Tampa Bay briefs

By Times staff reports

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 11, 2001

Schools give parents more time with surveys

Stop panicking, Pinellas parents. You have more time.

The Pinellas County School District recently mailed out surveys to more than 100,000 parents, asking questions about school choice. The surveys were supposed to be sent out by the end of last week, but a printing delay meant some were not put in the mail until early this week.

The district decided Thursday to give parents a few more days to fill out the surveys because of the delay. Instead of being due Monday, the surveys now will be due next Friday, May 18.

Beginning in 2003, the district will let parents choose their children's schools. The survey asks which school they would choose if the new system were starting this fall. The information will be used by the School Board to decide some of the plan's details.

Pinellas detention deputy arrested on sex charges

LARGO -- Pinellas County sheriff's detectives charged a Sheriff's Office detention deputy Thursday with two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation.

Marco Bertone, 44, was in jail late Thursday on $20,000 bail, sheriff's spokesman Cal Dennie said. Bertone had served as a detention deputy for 12 years.

In July 1999, Bertone was dating a woman and had the woman and daughter, then 12, spend the night at his home with him and his own daughter, Dennie said.

Bertone got into bed with the two girls and committed sexual acts on the visiting girl, Dennie said, adding that the girl told her dance teacher of the incident during the past week.

Dennie said Bertone acknowledged the girl's version of events Thursday upon his arrest.

Man suspected in nine store robberies

ST. PETERSBURG -- The Pinellas County SWAT team on Thursday afternoon arrested a man suspected of nine convenience store robberies.

When Sheriff's Office detectives visited the home of Phillip Turvey, 32, about 3:45 p.m. Thursday, Turvey barricaded himself inside the home at 5601 42nd St. N, sheriff's spokesman Cal Dennie said. More than four hours later, SWAT team members did a "slow, methodical entry" into the home and arrested Turvey without incident.

Dennie said Turvey is suspected in seven robberies in Pinellas Park and two in unincorporated Pinellas County.

$30-million medical facility slated for jail

More than a year after Sheriff Everett Rice took over medical services at the Pinellas County jail, plans are under way to build a new $30-million jail medical facility.

The building will have between 300 to 400 beds and will centralize the jail's health care services, said Maj. Ken Remming, jail director. It will serve mentally and physically ill men and women with individual rooms and open wards.

Officials hope to break ground on the building a year from now.

While the specific location of the building has not been decided, it will be near the recently completed jail addition on the 49th Street criminal justice campus.

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