Without a reason, warrant, or evidence: Florida arrests people for future crimes

Pascoe County Sheriff Chris Nokko took office in 2011 with a bold plan: to create a cutting-edge intelligence program that could stop crime before it happens. In fact, he built a system to constantly monitor and harass the residents of Pasco County, as the investigation showed. Tampa Bay Times.

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First, the sheriff's office draws up lists of people it believes might be breaking the law, based on arrest stories, vague intelligence, and arbitrary decisions by police analysts. He then sends his deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears on the lists, often for no good reason, a search warrant or proof of a specific crime.

Sheriffs deputies come into houses in the middle of the night, wake up families and embarrass people in front of neighbors. They issue fines for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, burdening residents with courts and fines. They come over and over again, get arrested for whatever reason.

One former deputy sheriff described the directive like this: "Make their lives miserable until they move or get sued."

In just 5 years, the Nocco program has trapped nearly 1000 people. According to the Times, at least one in ten of them were under the age of 18.

Some of the young people were targeted, even though they were arrested only once or twice.

Rio Wojteki, 15, was targeted in September 2019, almost a year after he was arrested for breaking into a carport with a friend and stealing motorcycles. These were the only charges against Rio and had already been reviewed by the state juvenile affairs officer. However, from September 2019 to January 2020, Pascoe Sheriff's deputies came to his home at least 21 times, according to the magazines.

They went to the car dealership where his mom worked, looked for him at a friend's house and checked his gym to see if he was registered there.

Sheriff's deputies have repeatedly admitted that Rio has no problems. Based on video footage of his body camera interactions, they mostly asked him about his friends. But they said that he was identified as a target, so they had to keep checking him.

Since September 2015, the Sheriff's Office has sent deputies to such inspections more than 12 times, the magazines show. They fined the mother of one teenager $ 500 for having 2500 chickens in her backyard. They arrested the father of another victim after peeking through a window in his house and noticing that a 5-year-old friend of his son was smoking a cigarette.

In an interview with the Times 21, the affected families described how deputies knocked on their doors at any time of the day or night. Nearly half said government officials sometimes surrounded their homes, forced the streets with patrol cars, or shone flashlights through their windows.

9 said they were threatened. 4 said they were seriously considering moving. One family did it.

The two adults whose teenage children were targeted did not complain about the sheriff's treatment of their families. Both said they had problems with their children and welcomed the authorities' intervention. Another father said he was surprised but not worried that his teenage daughter was being tested.

Everyone else called this tactic useless or unbearable.

The authorities protect the program

By performing checks, deputies send information to the system not only about the people they target, but also about family members, friends, and anyone in sight.

In the past two years alone, the country's two largest law enforcement agencies have abandoned similar programs following public outcry and reports of serious flaws. In Pascoe, however, the initiative expanded. Last summer, the sheriff's office announced plans to begin monitoring people who have been repeatedly admitted to mental hospitals.

In statements that run to more than 30 pages, the agency said it stands by its program, part of a larger initiative it calls intelligence-led policing. It says other local departments use similar methods and accuses the Times of portraying "essential law enforcement functions" as harassment.

The sheriff's office said its program was designed to reduce policing bias through the use of objective data and provided statistics showing a decline in burglaries, thefts and car thefts since the program was launched in 2011.

“This reduction in property crime has a direct positive impact on the lives of the citizens of Pasco County, and for that we will not apologize,” one statement said. “Our first and foremost mission is to serve and protect our community, and our intelligence-led policing philosophy helps us achieve that mission.”

But the decline in property crime in Pasco was similar to the decline in the 7 largest neighboring police jurisdictions. During the same period, the number of violent crimes increased only in Pasco.

Criminal justice experts said they were stunned by the agency's actions. They likened this tactic to the child abuse, mafia harassment and surveillance that one would expect under an authoritarian regime.

"It's morally inconsistent," said Matthew Barge, a police practices and civil rights expert who oversaw police misconduct settlements in Cleveland and Baltimore.

