IAPE Evidence Blog

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Fruit­land Park, FL

FRUITLAND PARK, Fla. — Fruitland Park’s police chief admit­ted that his col­lege degrees could be fake Wednesday.

Police Chief Mark Isom has under­grad­u­ate and master’s degrees from Youngs­field University.

Isom said he took online courses from 2003 to 2009 from the school, mak­ing A’s and B’s in cal­cu­lus, biol­ogy and sev­eral police-related subjects.

But Eye­wit­ness News found out that Youngs­field Uni­ver­sity is not a nation­ally accred­ited university.

It’s what is called a “degree mill” — an orga­ni­za­tion that allows peo­ple to pay a few hun­dred dol­lars for a bogus tran­script and degree.

Now, the Florida Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment is involved because Isom was receiv­ing more money in his pay­check because of the degrees.

“They are fast. You don’t actu­ally have to put in any work, if all you’re doing is send­ing in a resume and get­ting a degree by return mail,” said Alan Con­tr­eras, a degree mill expert and the admin­is­tra­tor of Oregon’s Office of Degree Autho­riza­tion. He says Youngs­field Uni­ver­sity only has a Web site and no phys­i­cal address.

“There’s no evi­dence that we’ve found that Youngs­field Uni­ver­sity exists any­where as a legit­i­mate degree-granting insti­tu­tion,” Con­tr­eras said.

Isom would not speak on cam­era with Eye­wit­ness News, but he said over the phone he did put in the work dur­ing this off time.

Wednes­day, FDLE’s Orlando office told Eye­wit­ness News its crim­i­nal jus­tice stan­dards and train­ing com­mis­sion was look­ing into the mat­ter. The com­mis­sion could ask the city to con­duct an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion to see if Isom inten­tion­ally vio­lated state law, since he’s been receiv­ing about $80 a month in incen­tive pay.

Thurs­day, FDLE spokesman Mike Mor­ri­son, who is in Tal­la­has­see, said the com­mis­sion is not involved in the case but is aware of the inci­dent. Mor­ri­son also said the agency is work­ing with the city to deter­mine the next steps.

About the time Eye­wit­ness News requested Isom’s degrees and tran­scripts, the chief told the city there might be a prob­lem with the degrees and he should stop receiv­ing that extra cash.

Fruit­land Park City Man­ager Ralph Bow­ers said the chief is the vic­tim of a scam and a per­son of high integrity who wouldn’t hurt the city.

Isom, who has been with the depart­ment for 20 years and makes more than $70,000 a year, has agreed to pay back the money he earned from hav­ing the degrees. The city is still adding up a total.

This is just the lat­est scan­dal for the Fruit­land Park Police Department.

In the last month, Eye­wit­ness News reported how $2,000 dis­ap­peared from the department’s evi­dence room.

Eye­wit­ness News also broke the story of a dri­ver who’s in the process of suing the depart­ment, after he said Offi­cer John Matey beat him up and arrested him, because he honked his horn to let the offi­cer know his car was stick­ing out in the road.

Last year, Eye­wit­ness News exposed an offi­cer work­ing for the depart­ment who was a mem­ber of the Ku Klux Klan.

James Elkins resigned and agreed to give up his law enforce­ment certificate.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

Orlando Sen­tinel (Florida)
BYLINE: Rene Stutz­man, Orlando Sentinel

Semi­nole County, FL

Three years ago, Semi­nole County deputies shot and seri­ously wounded a Lotto mil­lion­aire as he was inves­ti­gat­ing — with a pis­tol in his hand — why peo­ple were tromp­ing around his land at 2:30 a.m.

Robert G. Swof­ford Jr. sued. Now an Orlando fed­eral judge has issued a scathing rul­ing, crit­i­ciz­ing the Sheriff’s Office for destroy­ing sev­eral pieces of evi­dence, includ­ing the offi­cers’ guns.

“That we are here on this issue is inex­plic­a­ble and inex­cus­able,” wrote U.S. Dis­trict Judge Mary S. Scriven.

As pun­ish­ment, she has ordered the Sheriff’s Office to pay as much as $300,000 of Swofford’s legal fees.

