Illegal dumping is a problem throughout South Florida and Pinecrest is no exception. The fact that code enforcement officers do not work on a regular basis on weekends in the Village may be giving a free rein to dumping-law violators.

I was driving north on Ludlum Road (SW 67th Avenue) one Saturday morning on the way to my office, when I noticed a Pinecrest Police car alongside a dump truck in a vacant lot at SW 92nd Street.

Stopping to investigate, I learned that Village police were responding to a weekend complaint from property owner Frank Mendez, who charged that Allied Trucking Co. vehicles were dumping debris on his property at 6700 SW 92 St. and that the debris came from a nearby residential construction site.

Police went to the work site at 5898 SW 96 St., where work was being done by the MIS Corporation, and compared the materials being discarded from the roofing project with those found on the Mendez property. Officers confronted truck driver Lorenzo Aguiar, who admitted the dumping but claimed he had the property owner’s permission.

Aguiar quickly changed his story when police produced Mendez, who said no permission was ever given to dump anything on his property. Mendez said he wanted the waste material removed from his lot immediately and Aguiar readily agreed.

Aguiar returned to the Mendez property with a dump truck and a backhoe and removed all of the material that had been illegally deposited. As a result, no charges were filed.

However, the incident raises the question should Pinecrest have more code enforcement officers working on weekends? For that matter, what other code violations are occurring on weekends simply because people are aware of this gap in the enforcement policy?