“One of the worst displays of the intersection of pseudoscience and poor policing—and an absolute lack of common sense and humanity—that I have seen in my career,” said David Kennedy, a renowned criminologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice whose research on crime prevention is cited in Pasco politics.

Pasco is a predominantly white county, and the program does not appear to target people based on race. But according to former sheriff's deputies and a Times analysis of data, juvenile offenders, regardless of race, were an outsized priority for the intelligence program. Of the 20 addresses most frequently visited by specialized law enforcement teams, more than half were the homes of middle and high school students who had been identified as targets.

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Detention stories

Many of the visits were polite, according to interviews with program participants and videos of body camera interactions. But as representatives of the authorities returned several times, some interactions turned into a combat character and had serious consequences.

Rogers, a former corporal, said he and his team were looking for reasons for the arrest. One day, they noticed a teenage target through the window of his house. Another teenager was smoking a cigarette. Both refused to go outside, and the victim's father, Robert Jones, was unable to force them.

“We didn’t get any children,” Rogers recalled. “That’s why my father was arrested.”

The MPs accused Jones of aiding a juvenile delinquency and resisting an officer.

The charges were dropped. But 9 days later, Jones was arrested again, this time for missing a code enforcement trial he said he never received. Less than 3 months later, lawmakers arrested Jones for the third time, claiming they found small amounts of marijuana in his house and truck.

New charges against Jones—possession of marijuana and child neglect—also were dropped, but not before the sheriff's office posted details of the arrest on its Facebook page. Jones moved his family to a motel to avoid persecution. They later moved to Pinellas County.

Other families have had similar experiences.

Authorities went to 14-year-old Da'Marion Allen's home in front of school last October to inquire about the carjacking they believed he was involved in. While they were there, they arrested his 53-year-old grandmother, 28-year-old uncle and 20-year-old relative. Grandmother, Michelle Dotson, was standing outside when the officers first arrived. She said she asked them to call Da'Marion's lawyer. But when Da'Marion left, she said, one of the sheriff's deputies tried to take him into custody.

The police report said Dotson grabbed the officer's wrist and refused to let go. Dotson denies the charges. She said that the only person she touched was her grandson, who has developmental disabilities and functions at the level of a small child.

Authorities said a 20-year-old relative tried to hit one of them on the head with a decorative vase. Dotson said that when officers began to crowd in the lobby, she asked a relative to move the vase so it would not break. According to them, none of the adults had been arrested before. All of them denied having touched or threatened the officers. Their cases are pending.

In September 2016, Tammy Heilman directly explained the sheriff's office policy. On that day, Deputy STAR (Strategic Target Area Response) Team Deputy Andrew Denbaugh approached her home to ask questions about the SUV he thought her 16-year-old son bought with the stolen money. Heilman was taking her 7-year-old daughter to scouting classes. She told Denbo that she would not speak without a lawyer and left.

According to the police report, Denbo noticed that Heilman and her daughter were not wearing their seat belts. He told her to stop, then followed her down the street and stopped her. In the report, Denbo wrote that he opened the door of Heilman's car and ordered her to get out. She stayed where she was and called the 9-1-1 service, saying that she was hurt by a police officer and needed help, showing a video from her body camera.

Heilman told The Times that she was scared and confused. She said her daughter was wearing a seat belt until Denbo opened the door and the two adults started yelling at each other. The video shows a group of officers yanking Heilman out of the car.

Heilman was arrested on charges of resisting an officer, beating a law enforcement officer, and providing false information in a previous conversation about an SUV. The police report says she scratched and kicked the officers who arrested her.

Before she was arrested, during a taped conversation, Heilman asked why she was arrested.

“Because I told you to stay here and you left,” Denbo replied.

On the way, he continued: “This is the agency's policy. If people themselves or people who live in their home are committing crimes and harassing the community, then we are directed from our sheriff's office to act and for every violation that person commits, to exercise our authority."