Swofford’s attor­ney had writ­ten the Sheriff’s Office a let­ter in 2006, ask­ing it to pre­serve all evi­dence asso­ci­ated with the shoot­ing, but the sheriff’s gen­eral coun­sel, David Lane, did noth­ing, accord­ing to testimony.

Lawyer: Items lost

The judge sin­gled out Lane for the harsh­est crit­i­cism in her Sept.28 rul­ing and ordered him, as well as the sher­iff and the deputies named in the suit, to pay the legal bills Swof­ford, 58, incurred in his fight over the miss­ing evidence.

A para­le­gal in Lane’s office sent copies of the preserve-the-evidence let­ter to sev­eral agency man­agers, includ­ing Sher­iff Don Eslinger and the per­son in charge of firearms, Ann Mal­lory, but they, too, ignored it, the judge wrote.

Lane and Eslinger’s spokesman, Lt. James Clark, would not com­ment on the order, say­ing the case has not yet come to trial.

But at a hear­ing about the miss­ing items, sheriff’s attor­ney Tom Poul­ton said they were lost — not inten­tion­ally destroyed. He argued, in vain, that the Sheriff’s Office should face no sanctions.

What’s miss­ing?

Gone are:
The 9mm Sig Sauer pis­tols used by the deputies who opened fire, William Mor­ris Jr. and Don­ald Remus. The Sheriff’s Office decided to swap out all its hand­guns, so it sent them back to the man­u­fac­turer, where they were disassembled.

Remus’ lap­top com­puter. It was erased, as were those of other deputies, and employ­ees were given new ones as part of a gen­eral agency tech­nol­ogy upgrade.

All e-mail sent by both offi­cers the day of the shoot­ing and in the 12 months following.

The uni­forms the offi­cers wore that night.

Parts of the radios the offi­cers car­ried that night, includ­ing their ear­pieces and mikes.

The Florida Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment inves­ti­gated the shoot­ing, for­ward­ing its find­ings to the State Attorney’s Office in San­ford, and pros­e­cu­tors con­cluded nei­ther Mor­ris nor Remus had bro­ken the law.

Both men also were cleared of wrong­do­ing by a Sheriff’s Office review.

They had “no other rea­son­able alter­na­tives than to resort to deadly force,” wrote sheriff’s Inves­ti­ga­tor Shan­non Miller.

‘Law­fully armed’

But the fed­eral judge has been less gen­er­ous. On Nov. 30, she rejected the cor­ner­stone of the sheriff’s defense: that the offi­cers had immu­nity because their actions were reasonable.

The Sheriff’s Office had asked her to throw out the suit. She said no. Jurors must decide, she wrote, whether offi­cers deserved immunity.

“Mr. Swof­ford was law­fully armed and legally enti­tled to pro­tect his prop­erty,” the judge wrote.

Swof­ford won a $35 mil­lion Lotto jack­pot in Novem­ber 2004, but the for­mer U.S. Postal Ser­vice employee may be bet­ter known as the man who dated two sis­ters simul­ta­ne­ously, fathered chil­dren by them both within months of each other and set up a house­hold, where they all lived together.

That was the mid-1990s. Years before he won the lot­tery, the house­hold had bro­ken up.

Still, one of the sis­ters, Ann Lackey, was mar­ried to Swof­ford when he won the jack­pot. He did not claim the prize until after he nego­ti­ated a $5 mil­lion divorce set­tle­ment, with an addi­tional $1 mil­lion going toward child support.

The other sis­ter, Mary Lackey, sued, alleg­ing that even though Swof­ford never mar­ried her, he promised her one-third of his property.

A judge rejected that claim.

Dif­fer­ing accounts

The night Swof­ford was shot, April 20, 2006, Remus and Mor­ris were try­ing to track two bur­glary sus­pects that Remus had spot­ted in an apart­ment com­plex next to Swofford’s home on 7 acres near Alta­monte Springs.

The deputies poked out some planks in the fence between the two pieces of prop­erty and went on Swofford’s land with a search dog.

Swof­ford heard a com­mo­tion, grabbed his semi­au­to­matic hand­gun and went outside.

