By Colleen Jenkins, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Thursday, November 12, 2009

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TAMPA — This week, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard appeals in two Florida juvenile cases, scholars took note that the state leads the nation in locking up kids for life who committed crimes in which no one died.

That isn't Florida's only distinction.

The state sends more children to adult jails and prisons, period. Laws make it easy for prosecutors to pluck young people out of the juvenile justice system before they turn 18.

And in sheer numbers, Hillsborough County transferred more juvenile cases to the adult system than any other county in fiscal year 2007-08, a St. Petersburg Times review of Florida Department of Juvenile Justice data shows. Percentage-wise, Palm Beach County ranked No. 1, with Pinellas following as a close second among the state's largest counties.

Six Tampa Bay area counties — Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando, Citrus and Manatee — deemed juveniles in 1,410 cases bad enough to be charged as adults. On the other end of the spectrum, seven counties in Florida didn't send any young people to the adult system.

Local prosecutors say the numbers reflect an aggressive stance against juvenile crime, but they stress that the decision to charge teens as adults isn't made lightly. Kids who wind up in felony court can still walk away with juvenile sanctions.

"It gives them one more bite at the apple, but we have a much bigger hammer over their head," Hillsborough Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said.

Advocates for juvenile justice reform argue that the statutes Florida enacted in the 1990s response to a surge in juvenile crime need updating. Researchers say the laws fail to consider that adolescents, less developed than adults, are often capable of change. Or that, all things equal, juveniles are more likely to re-offend if convicted in adult court.

The stain of an adult conviction, they say, threatens a young person's ability to join the military, get a job or enroll in school.

"You essentially pull the rug out from under these kids, and it's no wonder that they end up back in the system," said Liz Ryan, chief executive officer of the Campaign for Youth Justice in Washington, D.C., an organization dedicated to keeping youth out of the adult criminal justice system.

Statewide during the 2007-08 fiscal year, the number of juveniles transferred to adult court increased to 3,592. That's a 45 percent jump since 2003-04, but only about half as many transfers as the state had at its peak in the mid 1990s.

Hillsborough County prosecutors sent 660 juvenile cases to adult court in 2007-08, the most in the state. Hillsborough also had the most juvenile arrests in 2007 and 2008, according to data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Pinellas prosecutors transferred 517 cases, up from 271 cases four years earlier. Pasco County transferred 84 cases, down from previous years; Hernando had 46, Citrus had 33 and Manatee had 70.

In five of the six counties, burglary was the most common ticket to the adult system.

Researchers say the majority of juvenile cases land in adult court through "direct file," meaning at the discretion of prosecutors. Florida is one of just 15 states that give prosecutors that power.

Some juvenile advocates contend that the decision to transfer juveniles to adult court should be left up to judges because they are neutral parties in the criminal justice system. Pinellas-Pasco Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett counters that the current arrangement includes sufficient checks and balances, allowing judges to give young offenders juvenile sanctions or youthful offender sentences if they don't feel the cases merit adult punishment.

Florida statutes require prosecutors to direct file or seek indictment for certain violent crimes — such as murder — in adult court no matter the offender's age. Beyond that, prosecutors say their filing decisions are dictated by each offender's individual circumstances rather than strict guidelines.

Some crimes are so heinous that the public interest requires adult charges, prosecutors say. That was the rationale they used to pursue adult charges against 13-year-old Jose Guadalupe Walle, who was suspected in a string of rapes and robberies at restaurants in St. Petersburg and Apollo Beach and a Gibsonton home.

"He was 13 going on 25," Bartlett said this week. Some young offenders are "behaving as adults, and the crime itself warrants them to be charged as adults."

Prosecutors also turn to the adult system to deal with repeat offenders.

"Frankly, there are some of the kids we have in juvenile court who have not been amenable to any sanctions we can impose," said Pinellas Judge Raymond Gross. "You run out of options."

The charging decision isn't always clear cut. Defense attorneys and prosecutors spent weeks wrestling over whether Davis Islands teen Jordan Valdez should be charged in juvenile or adult court with fleeing the scene of a fatal crash when she was 16. The teen's attorneys said she was a good kid who made a mistake, and they worried that a felony charge would dash her college scholarship hopes.

