Deputies pop in; family irked

Officials say a woman they were chasing entered the house.

By Helen Anne Travis and Molly Moorhead, Times Staff Writers
Published February 15, 2008

Gustine Rogers, 56, talks about how Pasco County sheriff's deputies had their guns pointed at her and her 29-year-old son in their Chapel Pines home about 1:20 a.m. Thursday. Audio: Hear the Rogers' family 911 call
	[Keri Wiginton | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Bay News 9] Gustine Rogers photographed Pasco sheriff's deputies in her house early Thursday morning with her camera phone.

WESLEY CHAPEL - Before the 911 operator could even answer, there was yelling on the line.

"Six officers came through our back door ... they're standing in our kitchen with their guns drawn on me."

It was about 1:20 a.m. Thursday. The caller was 29-year-old Terry Rogers. And from the tone of his voice, he was not scared. He was angry.

"Get the ---- out of my house," he yelled.

He alternated between talking to the 911 operator and shouting at the sheriff's deputies who had entered his home without invitation. "They came through my back door, no warrant or nothing ... I need y'all to send some state troopers or somebody."

Moments later, Rogers' mother, Gustine, who is black, called for help.

"I got about six white cops that came in my house shining lights and guns on me ... I don't trust white cops at all."

Hours later, Gustine Rogers was complaining to reporters. She said she is afraid of "white cops," raised the specter of Rodney King and called the deputies' warrantless entry into her home "the cops breaking the law themselves."

But as it turned out, Gustine Rogers' story was missing a key element.

When she was in her 20s, Gustine Rogers wanted to be a cop. She said she wanted to help people. But since then, she said, her perception of the police, especially white police, has changed.

There were horror stories from her friends about white cops overstepping the line. And early Thursday morning, there were six white men with badges standing in her house, telling her to shut up.

Gustine Rogers spent 12 years in the military as a medic. She respects the authorities, but she knows even they have rules to follow.

These white men in her kitchen, standing next to her table barking orders, were not following the rules, she said.

She ran upstairs and threw up.

"We were scared out of our wits," she said.

Her son, Terry, and her 14-year-old grandson live with her. The boy, whose name she did not want printed, hid upstairs until the deputies left.

The deputies wanted to check upstairs for the suspect they thought might be in her house. She said no and stood in their way.

"With my grandson up there," she said Thursday, "no one was coming through."

Terry Rogers called 911 in hopes the authorities on the phone could get the authorities out of the house.

Just before 1 a.m., a deputy was patrolling near a construction site off Overpass Road, not far from Chapel Pines. He spotted a white Buick driving around, got behind it and noticed there was no license plate.

The deputy flipped on his lights and siren, according to his report, but the car didn't stop. After about a third of a mile, it pulled over. But when the deputy got out, the car took off again. The driver, 35-year-old Thomas Wayne Metta of Gaithersburg, Md., finally did stop and said he ran because he thought there were warrants out for his arrest.

A second deputy arrived, and as they were taking Metta into custody, his female passenger climbed into the driver's seat and drove off.

As it happened, the Sheriff's Office helicopter was already circling over Wesley Chapel, searching for a missing person. The pilot abandoned that effort to help pursue the fleeing car. He spotted the Buick as it pulled up in front of a beige, two-story house on Midtown Court and watched as the woman ran into the house through a sliding door.

That provoked the angry confrontation with the Rogers family, which was so heated that the sergeant on the scene decided not to search the house.

Pasco Sheriff's Office spokesman Doug Tobin cited a Florida statute that says officers can "use all necessary and reasonable force" to enter a building to make a felony arrest, even without a warrant.

That, he said, seems to justify the deputies' actions.

"Our preliminary look at this incident is it did appear the deputies had a right to do what they did," Tobin said.

J. Larry Hart is a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor who is not connected to this case. In an interview, he addressed two central questions:

- Were the deputies justified in pursuing the woman in the car?

- Once they saw her enter the house on Midtown Court, did they have a right to go in after her, without a warrant?

At first blush, Hart said, it's a close call.

He said the pursuit of the woman may have had any of a number of justifications. The deputies could have said they wanted to search the car as part of Metta's arrest. And the woman fled after they ordered her out of the car.

"It does not strike me as unreasonable for police to investigate someone under these circumstances," he said.

But entering the house is a murkier question.

Hart cited another law that allows police to go into buildings where there's an emergency circumstance.

"That's why they're here - to protect and serve," Hart said.

But he wondered why, if there was such a great emergency, the deputies didn't search the house for the woman.

"That might suggest there wasn't that much of an emergency," he said. "There's an incongruity here."

Metta, the man deputies arrested Thursday morning, remained in the Land O'Lakes jail that evening.

The Sheriff's Office is still looking for the woman they say ran into the Rogers' house. They think her name is Teshina Smith because of the driver's license they found in the Buick.

Gustine Rogers has a daughter named Teshina.

She was surprised to learn that her daughter might be the suspect. She said Teshina lives in Tampa part of the time but was not in the house Thursday morning. No one else was in the house besides her son and grandson, she said.

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.

[Last modified February 14, 2008, 22:36:42]