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Searches under attack in court

A Hillsborough sheriff's unit that patrols near USF has been called too aggressive, echoing some residents' complaints.

By JENNIFER LIBERTO
Published July 25, 2005

	[Times photo: Daniel Wallace]
	Cpl. Jerry Stewart inspects beer bottles at a traffic stop near Nebraska Avenue, after a pickup was pulled over for its windshield tint Thursday.

TAMPA - Sheriff's deputies pulled over Shanta Tori Rivers' maroon Suburban three times in three weeks last year as he drove near the University of South Florida.

Once for running a red light. Once for loud music. Once for a loud muffler. The muffler got him.

Deputies searched his car and tore open his console, said Rivers, a 26-year-old felon.

Rivers was arrested on gun and drug charges Sept. 9, after deputies found a .40-caliber pistol under the hood and marijuana shavings embedded in the back of the Chevy.

But a federal judge was so concerned about the tactics used by Hillsborough sheriff's deputies in the Rivers case that he threw out the evidence and chastised the deputies in a scathing order. Since then, those criticisms of the sheriff's unit that patrols the high-crime area near the university have become ammunition for attorneys in at least two other cases who argued that deputies crossed the line in stopping residents they suspected of crimes.

U.S. District Judge Richard Lazzara wrote that deputies had embarked on a "conscious and deliberate course designed to stop Defendant's vehicle for any possible traffic infraction." He wondered if racial profiling had occurred. (Rivers is black).

Hillsborough Sheriff David Gee sent a letter to Lazzara, apologizing for any actions by his deputies "that may have been interpreted as evasive, unprofessional or inappropriate."

But questions about the street crimes unit haven't gone away.

Judges have recently reviewed traffic stops made by the same deputies in two other drug cases. One was thrown out as unlawful; the other was upheld.

Search and seizures are invaluable tools in fighting drug crimes. Since 1996, courts have consistently ruled that police can use traffic violations as simple as a burned-out brake light as a pretext for stopping cars to search for drugs.

Yet such searches have cast the sheriff's "green team" - a name residents coined to reflect deputies' green military fatigues - as a polarizing force in the 4-square-mile area bounded by Bearss and Fowler avenues, Interstate 275 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. While most residents herald the aggressive techniques because they say they feel safer, some have complained that deputies can be overzealous.

The Sheriff's Office has started investigating issues Lazzara raised in his February order. It had been waiting for the court case to close.

Chief Deputy Jose Docobo acknowledged that mistakes do happen, but said deputies want to better the neighborhood within the confines of the law. He also said he doesn't think deputies are engaged in racial profiling.

"They're dealing with violent, dangerous people and are making split-second decisions out there," Docobo said. "They don't have the luxury of consulting a law clerk or sitting down with law books."

* * *

Most residents of the neighborhood west of the University of South Florida treat the area's pejorative nickname "Suitcase City" with much the same enthusiasm as patrolling deputies greet the term "green team."

They hate it.

Hundreds of aging rental apartments stretch for block upon block. About 80 percent of the community's residents move within a year.

The complexes originally sprouted to house USF students.

Over the years, students moved to new USF housing and low-income residents flocked in. Also, federal housing dollars demolished the Ponce De Leon and College Hill public housing complexes in central Tampa, displacing hundreds of families and also some career criminals. Many plunked down public housing vouchers on the apartments west of the university.

By 2001, the university area had become one of the most violent in Tampa Bay.

In 2003, the Sheriff's Office sent in a veteran undercover narcotics officer, Sgt. Leonard Diaz. Instead of just patrolling, deputies started going undercover and making drug buys to catch dealers.

They also started working more closely with the community, Docobo said.

Residents like Ed Barker, 61, who moved to the area in 1992, appreciate the deputies' efforts.

"It's the best it's been around here for a long time," Barker said.

Some residents, however, like Jason Hodge, 17, say the deputies who saturate the neighborhood in the afternoons and evenings can be unsettling. Several of his friends and family have been pulled over on minor traffic stops.

"They're all over, all the time" Hodge said.

State Sen. Victor Crist, R-Temple Terrace, a longtime advocate for the university area, said he understands the fine line that law enforcement must walk.

"Law enforcement has a responsibility not to abuse their power, but they also need to be responsive and try to curtail runaway criminal activity," Crist said. "They have limited tools to work with, and sometimes it's not always clear to what extent a tool can be used."

* * *

Shanta Tori Rivers is no angel.

In June, he was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for having a gun, the result of a January 2004 arrest made by the street crimes deputies.

But when it came to Rivers' Sept. 9, 2004, arrest, Lazzara threw out the evidence, because he did not think Deputies Chris Tuminella, Matthew Luckey and Andrea Eagon had a lawful reason to stop and search Rivers' car.

He said the deputies stopped Rivers "in hopes of securing evidence to arrest him for a criminal offense." Lazzara said this motivation colored their testimony about their probable cause.

The law lets deputies stop motorists, even if their sole intention is to find some way to search the car - as long as they ask to search or have probable cause such as smelling drugs or seeing them in plain view.

Deputies carry 14-page "cheat sheets" in their cars, listing all the possible moving and equipment violations that can be cited in a traffic stop.

"As long as the police are honest about the facts, they can go around waiting until they see him violate a traffic law and then stop him," said Christopher Slobogin, a criminal law professor at the University of Florida. "But here, the judge says they're going too far by making up reasons to stop someone."

Docobo, the sheriff's chief deputy, read the federal hearing transcript and wondered about Lazzara's strict order, because, to him, the two didn't seem to jibe. For example, Lazzara called the deputies "arrogant and smug" in his order. But Docobo read their testimony and thought they sounded forgetful and confused.

"Maybe they (the deputies) weren't prepared as they should have been to testify in court," Docobo said.

The three deputies involved have clean records and several letters of commendation in their personal records for good work on the street.

But in the Rivers case, Tuminella received a written reprimand for not following proper procedure. After his arrest, Rivers said, most of the $650 in his wallet disappeared. The entire street crimes unit took and passed polygraph tests about the missing money.

A month after Lazzara's order, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Ronald Ficarrotta threw out evidence in another arrest by the unit.

Eagon had stopped Ronald Wayne Turner on 28th Avenue, because his 1994 Cadillac's tinted windows looked too dark. Eagon then smelled marijuana and searched the car, finding four unprescribed hydrocodone pills, a felony that could earn up to 15 years in prison.

Ficarrotta ruled that the traffic violation wasn't a legal stop, since Eagon didn't follow up by measuring the windshield's opaqueness. Ficarrotta considered Lazzara's order and threw out the evidence against Turner.

Turner, a 24-year-old African-American with no felony convictions, has since been stopped and ticketed for traffic violations four more times. He could not be reached for comment.

A third case drew Tuminella to federal court again, when attorneys questioned his stop last December of Angelo Woodruff Wynn, 28, a felon.

Tuminella had pulled him over, because he said the tinting on the top of his windshield was too deep. Tuminella searched Wynn's Buick after he and another deputy said they smelled marijuana. Deputies found bags of marijuana and a .40-caliber pistol.

Wynn's attorney, Frank Zaremba, pointed to Lazzara's order and argued that Wynn, who is black, wasn't legally stopped, because the Sheriff's Office has been misinterpreting state law regarding where windshield tinting should stop.

Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Jenkins rejected the argument, backing up the Sheriff's Office.

Docobo said it's no surprise that traffic stops by deputies in the USF area have been questioned more than other units, because they work in a high-crime area.

However, since Lazzara's order, all street crime deputies have been sent to search-and-seizure courses run by prosecutors.

[Last modified July 25, 2005, 04:53:16]