Months ear­lier, he had com­plained to the Sheriff’s Office about crim­i­nals com­ing on his land and had asked that deputies reg­u­larly patrol his place. The Sheriff’s Office had com­plied. In fact, Remus had patrolled Swofford’s prop­erty about three hours before the shooting.

Swof­ford and the deputies have given dif­fer­ent accounts of what hap­pened in the sec­onds before the shoot­ing. The deputies said they called out sev­eral times, iden­ti­fied them­selves and told Swof­ford to drop his weapon.

Swof­ford said they said noth­ing. He said he saw two men but did not real­ize they were deputies. He said he did not point his pis­tol at them.

The offi­cers fired seven rounds, wound­ing Swof­ford in both arms, abdomen and leg. He was hos­pi­tal­ized for sev­eral months.

Intends to appeal

The Sheriff’s Office three weeks ago filed notice that it intends to appeal two of Scriven’s deci­sions: the sanc­tions she imposed because of the miss­ing evi­dence and her refusal to accept the deputies’ immu­nity claim.

Mor­ris is still a deputy. Remus resigned two years ago, say­ing he wanted to pur­sue a busi­ness opportunity.

The case is cur­rently set for trial in Feb­ru­ary, but the appeal could delay that for a long time.

CONTACT: Rene Stutz­man can be reached at 407 – 650-6394 or rstutz­man @orlandosentinel.com.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

www2.tbo.com
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BYLINE: JOSH POLTILOVE, jpoltilove@tampatrib.com

Tampa, FL

TAMPA — Police will inves­ti­gate ille­gal dump­ing at a site where the cre­mated remains of a dec­o­rated World War II vet­eran were found.

The remains of Del­bert E. Hahn, his wife, Bar­bara, and another per­son were dis­cov­ered Sat­ur­day among trash behind a vacant col­lege on Busch Boulevard.

It appears a com­pany has dumped items from sev­eral Pasco County addresses there, Tampa police spokes­woman Andrea Davis said Wednesday.

“We’re going to make every effort to find out who is dump­ing ille­gally in the city,” Davis said. “Peo­ple don’t real­ize it’s a crime. It is.”

City code-enforcement offi­cers Mon­day cited the owner of the for­mer Rem­ing­ton Col­lege prop­erty, 2410 E. Busch Blvd., and ordered a cleanup of the site.

“Code enforce­ment is putting a fence around the area so peo­ple can’t dump things there,” Davis said.

Mike Colt and his girl­friend, Carol Sturgell, were look­ing through dumped items Sat­ur­day when they found the urns and details on Del­bert Hahn’s mil­i­tary retire­ment and medals.

Hahn sur­vived the inva­sion of Nor­mandy and was a two-time Pur­ple Heart recipient.

It wasn’t imme­di­ately clear when Hahn died, although Colt said he thinks paper­work found with the urns indi­cated Hahn retired in the 1960s and died in the early 1980s.

Bar­bara Hahn died Aug. 1, 2003, and was cre­mated at South­east­ern Cre­ma­to­ries in Clearwater.

Hahn willed her Zephyrhills mobile home to Alan and Nicki Sheran. The cou­ple lived there until 2008, when it went into fore­clo­sure, Nicki Sheran said.

The Sher­ans weren’t able to remove all of their pos­ses­sions before los­ing own­er­ship and the urns were among the items left behind, Nicki Sheran said. She said the third urn con­tains the remains of Bar­bara Hahn’s mother, Bar­bara Stahlhofen.

Offi­cials haven’t con­firmed the iden­tity of those remains.

Police say a Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs liai­son deter­mined the Hahns had no next of kin. VA offi­cials said they were arrang­ing with Jack­son Funeral Home to have the remains trans­ported to Florida National Ceme­tery in Bushnell.

Ronald Derr Sr. of the Tampa funeral home said the Hahns’ remains will be taken to Bush­nell if they aren’t claimed by fam­ily. A ser­vice will be held there at 1 p.m. Monday.

The third urn will stay in the police department’s prop­erty room until it is claimed, Davis said.

News Chan­nel 8 reporter Dave Balut con­tributed to this report. Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at (813) 259‑7691.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org