CLEARWATER, Fla. — Big changes are coming to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office when it comes to how law enforcement agencies investigate themselves when an officer pulls out their gun and shoots.
Those type cases were previously investigated internally, but Tuesday, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri announced the immediate creation of a use of deadly force task force.
“Nobody in Pinellas County gets a pass just because they happen to be a cop,” Gualtieri said.
Effective immediately, investigations into an officer’s use of deadly force will now be carried out by an independent task force made up of homicide detectives from other agencies across Pinellas County.
“The agency whose officer or deputy is involved in that deadly force incident will never participate in the homicide investigation,” Gualtieri said. “That will be independently conducted by the task force including making an arrest and bringing criminal charges against an officer or deputy if warranted.”
The sheriff says the collaboration between his office, the St. Petersburg Police Department, Clearwater and Pinellas Park police is about transparency and public trust in the process. He says previous investigations into law enforcement’s use of deadly force were carried out properly in Pinellas pointing to the arrest of Deputy Timothy Verdon.
He was charged with attempted manslaughter and lost his job after shooting a man near John's Pass following a traffic stop in 2015.
The sheriff says the task force is all about the public’s perception of how those type investigations are carried out.
“This is about public trust and confidence and outcomes and making sure when a determination is made that people not only know it’s the right determination but believe it’s the right determination,” Gualtieri said.
The sheriff says the task force will not only investigate the use of deadly force but any incident involving a law enforcement officer that results in a person’s serious injury or death.
Detectives on the team will also carry out other portions of the criminal investigation not related to the officer’s actions.
10 Tampa Bay reached out to members of the NAACP in Pinellas who said they’d not fully read the plan but said on the surface, it sounded like a step in the right direction.
“We cannot do our jobs effectively without community trust,” Gualtieri said. “We want to do everything we can to let everyone know that we hear you, we’re listening and we’re taking the initiative ourselves.”
RELATED: Pinellas County law enforcement set to create new task force to investigate use of deadly force
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