Sheriff's complaint about Troiano headed to investigation

Local law enforcement officials are still not seeing eye-to-eye on the issues addressed by Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell in a formal letter to the High Springs city manager about two weeks ago, but now an outside investigator will be appointed to determine the facts.

Darnell wrote the July 16 letter to High Springs City Manager Jim Drumm, discussing two mattters. One issue is a disagreement between herself and Police Chief Jim Troiano regarding the use of grant funds administered by the Sheriff’s Office.  The second issue concerns the way Troiano spoke to one of her employees during a recent phone conversation. 

While rumors began to circulate of the possibility that Troiano may have misappropriated grant funds, he stated this was absolutely not true.

Drumm confirmed this, explaining that because the city must first spend a grant allocation out of pocket and is then reimbursed for expenses, it would be virtually impossible for Troiano to have used money illegally.

Regardless, Troiano still questions the sheriff’s rationale for denying his request to use portions of the department’s Byrne Grant money to cover expenses of using confidential informants.

Questionable behavior named as real priority

Darnell said people should remember that the intended focus of her letter was in fact the phone call incident, and not the grant issue. Though she and Troiano are in disagreement about appropriate uses for the money, the reason she wrote the letter was first and foremost to bring to Drumm’s attention what she deemed to be highly inappropriate behavior on the chief’s part.

Drumm also said, “The question [now] isn’t over whether funds should or shouldn’t be awarded — it's how the conversation went and whether it crossed a line to become unprofessional or even offensive.”

The two law enforcement officials continue to disagree on the grant, the nature of the conversation and now on what the real issue is.

Darnell reiterated the sentiment of her letter, saying, “The main issue is his, not only inappropriate behavior, but disturbing behavior.”

According to the letter, Troiano had called Kelly Amerson, the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office grants administrator, to “voice his displeasure” over Darnell’s position on using grant funds for confidential informants.

Darnell’s letter states that Amerson was “extremely disturbed by the tone and nature of his tirade,” and she described it as a “Mel Gibson type of rant and rage.”  He was yelling at her, said he was “going to bring her down,” referring to Darnell. He threatened to contact various politicians and media outlets and later hung up on Amerson, the letter states.

In a letter Troinano wrote to Drumm in response to Darnell’s letter, as well as in a later interview, Troiano repeatedly said that he is confident Amerson would have come to him directly if she was upset or had a problem. He said that when the conversation ended, it was on good terms.

With substantial evidence, investigation will be initiated

Though it initially appeared to be a “he said, she said” situation based on Darnell’s letter, Drumm said, after making his own inquiries and preliminary investigation, he has determined there is enough information to warrant an investigation.

He spoke with Amerson directly, which led him to believe she was in fact upset by the conversation, but she has not expressed a desire to file a formal complaint at this time. Amerson did not object to cooperating with an investigation, and Drumm will be initiating the complaint.

There appear to be witnesses from both ends of the phone who heard the conversation, Drumm said.

The next step will be to select an investigator from an outside agency, which Drumm said he hopes to finalize quickly. And because the nature of the issue is not specifically law-enforcement related, but rather something that could happen between staff members of any two types of agencies, the investigator does not have to be a law enforcement agent or expert, and this could make it easier to get the process going.

Initial disagreement might reflect larger issue

Troiano has already been notified, and he said he welcomes the investigation.

He reiterated that he was simply venting to Amerson about his frustration with the grant situation. Even now, he hopes that the communication line might be reopened in the future to discuss how he and the sheriff might be able to reach a compromise, or at least come to an understanding.

Darnell said that if Troiano wanted approval to use these funds to pay for informants, he should have brought it up during discussions in early June with the Grant Policy Board when decisions were being made on how to spend the money in the coming year.

“He’s trying to come in the back door with it,” she said.

The grant money in question is distributed through the sheriff’s office to various city law enforcement agencies in the county.

The High Springs Police Department was allocated $7,000 in the 2009-2010 budget year and $4,000 in the 2010-2011 budget year from the grant funds.

Troiano said he didn’t bring the issue before the board based on dialogue with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and his impression that this use was already allowed. It wasn’t until after the process of the board was complete that he was told there was a problem.

The federally funded grant does allow for payments to drug informants, but the contracts between the Sheriff’s office and each of the county’s police departments specifically disallows the use of the funds for that purpose.

Troiano said permitting his department to use the funds to pay confidential drug informants could be easily remedied with an amendment to the contract.  That seems unlikely to occur since, according to Troiano, Darnell has indicated that she would not be willing to do that now or in the future.

Waldo Police Chief Mike Szabo said he sees no problem with Troiano’s request, though he would not use the money that way. As he understands it, covering costs for confidential informants would be an allowable use under the guidelines of the grant.

He compared Troiano’s conflict with Darnell to an issue his own department has faced concerning the operation of dispatch services in Waldo.

“It’s not about who’s in charge, it’s about the community, and it’s about safety.”

Szabo said, as a smaller agency, he feels like he is being told “my way or the highway” by the sheriff’s office.

Troiano said he fully supports Darnell as sheriff, but he doesn’t agree with some of her decisions, and in some cases he explained that he probably has a better idea than she does of the needs in High Springs.