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FDLE chief's boot camp e-mails trouble Bush

As his agency probed a beaten boy's death, Guy Tunnell commiserated with the sheriff whose deputies were involved.

TALLAHASSEE - The head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement should not have communicated with Bay County's sheriff during the state's investigation of the death of a teenager who was punched and kicked at the sheriff's juvenile boot camp, Gov. Jeb Bush said Tuesday.

In e-mails to Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen and others, FDLE Commissioner Guy Tunnell criticized those who questioned the effectiveness of the boot camp concept. Tunnell started Bay County's boot camp when he was sheriff, and he is a close friend of McKeithen's.

"E-mail is a very difficult thing," Bush said. "It's a means of public communication and on matters that relate to investigations I think making sure that people stay focused and disciplined on these things protects the folks that are being investigated and is also more respectful for the people who are grieving."

Bush had a meeting scheduled later Tuesday with Tunnell, but wouldn't say whether they would discuss the e-mails.

"I'll see him today," Bush said. "I'll leave it at that."

Bush also said the FDLE has played a secondary role in the matter since he brought in Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober to conduct the investigation.

Tunnell conceded Tuesday it has been difficult to remain neutral in the investigation.

"I am a Bay County native and I'm proud of it, but I think FDLE's reputation (of) being straightforward, professional and calling it like it is is well known," he said. "I don't see any tarnish."

He said it was easy for people to "throw stones when they really don't have an idea of what they're talking about."

Tunnell also forwarded to McKeithen an e-mail detailing the agency's effort to withhold a video showing several guards hitting 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, who died Jan. 6, hours after the incident at the Panama City boot camp.

An e-mail from FDLE spokesman Tom Berlinger that the agency would fight attempts to release the video was forwarded by Tunnell as an "FYI!" to McKeithen.

When two lawmakers saw the video before it was released publicly, two others, Sens. Rod Smith, D-Alachua, and Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, asked to see it. Wise and Smith, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, are the chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

"Ain't gonna happen," Tunnell wrote in an e-mail to FDLE staffers about the request.

One of the lawmakers who first saw the video said Tuesday that the FDLE should have stayed out of the Bay County troubles, since the boot camp was conceived by Tunnell when he was sheriff there.

"I encourage the state attorney's office who is investigating this, and I know the federal government is investigating this, to look at what the potential coverup has been and all the potential players in it," said state Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, adding, "From day one, there's been a big coverup on what happened to Martin Lee Anderson."

On another occasion, a Tunnell missive blamed bureaucratic red tape and lawmakers' failure to provide enough money to answer issues in the boot camps across the state. The Panama City boot camp has since been closed.

Anderson collapsed while going through mandatory exercises on his first day at the camp. The Bay County Sheriff's Office said the guards were trying to get him to participate after he became uncooperative.

After an autopsy, Bay County's medical examiner said the boy died from complications of sickle cell trait. Widespread skepticism about that finding and other aspects of the investigation led Bush to turn the matter over to Ober. Anderson's body was exhumed and a second autopsy was done in Tampa. The findings are still being prepared, but a nationally known pathologist, Michael Baden, said after observing that autopsy that Anderson likely was suffocated during the confrontation with guards.

[Last modified March 29, 2006, 01:22:03]