PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — More Pinellas County detention deputies have been caught watching videos on the job, according to records 10 Investigates got from the sheriff’s office.
Two weeks after our first investigation into distracted detention deputies came out last year, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri increased the penalty for detention deputies who stream videos in the jail.
But, according to an internal investigation, that didn’t stop Detention Deputy Brandon Wilson from watching videos of partially nude women when he was supposed to be watching people serving jail time.
In August, a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office IT customer support tech told internal investigators he caught Deputy Wilson looking at videos and images of women posing in lingerie.
In a recorded audio interview, Deputy Wilson described what he was looking at as, “Inappropriate videos. Things that I’m not supposed to be watching. Females in various states of undress.”
The sheriff’s office suspended Deputy Wilson for 160 hours, the new minimum penalty the sheriff put in place after our investigation last year exposed deputy after deputy distracted on the job.
Another detention deputy, Vonda Noel, resigned while under investigation in October, according to an internal memo. She was accused of watching YouTube on the job for three hours over the course of her shift.
“It’s disappointing. It’s disappointing,” Florida jail expert Chief Cornita Riley told 10 Investigates.
She’s the former Chief of Orange County Corrections and was awarded Jail Administrator of the Year in 2018 by the American Jail Association.
“We know, ultimately, the potential risk is to inmates — to the population that you’re charged with caring for and maintaining custody over,” Chief Riley said.
Last year, we reported on five Pinellas County detention deputies caught watching Netflix, looking at YouTube, and reading on the job.
Surveillance video showed two of those deputies watching Netflix while Robert Leutzinger vomited blood in his cell for hours.
“It don’t make you feel very good – unprotected,” Leutzinger told 10 Investigates last year.
In Dec. 2022, Sheriff Gualtieri sent an email to all Department of Detention and Corrections employees, increasing penalties for streaming videos on the job.
We got it through a public records request.
Sheriff Gualtieri’s email included a link to our story and said, “…from today forward anyone who engages in this type of misconduct that is substantiated as a Level 5 policy violation will receive an automatic 160 hour (basically one month) suspension as minimum discipline.”
That’s four times the discipline the deputies 10 Investigates reported on in November 2022 got.
Sheriff Gualtieri also called our story “embarrassing” to the agency and said, “I am beyond frustrated by this because we have said don’t do it and taken steps to ensure it won’t occur only to have deputies do it anyway.”
Both last year and this year, the sheriff’s office’s spokespeople told 10 Investigates that Sheriff Gualtieri and the deputies involved turned down our requests for interviews.
“But I think that the transparency in terms of where [the sheriff’s] mind as well as his heart is, is actually seen in every line of that memorandum that he put out,” Chief Riley said.