Melissa attached to herself people in high places for power:
It has since become obvious to me that the whole reason ACOEM did what they did
was because Melissa had duped them. She forged business cards of her own, gave
herself titles I had never given her. She told everyone around her that I was
handing the program over to her, that she was the new "Coordinator", that
Alachua County SKYWARN was going to be run by her. It was false. The
responsible thing for upper echelon in ACOEM to do would have been to call me,
or email me, and ask if this was indeed true. But there were no emails, no
phone calls, no letters. Nothing official. No signed papers. Upper echelon in
ACOEM simply took Melissa at her word and never challenged her. (This is
unbelievable to me, really.) And so, they gave Melissa UNBELIEVABLE power
within ACOEM, gave her charges and duties, put her in charge of putting
together a "new SOP Manual" for Alachua County SKYWARN. She convinced them that
I was behind her, that I wanted this, that I was instructing her. So when Dave
Donnelly finally sent me a copy of this new SOP manual, asking my opinion, I
had no idea what they were doing, and I was livid, and I demanded they stop.
Chief May then intervened, attempting to tell me that "no one was
attempting to take over anything" when in actuality he had NO CLUE what
was actually going on, and he wanted me to sit down with the bad guys and come
to some "agreement" with them - in an apparent total denial of what I had just
TOLD the both of them! This made no sense to me, and sounded like he
was indeed attempting to take over, and when I got mad, the Chief ceased all
communication with me...BUT CONTINUED USING THE ACS NAME ANYWAY!!! These people
were severely duped. And I would be quick to relieve them of any responsibility
for anything BECAUSE they were duped...EXCEPT that they had ignored me, blew me
off, never contacted me, never kept in touch with me, and instead of stopping
to think "Why is Todd so angry? Where is the miscommunication?", they
instead assumed that I was "changing my mind", and then they labeled me as
being irrational and cut off ALL communications. NEVER OCCURRED to them that
they were being used, or that Melissa might be bad, or that
she might be anything like a psychopath. Melissa had impressed upon
Emergency Management that the SKYWARN program was an amateur radio program, and
thus that it could be regulated by Emergency Management, and thus that it was
within their purvuew and responsibility. (This possibility of thinking was not
apparent to me until long after all the damage had been done. But now I
realize it...only after having sat home for long periods of time going over
everyting in my mind, asking myself, "WHY did they do this? What would MAKE
people act like this? What would MAKE people believe that they even had any
RIGHT?") She had everyone who held any kind of a powerful position
conned and was expertly manipulating them. Everyone believed
in her - without question, gave her unbelievable powers -
without check. This was their own fault, not
mine. ACOEM managers acted stupidly, irresponsibly;
assumed things that were wrong; took actions without first
verifying, then left me out of the loop. Instead of investigating of
what was going on, they just assumed that I was crazy and being mean. (I have
NEVER had any problems with ANYONE in EM, NWS, FDEM, the police, I have no
police record, no mental history...and people are assuming things I'm being a
problem without anything behind it to support it.) In so doing, they only
encouraged my harassers. At every step, people were doing things to me and, in
the end, I was always blamed. This was starting to happen in ridiculously
epidemic repetition, I was beginning to note. I'm sitting home doing
nothing to anyone; and yet, every time I turned around, I was being
labeled as a "problem" by someone. No one EVER took my complaints
seriously. EVERYONE believed everything my attackers said without question. I
would LOVE to watch a Discovery Channel program which explains how things like
that happen.