TAMPA COPS IN GENERAL they retire when the heat is on such as the probable case with Sophia Teague or whomever drove car 838 and stalked us into SHOPPING VENUES ILLEGITIMATELY AND WITH NO PURPOSE BUT THE INTIMIDATION RESULTING IN TERRORIZING US FROM OUR HOMES AND LIVES

1. PUBLIC DEFENDER SUES THE TAMPA PD FOR REFUSING TO RELEASE "INTERNAL AFFAIRS" RECORDS REGARDING POLICE MISCONDUCT.





2. TAMPA PD CONCEALS INTERNAL AFFAIRS DOCUMENTS: CITIZENS' COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS ARE PLACED IN A SECRET FILE THAT IS VIRTUALLY INACCESIBLE. 
   
��people who ask the Tampa police Internal Affairs unit for investigation files on a particular officer are not shown the A-File unless they know to ask for it by name.�Some defense attorneys and advocates for open government are calling the A-File an easy way for the Tampa Police Department to hide dirty laundry. Critics say the fact that so few people have seen the file, which is kept separately in the Internal Affairs unit, because they didn't know to ask for it calls into question whether the agency can be trusted to police itself.
�Attorney Frederick Mann said he asked for all Internal Affairs investigations on a former officer who shot his client's son to death. The city gave him 19 cases, Mann said. However, Mann said he later learned that he never saw a case in which the same officer was investigated for hitting a prostitution suspect so severely that she ended up in a hospital emergency room. That case was kept in the A-File.
��If you're Joe Citizen, and you've been beaten or man-handled by a policeman and you want to find out what kind of record he has, you want to get everything,� Mann said.
��I assumed I got everything� from Tampa police, said Brian Donerly, a criminal defense attorney and a former assistant public defender in Hillsborough County for 14 years. �I didn't know there was something they automatically hold back.��





3. DEFENSE ATTORNEY AGREES NOT TO PURSUE SANCTIONS AGAINST TAMPA PD FOR IMPROPERLY WITHHOLDING INTERNAL AFFAIRS RECORDS, SO LONG AS RECORDS ARE TURNED OVER.
   
   
   �In preparing for trial, [Attorney] Mann said, he asked the Police Department for all Internal Affairs investigations on [Officer] Slatton. However, he said he was never given records that showed Slatton was accused of severely beating and injuring a prostitution suspect three years before he [fatally shot Mann�s client�s son] Sexton.�That record was in a little-known drawer called the A-File, where the department's Internal Affairs bureau keeps some residents' complaints against officers. A Times report last week revealed that people are not shown the A-File, which is a public record under Florida law, unless they know to ask for it by name.�
   
   
   
   
4. CITIZENRY AGHAST TO LEARN THAT THE TAMPA POLICE DEPARTMENT HABITUALLY CONCEALS COMPLAINTSLODGED AGAINST POLICE OFFICERS.
   
   
   �The disclosure that Tampa police maintain a trap-door file on citizen complaints is even more alarming. Complaints in the A-File, as the list is called, are kept separate from Internal Affairs files on particular officers. That creates a black hole for abusive and unprofessional cops. It is also a sneaky way to undercut public control.�The ramifications go far beyond a single meeting, or a single file. Commissioner Ed Turanchik said the closed meetings helped prevent him from saying something stupid in public. Police Chief Bennie Holder offered a similarly lame excuse. �I'm not stupid,� the chief told Times reporter Katherine Shaver. �If I wanted to skirt the public records law, I wouldn't put things in writing.� Good Lord.�
   
   
   
   
5. INNOCENT MAN, WATCHING TV IN HIS HOUSE WITH HIS 2-YEAR-OLD SON, IS "ACCIDENTALLY" SHOT IN THE BACK BY TAMPA COPS. SETTLES SUIT AGAINST CITY OF TAMPA FOR $30,000.00. This was not an �accident�- the cops INTENTIONALLY fired their guns at his house. This is inexcusable negligence and incompetence.