Two years later, MPs arrested Heilman a second time, after she opened the mesh front door, pushing the MP. Heilman said this was not intentional. She had a baby in her arms, and she said that the door sometimes jammed. The video shows her angrily pushing the door open, but then holding it open and telling the authorities that they can go inside.

Since Heilman was on probation, she was not offered bail. She spent 76 days in prison. When she was offered a plea bargain, in which she was sentenced to one year's probation plus served time, she agreed.

She said she wanted to spend Christmas with her children. But this decision had long-term consequences. She is now a convicted felon. According to her, for the past two years she has not been able to find a job.

Teenagers as targets

According to records and interviews, youth were the focus of the program. Rogers, a former STAR team corporal, said his unit "targeted almost exclusively teenagers." The number of teen victims is likely higher than the Times has been able to determine. About 7,5% of those arrested in Pasco County are 17 years old or younger.

In a statement to the Times, the sheriff's office said the program was designed to address the types of property crimes that teenagers often commit. It specifically referred to a series of car thefts by young people in neighboring Pinellas County. The statements included a detailed listing of the juvenile convictions featured in the story.

“Just because a person is 12 years old does not make him incapable of committing a crime,” it said of one of the program’s youngest targets.

Criminologist David Kennedy called the agency's tactics "child abuse."

“There is nothing that justifies terrorizing schoolchildren,” he said.

Other experts pointed to research showing that violent police action increases the likelihood of juvenile offenders re-committing crimes. According to them, the criminal justice system treats young people more leniently than adults, because their brains are not yet fully developed and they are more likely to rehabilitate.

The sheriff's office is urging to ensure that young offenders do not take advantage of the juvenile justice system: they recommend that charges be brought as adults and not as children.

Pasco isn't the only local law enforcement agency focusing on juvenile offenders. Several Pinellas County agencies have a joint program to monitor youth on house arrest or court-ordered probation. But teenagers must be arrested at least 5 times in one year to qualify.

Some of the juveniles who were attacked were particularly vulnerable. When the list was provided to the Times, it was revealed that 20 of them were no older than 15. Two of them are 13 today, including Jahin Winters, who has autism and post-traumatic stress disorder due to child abuse, his mother said.

According to his mother, at least three of the victims had developmental disabilities.

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Suicide of Matthew Lott

Matthew Lott was listed as a criminal at age 14. He was arrested at least 6 times in 2016 and 2017, mainly for entering empty houses and cars. His mother recalled that the police constantly checked on him, sometimes interrupting family evenings to watch movies.

But by 2018, after months on a program for at-risk children outside Orlando, Matthew was beginning to change his life. He returned to Pascoe, graduated, found a service job at his church, and didn't get into trouble, as records show.

However, deputies came to his door. They arrived one evening in September when he was supposed to rest after having his tonsils removed. His mother was responsible for the young man. They came again in October.

“He is still considered a hardcore criminal in our system, which means he will continue to be tested,” an official told his mother, according to a video of the meeting.

Matthew's three close friends said he feared the department would find a reason to send him back to prison.

Six weeks after his October visit, Matthew's body was found behind an empty building. His death was ruled a suicide due to a prescription drug overdose. He left a short note on his laptop, apologizing and thanking his family and friends.

Matthew's mother said she did not understand why the guy killed himself. Experts say suicide rarely has a single cause. But two psychologists and a social worker who were not involved in Matthew's case said the way he was treated by the authorities could put tremendous psychological pressure on any young person and contribute to feelings of hopelessness.

Juvenile Justice Department officials knew Matthew was in trouble. They noted in his dossier at least 7 times that he cut himself or had suicidal thoughts. The sheriff's office confirmed they have access to a portion of the file in which Matthew was flagged as threatened with suicide. But the department said that it would be irresponsible to blame the program for Matthew's death, since the program is based only on crime data, and Matthew met the requirements.

When asked what resources were provided to the young man, the sheriff's office said they had given Matthew a list of 20 organizations to which he could turn for help.

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