Fla. Police Dept. Investigates Conduct During an Arrest

SARASOTA

SARASOTA: As investigation wraps up, more voices are beginning to chime in

City Manager Bob Bartolotta drove to Hillsborough County on Tuesday to pick up more than 2,000 pages of investigative records that will shape the future of the Sarasota Police Department.

The records will trigger Bartolotta's decisions on the futures of Police Chief Peter Abbott and a half-dozen other city employees, most of them police.

Three weeks ago Bartolotta took another trip to Hillsborough to talk to detectives and administrators on the case about the need for them to make "fact finding" statements in the investigation.

The Hillsborough team had considered simply interviewing witnesses, collecting documents and writing summaries of what they found out.

Bartolotta pushed for the standard determinations in internal affairs cases -- an allegation of wrongdoing is either proven and sustained, not sustained because of a lack of proof, or refuted and classified as unfounded. The team's conclusions have not been made public.

Now Bartolotta has decisions to make. And as the investigation wrapped up over the past few days, more and more people are chiming in about Abbott.

Weighing in

Six speakers at Monday's City Commission meeting stuck up for Abbott, adding to a trickle of pro-Abbott e-mails over the past three months as he sat on administrative leave with his job on the line.

"Three months is too long," former Fire Chief Dan Stinchcomb told commissioners. "Get this man back to the job of being a police chief and let this man get out from underneath the pressure of this investigation."

Others are questioning the need to involve an outside agency.

"We're destroying the integrity of city government. Your policy, his management," Dr. Bob Windom told city commissioners Monday night, jabbing a thumb at Bartolotta.

Windom, son of Sarasota's first city manager, has known Abbott through the Kiwanis and as an occasional golfing partner.

In past meetings, others told commissioners that the mistakes in the Juan Gomez Perez case point to management problems that Abbott has not solved in seven years. They want a fresh face.

Bartolotta said the lobbying efforts are "more input. But I'm going to decide what to do. It's not a poll."

One bad turn

The mistakes in the Perez case were blatant.

A detective was investigating the conduct of Officer Christopher Childers, who was videotaped June 26 as he allowed a handcuffed Perez to shimmy out of his car and fall on his head, then kicked Perez to the ground as he struggled to stand.

Instead of quizzing Perez about what happened, Sgt. Ken Castro asked leading questions -- getting Perez to admit that police had acted professionally -- and offered him a $400 settlement.

Abbott apologized for the "moronic" decision to mix the civil settlement with the ongoing criminal investigation.

There are five police under investigation: Abbott; Castro; Childers; Capt. Paul Sutton, head of the department's detective bureau; and another officer who saw Childers standing over Perez and pinning him to the ground with his foot.

But while others at the department knew about the quick settlement attempt, no police publicly acknowledged a problem with it until July 20.

The investigation will establish that many seasoned officers -- and the bulk of Abbott's command staff -- "had some level of involvement or knowledge of the Gomez-Perez incident," according to an Oct. 14 memo from a Hillsborough sheriff's administrator to Bartolotta.

A long wait

Only two of the people being investigated, Abbott and Childers, have been on administrative leave pending the results.

Abbott, hired in 2002, has not been hiding. He has been seen at the Downtown Farmer's Market, at a Kiwanis meeting about a month ago and at the funeral of a former SPD officer last week. He recently took a longtime volunteer to lunch.

Bartolotta has warned that parts of the report will not be released for three weeks while the city decides what action to take.

Some, including City Commissioner Terry Turner, one of Bartolotta's bosses, have said it has taken too long.

Abbott is "a good man that's done a lot of good for the city, and he's made a mistake," Turner said at a city meeting in September.

The chief has already apologized. Turner says he does not expect the investigation to reveal much more about Abbott's involvement.

"I did want to get on with it, because it's an awkward position for him," Turner said outside of the commission chambers as he explained his public push to get Abbott back on the job.

Few in the police department know -- or are even willing to speculate -- about Abbott's future. Two senior officials put the odds at "50-50" but say that no one in the department has communicated with Bartolotta's office about it.

The police union will not take a stand on whether Abbott should stay or go.

And sources inside City Hall and the police department say Bartolotta has given no indication.

"Anybody who tells you they have an idea of how this goes down is lying," said one senior police officer.

Staff writer Anthony Cormier contributed to this report.