State Attorney Bernie McCabe concludes that Pinellas Park could have avoided litigation over public records of the city manager's death.
By ANNE LINDBERG
Published June 1, 2003
PINELLAS PARK - The state attorney has criticized city officials for their poor handling of public records concerning the city manager's suicide and blamed them for the confusion, controversy and litigation that has occupied Pinellas Park the past three months.
Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe found that the original police report had not been shredded as police had suggested. McCabe now has that document.
"When we began this inquiry, I was reasonably confident that it would turn out to be "much ado about nothing,"' McCabe wrote in his report, which was released Friday. "However, I have concluded that it is much ado about something that could have easily been avoided."
McCabe closed his inquiry into the matter, saying a criminal investigation would not be appropriate.
"I guess when you have that kind of a death you have some miscommunications in the beginning of how records went out," Interim City Manager Mike Gustafson said.
Gustafson said the city is reviewing its public records policy but cautioned that should something similar happen again in the future, the same sort of confusion could occur again.
Some of the problems arose because Pinellas Park officials did not handle the requests for information about Jerry Mudd's death in the usual way, McCabe said. Because it was a police matter, any records requests normally would have been routed through that office. However, requests for documents about Mudd's death, including copies of original police reports and the suicide note, were routed through the public information officer and city clerk.
"There appears to be no justification for treating this death as anything other than the police matter it was," McCabe wrote.
"It is my belief that, had the records requests in this case been processed "in the normal course of business,' i.e., through proper police channels, the controversy and litigation could likely have been avoided."
On Feb. 11, the day Jerry Mudd died, Pinellas Park officials denied requests by the St. Petersburg Times to turn over copies of the original police report and suicide note. But despite the lawsuit, the city has been slow to turn over documents and still has not given the newspaper a copy of the original police report.
McCabe's inquiry focused on the fate of that document.
Police Sgt. Dan Levy did not bring a copy of the original signed by the officer and her supervisor to a deposition despite a subpoena instructing him to do so.
When asked about it, he testified that he had been ordered to have Donna Saxer, the officer who wrote it, change the report to omit a verbatim copy of Mudd's suicide note. The rationale, Levy testified, was that "we did not want that to become the official police report that would be released to the public."
When asked what he did with it, he testified that it was put in his shred pile.
McCabe said Levy then testified that things on the pile "ultimately get shredded," not "got shredded" as was reported in the Times.
In fact, Levy told a state attorney's investigator that "it was not shredded," McCabe said Friday.
McCabe said he was unsure when Levy removed the report from the shred pile or why he had not turned it over to the Times as required by the subpoena. McCabe said he did not want to enter the dispute between the paper and the city.
"At some point in time, he was somehow directed to go find it. ... Basically, he hadn't gotten around to shredding the pile," McCabe said. "My investigator's report says, "I determined that the original report ... was not shredded but in the possession of (Pinellas Park police) Chief (Dorene) Thomas."
It's unclear why the city never produced the original report in the face of news stories saying it had been shredded. In one interview, Gustafson agreed the report had been shredded but said it was a draft. Gustafson never said Saxer's original, approved report still existed.
Gustafson said he thought all records had been turned over to the Times but conceded he had been "out of the loop" concerning most public records created the day Mudd died. The exception was the suicide note.
"At one time the attorney asked me about the suicide note; should we release it or withhold it? I agreed about withholding it. Absolutely," Gustafson said.
The police department and city Clerk Kathy Witherington Rogers turned to city attorney Ed Foreman for advice, he said. Foreman "decided what should be released."
