was ultimately fired from the department, but the county prosecutor’s office declined to bring criminal charges against him. He filed a $4.8 million federal lawsuit against the Department of Public Safety director that was dismissed in 2011.
Jacobs has said he was a victim of retaliation — not only for ending his relationship with the daughter of the head of the department, but also for arresting the head of Arizona’s Republican Party, Brett Mecum, for speeding in 2009.
“All of these allegations happened more than 15 years ago,” Jacobs’ attorney, Michael Pizzi, told the Miami Herald. “In the past 15 years, I don’t think he’s done anything but raise three children, be a great husband and do work for his community.”
Political rivalries fan the flames
Now Jacobs says his family is in danger — and that town politics are at least in part to blame.
At the April 28 meeting, Jacobs called out Commissioner Howard Clark for his role in an effort last year to discredit him, which involved the circulation of a packet of information about Jacobs’ past. Clark proposed at an October meeting that Jacobs, who was not yet mayor at the time, be stripped of his titles as the town’s clerk-commissioner and police liaison, citing his troubles in Arizona. The proposals both failed, 3-2, with Clark and then-mayor Ashira Mohammed in favor.
Also at that meeting, Mohammed’s mother accused Jacobs of making racist comments to her at a town event shortly after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Jacobs denied that allegation, but acknowledged he had a disagreement with Mohammed’s mother because she was “trying to lump every cop into a category of killing Black men.”
“The last thing an officer wants to do is take the life of another,” Jacobs said at the meeting.
Young has referred to Jacobs’ exchange with Mohammed’s mother in various Facebook posts labeling Jacobs a racist. In one post, he wrote, “This is your New Mayor of Pembroke Park Geoffrey Jacobs,” alongside an image of members of the Ku Klux Klan next to a burning cross.
“He is not engaging in protected speech,” Pizzi, Jacobs’ attorney, said of Young. “He has crossed the line by miles and he needs to be held accountable.”
Jacobs was appointed as mayor by his colleagues in November, on the heels of a damning report by the Broward inspector general’s office that said Mohammed failed to properly resign as mayor before she ran unsuccessfully for state representative, among other findings. Jacobs filed a lawsuit in early October — prior to the meeting where Clark and Mohammed brought up his past — arguing that Mohammed should leave office immediately.
At the April meeting, Jacobs suggested his colleagues bear some responsibility for Young’s attacks against him.
“Your actions have consequences,” Jacobs told Clark. “You may not understand what those consequences are, but I do. At this point, my personal safety is in jeopardy, along with my family’s safety.”
Jacobs, who was first elected in 2019, said there have been “threats” against him and his family. He declined an interview request from the Herald, but Pizzi said Young showed up in a van at a local COVID-19 vaccine event and took photographs of Jacobs and his family.
“Every citizen has the right to speak out and exercise their First Amendment right, but you don’t have the right to stalk people and accuse people of horrendous conduct that harms their families and their reputations,” Pizzi said.
In a recent Facebook post, Young called the mayor’s lawsuit a “trivial and baseless attempt ... to derail my efforts to bring attention to his horrible past.”
Young has a troubled history of his own. According to court records and news stories, he was charged with murder for a shooting near Hollywood in 1980, when he was 17 years old, and was later convicted. A spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections said Wednesday that Young was initially sentenced to life in prison but was granted parole in 1994. Young declined to comment on the case.
Town officials say they’re trying to bury the political hatchet and move on. Clark, the commissioner, told Jacobs at the April meeting that he believed Jacobs initially “left some of the facts out” when he first told Clark about his Arizona saga over breakfast at an IHOP in Hallandale Beach several years ago.
But Clark said he no longer harbors any ill will against Jacobs, who has pledged to “overhaul” a town government that he claims was previously dysfunctional. Perhaps the biggest undertaking: The South Broward town, which has 6,000 residents and consists largely of mobile home communities, is moving to abandon its contract with the Broward Sheriff’s Office and form its own police department.
“I think you’re doing a phenomenal job,” Clark told Jacobs at the April meeting. “Everybody out there, listen up. This is coming from Commissioner Clark: As time went on, I got to know Geoffrey Jacobs, the mayor, and he’s done a great job.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2021 at 2:22 PM.
