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Workplace ''threats'' investigated as kiddie porn |
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Written by ELGIN JONES
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 DEERFIELD BEACH – Law-enforcement officers used false language about an ongoing child pornography investigation to obtain the private records of personal, home Internet use by city workers who were suspected of making violent threats on an Internet blog.
A civil rights lawyer who works closely with the American Civil Liberties Union said the investigation was a gross violation of privacy.
“It’s outrageous and I think it is actionable. If false information was knowingly put in a search warrant or subpoena, then the police agency can be sued,” said Barry Butin, a First Amendment attorney based in Fort Lauderdale who is also co-counsel for the ACLU’s Broward chapter.
The investigation arose from a series of text messages that were sent to city employees’ cell phones, and a posting on an Internet message blog that criticizes internal city operations.
The blog was posted on Aug. 6. It suggested there might be violence in the workplace if city officials did not take action on certain employment conditions and the managers who fostered them.
Over the years, city workers have complained of unfair hiring and promotion practices, as well as overbearing managers. There have also been a number of employment lawsuits and numerous work scandals, but few repercussions for managers.
“Nothing will be done until somebody brings in a gun and shoots up the whole place. Then watch [City Manager Mike] Mahaney get off his a-- and fire [Public Works Director] Carl Peter and [Division Chief] Jim Graham! It will be too late when bodies are laying all over the place,” the message stated.
On Aug. 8, Mahaney turned the posting over to the Broward Sheriff's Office to investigate whether it constituted harassment and a possible threat, which would require certain precautions.
BSO, in turn, issued requests for subpoenas – orders demanding testimony and other evidence – to the Broward State Attorney’s Office, which handles such requests.
The requests sought to determine who sent the text messages and the potentially threatening blog posting.
BSO’s requests, however, claimed that the inquiries would be part of ongoing investigations into Internet child pornography.
The requests also stated repeatedly that the Law Enforcement Against Child Harm Task Force, also known as L.E.A.C.H., was investigating.
L.E.A.C.H. is a multi-agency task force in the state of Florida that targets child pornography and Internet predators of children.
The task force works closely with the national Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force started by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in 1998.
The FBI, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Attorney General’s Office, state prosecutors, and local law enforcement are among the agencies that comprise the Florida L.E.AC.H. Task Force.
“L.E.A.C.H. cyber crime detectives, and BSO’s internet specialists, were helping Deerfield investigators get subpoenas for Internet in-formation through the Broward prosecutor they normally work with,” said Ron Ishoy, a spokesman for the Broward State Attorney’s Office.
“L.E.A.C.H. detectives sent over to the State Attorney’s Office prosecutor standardized sub-poena-request forms, that had a line at the top that noted that the subpoena is from the ‘Child Pornography Task Force.’
It's my understanding that the Deerfield case had nothing to do with that topic,” Ishoy said.
“That’s clearly improper,” Butin said. “It’s no different than if the police made up a phony informant and used that to obtain information. I would not think there is any substance in that subpoena form and I know the ACLU would be interested in this incident.”
Butin successfully handled the 2000 case of Lloyd Shank, who was criminally charged with delivering anonymous letters to Broward County commissioners that allegedly contained harassing hate speech.
Butin, who has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and other TV news stations, argued successfully before Broward County Court Judge Gary R. Cowart that the Shank case should be dismissed. He also won a state appeal of the dismissal in the Fourth District Court of Appeal in 2001.
In the recent Deerfield case, BSO Det. Jonathan Brown headed the probe, which began on Aug. 8. Brown questioned several city supervisors and employees over the course of the inquiry. Brown’s investigation ultimately concluded that no crime had been committed, and it was closed on Sept 6.
“Our investigation into the text messages being received by various city staff members and an anonymous post to a computer blog devoted to addressing issues within the city has been closed as no criminal violations were uncovered,” BSO Deerfield Beach District Chief Jay Fernandez wrote to Mahaney in a Sept. 6 memorandum.
At some point during the investigation, the L.E.A.C.H. task force became involved, but it is unclear why.
During one interview, Brown informed Thomas Hostetler, a supervisor who oversees employees who maintain and repair water pipes in the Environmental Services Department, that BSO had subpoenaed and obtained the personal Internet information of some employees, but made no mention of child pornography.
In Broward County, the L.E.A.C.H. task force is headed by BSO, where Det. Joe Vella is assigned to the task force.