Prosecutors ultimately filed an adult charge, saying only that they based the decision on the nature of the crime. Valdez is expected to plead guilty and be sentenced Nov. 24.

In Pinellas, Bartlett admits he struggled with the decision to charge five teenagers as adults after they terrorized neighborhoods over two nights in January and February with firebombs, slashed tires and shattered windows. Though the young men were good students, Bartlett said the amount of property damage and the repeated offenses tipped the scale for him to adult charges.

"I was pretty comfortable in my mind that those kids would never reoffend," he said. "But there's a certain level of punishment that has to be attached to it."

Last month, a judge sentenced the teens as youthful offenders to varying combinations of prison and probation.

Advocates acknowledge that young offenders need to be punished, but they lament that the state's tough stance on juvenile crime has shifted the focus, and funding, away from rehabilitation and prevention.

There are bright spots. After terrible crime rates in the 1990s, Miami-Dade is now considered a national model for effective juvenile justice. The county puts special emphasis on getting services for first-time offenders based on their needs rather than their crimes, a model Hillsborough and Pinellas counties have watched with interest.

Taking a holistic view with juvenile offenders is the only approach that makes sense, said Hillsborough Public Defender Julianne Holt.

"If you don't modify the behavior of the child and you don't create a values system," Holt said, "there's no doubt that the community suffers at a later time and so does that child."

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.

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Two systems, two punishments

What difference does it make to charge a teen as an adult?

Consider the case of a juvenile accused of home burglary.

If charged and convicted in juvenile court, the system can supervise him until he reaches 19, or detain him in a juvenile facility only until age 21.

In adult court, he could face up to 15 years in prison. He might not get the maximum, but the judge could hold it over him if he violates his sentence.

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PINELLAS COUNTY, FLA– In his infamous Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln orated “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom….and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.

It’s time for the people of Pinellas County, Florida, to enforce that these words are as strong today as they were 140 years ago. Government is of the people, by the people and for the people—not the political powers that be.

Some 45 years ago a unanimous Supreme Court declared: “The historic phrase ‘a government of laws and not of men’ epitomizes the distinguishing character of our political society….[L]aw alone saves a society from being…ruled by mere brute power however disguised.”

According to an announcement on the website of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, a team of assessors from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc. (CALEA) will arrive in Clearwater on Oct. 17 to examine all aspects of the Sheriff’s Office policies, procedures, management, operations and support services. These inspections occur every three years.

The on-site assessment team will consist of Chief (Ret.) Thomas Clark, Jr. of the Mechanicsville Police Department, Mechanicsville, Va., and Captain Nancy Dietz of the Wilmington Police Department, Wilmington, Del.

Agency members and citizens are invited to offer comments on Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office services at a public information session scheduled for 7 p.m., on Monday, Oct.19.

The session will be conducted at the Criminal Justice Center, located at 14250 49th Street North, Clearwater.

For those persons who cannot attend the public session, they may still provide comments to the assessment team by telephone. The assessors will receive telephone calls from 3 to 5 p.m., Monday, Oct. 19. Members of the public are asked to call 727-582-6033 to speak to an assessor.

In each case, citizens will be given 10 minutes to offer their comments, which should address the ability of the Sheriff’s Office to comply with the standards set by CALEA.
Citizens who wish to submit written comments can address them to CALEA at the address listed above.

In our view, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Jim Coats has some tough questions to answer and quite frankly, considering the alleged handling of the Terri Schiavo case, the deaths at the Pinellas County Jail and the homicides and serious incidents occurring due to the department use of tasers

In July 2007, Pinellas-Pasco state attorney Bernie McCabe cleared seven officers of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department in the May 5, 2007 death of Daniel Bradley Young, 34, of Largo. McCabe ruled that Young’s death was an “excusable homicide”. Young was tasered by several of the officers.

An autopsy conducted by the Sixth Circuit medical examiner’s office said there were several puncture marks on Young’s body that were consistent with marks from a Taser but that Young died as result of “excited delirium syndrome”, a “pre-existing condition” due to cocaine toxicity.

Months later, McCabe once again ruled that the victim’s death was an “excusable homicide” and that despite the officers punching Young and tasering him, that the deputies didn’t cause Young’s death, apparently wanting the public to believe that Young would have died anyway, regardless of the police intervention and presence.