�Gordon, a career U.S. Army sergeant, was in the living room of his Gandy Gardens home on June 9, 1998, when a hail of bullets was fired by police at Michael Lentz, a teenager who armed himself after suffering a mental breakdown and fleeing to Gordon's south Tampa neighborhood.�Eight officers fired a total of 53 rounds at Lentz as he brandished a gun behind Gordon's home at 4701 W Wyoming Avenue, reports show. The 17-year-old, reported to be suicidal after being released from Charter Manatee Palms Hospital, was struck seven times.
�As the gunfire started, Gordon, now 41, covered his son, Cameron, with his own body to keep the toddler from being hit. A total of 13 rounds fired by police hit Gordon's home, including one which lodged in his back.
�Gordon was treated at Tampa General Hospital and released a day later. Wardell said Gordon escaped a crippling injury by a half-inch, the distance the bullet that ripped into him missed his spinal cord.�





6. TAMPA COP ALLEGEDLY FALSIFIES REPORT; TAKES THE 5TH IN MURDER INVESTIGATION, THEREBY ALLOWING MURDER SUSPECT TO AVOID CONVICTION.
   
�[Officer] Delgado is accused of falsifying the report after the police cruiser she was driving July 1 collided with a suspect's car. She claimed the suspect had backed into her cruiser. Several Tampa police officers, including Delgado's partner, claimed Delgado had slid the cruiser into the suspect's car.�No one was seriously hurt, but the fender-bender triggered a controversy that derailed Delgado's 10-year police career and helped undermine an unrelated first-degree murder trial.
�Because of a pending internal affairs investigation surrounding the crash, Delgado claimed her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination last year and refused to testify during the murder trial. The decision caused a mistrial.�





7. TAMPA COP RESIGNS AFTER ADMITTING HE HAD SEX WITH A PROSTITUTE WHILE ON DUTY. DA claims there�s insufficient evidence to prosecute, EVEN THOUGH the cop ADMITTED to the illicit conduct, and the prostitute, a POLICE INFORMANT, whose testimony is presumably adequate to convict any other john, stated that the cop purchased her sexual services. Why wasn�t the cop prosecuted? It�s merely yet another example of prosecutorial bias in favor of cops. Typically, such decisions are a proactive quid pro quo arrangement-- the DA helps out the cops by granting them virtual immunity from prosecution, and the cops help out the DA by providing �helpful� testimony (i.e. perjury) throughout their careers. (See our Crucial Reforms section for further details on this all-too-common problem).



"�If he hadn't resigned, he was looking at discipline ranging from a reprimand up to dismissal,� said Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin.�In November 1999, a woman who is a convicted prostitute and an informer for Tampa police told investigators that Reagan met her while on patrol at Tampa Presbyterian Village. [Officer] Reagan, 32, worked an extra-duty patrol in full uniform and marked patrol car at the complex, near downtown. The woman said Reagan gave her $20 to give him oral sex, which she later did at her home on E 28th Avenue.
�As soon as the allegations came to light, an Internal Affairs investigation began, Durkin said. The investigation continued into this year. Meanwhile, Reagan continued to train other officers and receive favorable evaluations for his work.
�On Aug. 29, Reagan admitted having sex with the woman and resigned a few days later.
�The case was turned over to the State Attorney's Office, which did not find enough evidence to charge Reagan or the prostitute criminally.�





8. TAMPA COP RESIGNS AND IS CHARGED WITH PERJURY AND PETTY THEFT. FORMER COLLEAGUES ON THE POLICE FORCE SHIELD HER FROM ADVERSE PUBLICITY, PERHAPS BECAUSE SHE USED TO BE MARRIED TO CHIEF�S MAIN SGT.
   
   
   �[TPD Spokesman] Hughes said [disgraced ex-officer] Gary, who had been an officer in the District I office, resigned quietly in December in the midst of an internal affairs investigation. That investigation is still under way, and Hughes won't talk about it."�Even when an officer resigns, they are still required to complete the administrative investigation,� Hughes said. (By the way, didn't police Chief Bennie Holder defend dropping the investigation into former Deputy Chief Ken Taylor because he retired? Just wondering.)
   �So why didn't TPD say anything about the arrest? (The St. Petersburg Times got an anonymous tip.).
   "�As far as we are concerned, she is a citizen,� Hughes said. �There's no reason for us to publicize the minor arrest of a citizen. [Oh really? Then why do so many PD�s issue press releases with the names and photographs of accused johns?] If she was active duty, we would have written something about it.�
   �Surely TPD's silence had nothing to do with the fact Gary used to be married to Sgt. John Bennett, executive officer and right-hand man to Chief Bennie Holder.�
   
   
   
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