Vella submitted several subpoenas to the Broward State Attorney’s Office, indicating repeatedly that the information was being sought in connection with an ongoing Internet child pornography investigation, which it was not.
Ishoy, the State Attorney’s Office spokesman, said that his office and BSO have decided to change the form for future cases, and said it was nothing more than an oversight.
“After you brought this to our attention, SAO and BSO decided to take that child pornography line off subpoena-request forms issued in the future,” Ishoy said.
BSO spokesman Elliot Cohen agreed. Neither Ishoy nor Cohen, however, indicated a need for further review of the matter.
Nevertheless, the city employees who were interrogated during the investigation said they hope something would be placed in BSO’s investigative files and their own city personnel files to show they had no connection to any child pornography probe. That is not likely to happen, according to Cohen.
“I think the best solution at this point going forward is for us to change the forms,” Cohen said of BSO’s processes. “It would be up to the city to determine if anything should be placed in their personnel files or not,” Cohen said.
Mahaney, the city manager, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the matter.
That stance concerns city employees such as Hostetler; John Murphy, a Streets Department superintendent; and Wayne Adams, who works in the Public Works Department, where he maintains drinking water valves and repairs backflow prevention devices.
Neither city officials nor investigators would say why these three men were targets of the investigation, who accused them, or what led to suspicions about them in the criminal probes.
Nonetheless, Brown questioned all of the men, and videotaped some of their statements without their knowledge, a common practice when subjects are interrogated inside a police station, according to a BSO spokesperson.
Yet the workers say they feel it was unfair not to inform them that they were being recorded.
Adams’ personal information was collected from Bellsouth, his Internet service provider, and Google, the search engine, under subpoenas supposedly related to Internet child pornography probes.
“Someone needs to get off their behinds and try to rectify this situation, starting with BSO and everyone else who was involved. They should all be investigated,” Adams said.
Others say they expect some kind of an investigation as well.
“I just hope no other city employees have gone through being falsely accused and secretly videotaped, because it is not right,” Hostetler said. “Myself and many others are getting those text messages, but we were never even asked about our messages.
Documents obtained by the Broward Times show, for example, that on Aug. 8, Det. Vella submitted a request for a subpoena to Broward Asst. State Attorney Dennis Niecewander, to obtain the personal Internet records of Adams from Bellsouth Telecommunications, Inc. The company approved the request, and provided the records to investigators.
Investigators also served subpoenas on Google, Inc. for Adams’ history on the company’s blogs, to which Adams contributed from his home computer.
“Please note on the fax cover sheet that this is a Child Pornography Task Force Referral. In order to pursue these separate investigations, we must first identify the suspected offenders known only by their screen names at this time,” the request reads. “Through your issuance of a subpoena to Bellsouth Telecommunications, Inc. for the subscriber information and detailed billing information, we will be able to identify them and document their online time in relation to the time and date of the complaints.”
Spokespersons for other L.E.A.C.H Task Force agencies, including the FBI and the Florida Attorney General’s Office, would not comment on the issue, stating it only involved BSO and the Broward State Attorney’s Office, not their agencies.
“I am very disappointed in the sheriff’s department,” Adams said. “I’ve always tried to work with them, but now that trust is gone.”
Murphy said whoever is responsible has an obligation to correct the records because, the workers say, they are now branded as bad people, and were directed under threat of prosecution to give statements.
“According to what I’ve been told, I may have been the one they suspected of doing the postings, or I knew who was doing it, which is totally false,” Murphy said. “I explained to them I did not know anything about it and I told them I was getting text messages, too. I think they should give us an apology and this entire issue should be dealt with to make things right.”
Mahaney could not be reached for comment, and no such reconciliation efforts have been announced. Bellsouth Tel-ecommunications, Inc. has been sold to AT & T since the private information was handed over to BSO this past summer. AT&T says nothing improper took place on the company’s part.
“To my knowledge we didn’t do anything wrong. If there was an issue that the customer has beyond our response to a lawful subpoena, they should take that up with the law enforcement agency that processed the subpoena,” said Don Sadler, AT&T’s Public Affairs Director for Florida.
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Photo by Elgin Jones/BT staff. Deerfield Beach city workers Thomas Hostetler, left, John Murphy, center, and Wayne Adams, right, say the Internet probe violated their privacy rights.
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