In announcing McCabe’s refusal to prosecute the seven officers, the sheriff’s department press release said that Young’s death occurred while the officers, “believing Young met Baker Act criteria, were in the performance of their lawful, legal duties of taking Young into custody”.

The police report said that Young was Tasered and as he continued to struggle, a deputy struck him with a closed fist in the face and throat. Another deputy got a handcuff on one of Young’s hands and she then Tasered Young in the lower back and then in the stomach.

Young, the brother of Pinellas County Jail detention deputy Randall Young, was allegedly wandering in his neighbors’ yards, walking back and forth across Park Blvd. from his residence, speaking incoherently, shedding his clothing and collecting and carrying objects from the yards of his neighbors to his residence.

Police said that when Young was told he was under arrest, he became combative, a struggle ensued and officers tasered him. He became unresponsive and was transported to the Largo Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Young was the second man to die that week at the hands of officers of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department. McCabe cleared them all.

Deputy Christopher Taylor shot drug suspect Jarrell Walker twice in the back, but although McCabe said that the sheriff’s department needed to review its policy on deadly force—instituted by former sheriff Everett Rice—that the Taylor killing of Walker was, guess what—yep—justifiable homicide.

And just what was Walker doing that justified the police officer shooting him in the back twice? He was lying face down on a couch, with his hand underneath the skirting of the couch. Wasn’t there some other way of containing Mr. Walker than shooting him in the back?

Other officers found no gun or weapon under the couch.

Rice hired Taylor in 1998 and he was involved in two previous shootings. Instead of reassigning Taylor, Rice allowed him to remain on the SWAT team and ultimately the officer took a black man’s life—-but it was justified according to McCabe.

In May, 2000, Taylor shot a man who allegedly interfered with the investigation of a shoplifting suspect in a Seminole parking lot. In April, 2004, he was one of two deputies who shot at a truck driver who snagged a sheriff’s patrol car under a boat trailer. No deaths were involved in those incidents but in both cases, McCabe and Rice cleared Taylor of wrongdoing.
In 2005, even McCabe said the Pinellas Sheriff’s deadly force policy had a problem—-and then the FBI opened an investigation into whether Walker’s civil rights were violated.
Then there was the case of Charles Faybik. He’s lucky to be alive.

He almost wasn’t due to the actions of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office who sent six deputies to the 75-year-old man’s house because they thought he might be suicidal.

Claiming that they were assisting Faybik, they forced entry to his house and shot him in the stomach with three Taser guns, two jolts each for a total of six electrified hits, leaving burn marks on his stomach. The Taser produces 26 watts of power transmitted through two electrified prongs. He’s lucky he didn’t suffer a heart attack.

Now he’s suing Sheriff Jim Coats and the sheriff’s office for use of excessive force and violation of his civil rights…….and rightfully so. Faybik’s attorney, John Trevena, says the officers weren’t properly trained. Coats says that there’s nothing in department policy that restricts the use of Tasers on senior citizens.

The accreditation team needs to take a long hard look at the training and departmental policy.

Faybik, who is blind in one eye and hard of hearing, says he initially didn’t hear the officers when they knocked on his door. Depressed due to the holidays, Faybik had been talking on the phone with a friend of his on Dec. 28, 2005, and mused he wondered what he would do if he had a gun. He didn’t have one.

That friend’s wife called 911 to warn that Faybik might be suicidal. Deputies claim that when they arrived at the elder’s house, he didn’t initially respond to answer the door and didn’t answer the phone. It was later revealed that the police were calling the wrong number.

When he did finally hear the doorbell and started to open the door, claiming that they were acting under the Baker Act, the officers pushed in the door, shoved the old man backwards using a shield, pushing him to the ground because they said he wouldn’t cooperate and because they couldn’t see what he had in his hands. They zapped him because they said he was “flailing” his arms around.

When the six officers forced open his door, Faybik thought he was being robbed. The officers admitted they knew they Tasered Faybik knowing that he wasn’t armed.

Instead of calling in a crisis intervention team or even trying to talk with the man, the deputies zapped him six times. He posed no threat and had broken no laws.

Naturally Coats and the sheriff’s office says the officers acted properly. As usual in Pinellas County, no disciplinary action was meted out to any of the officers involved.

The sheriff’s office began using Tasers in January 2004 and according to statistics kept by the agency, that year officers used force over 1,400 times, force including the use of pepper spray, Tasers, batons and takedowns. Records indicate that deputies used their Tasers in 22 percent of the incidents. In 2005, in responding to 1,151 uses of force, the frequency of Taser use went up to 47%.

The circumstances surrounding the use of Tasers, excessive force and the resulting deaths are becoming more and more demanding for an investigation of the not only the sheriff’s department but the state attorney’s office.

We don’t believe that accreditation should be reissued to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office because professional excellence is seriously lacking within that agency.

A serious look should be taken at the deaths occurring at the Pinellas County Jail where in 2006, inmates were dropping like flies which would seem to raise grave questions about not only about the quality of the medical care rendered and screening procedures at the facility but about the supervision within the jail.

The deaths of five of the six inmates occurred on the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift worked by Michael Schiavo.

It would also appear to be a basis for an outside independent investigation of jail policy, procedures and staff. In 2006, at least six inmates have died while in the custody of Coats and the jail staff which includes the widely known wife killer and euthanasia advocate Michael Schiavo is employed on staff as a registered nurse.

There have been issues of alleged illegal dispensing of prescription medication in the inmate division of the jail where Schiavo is employed and was involved in a case where Diane Cross, a registered nurse and clinical supervisor at the jail, was terminated after Schiavo filed a complaint against her, claiming that she had allegedly dispensed Robaxin, a prescription medication to another nurse and clinical supervisor.

Schiavo himself was also disciplined in the case.

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/10/03/fingers-of-accusation-fuel-schiavo-retaliation/

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/09/30/fired-nurse-says-schiavo-fabricated-claim-in-retaliation/

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/10/27/judge-upholds-nurse-termination-on-schiavo-complaint/

Let’s not forget the death of Dorothy Dian Palinchik at the jail in February 2008. An autopsy showed her cause of death to be severe pneumonia brought on by a massive MRSA infection. Palinchik had been charged with stealing a $9 Philly cheesesteak sandwich from a Publix in St. Petersburg.

MRSA is found in crowded places that have questionable sanitation practices such as jails. She died three days after she was admitted to the jail.

Although she had a fever of 101.5 degrees, the jail staff had allegedly only given her a Motrin and a Sudafed. When a friend visited her at the jail and found her in serious condition, he complained to jail staff but said he was ignored by hostile guards.

Fifteen days after she was booked into the jail, she was dead.

Considering the number of inmate deaths at the jail, it appears that perhaps a state investigation should be conducted and a review of the inmate health care division, detention and corrections bureau where euthanasia advocate Michael Schiavo is employed as a clinical supervisor on the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift.

Accreditation? Not with that number of deaths. Someone needs to take a look at what’s going on at the facility. Maybe the guards are spending too much time surfing the Internet and reading articles about the Schiavo case instead of supervising inmates.

Earlier this year, following an Internal Affairs investigation, it was determined that Michael Schiavo, the man who killed his former wife, Terri Schindler Schiavo, by dehydration, claiming that she would want to die in such an inhumane manner because she was incapacitated, had been using taxpayer-owned sheriff’s department resources and taxpayer time to engage in public attacks on Internet forums, focusing on the Schindler family and others involved in the Schiavo case–in essence–defrauding the taxpayers.

Investigations conducted by both the Administrative Investigations Division of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the command level of the Detention and Corrections Division substantiated that Schiavo violated department policy and for a period of nearly six months, had routinely been posting derogatory messages, even starting threads to post negative comments about the Schindler family and their representatives, wile using department computers during regular work hours.

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/01/25/cyber_slacker/

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/01/31/schiavo_dole/

The accreditation team should also consider the cover-up in the Schiavo case which would lead us to question how many other cover-ups and scuttling of warranted investigations into politically sensitive alleged criminal activity have there been by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and its supervisors.http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/10/15/schiavo_culture/

After all, government is still by the people, of the people and for the people and now is the time for the people to speak out and emphatically state that cover-ups and protection of certain politically connected people in the state of Florida and particularly in Pinellas County cannot and will not be tolerated. 10-16-09