Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri has fired five corrections officers for abusing inmates at the jail, including one who was on a suicide watch.
One incident included high-ranking officers who took and shared pictures of an intoxicated woman’s “buttocks and genitals” as she struggled to urinate while handcuffed in a cell without a toilet. Another involved a deputy who sprayed a man undergoing psychiatric observation in the face with Lysol.
Gualtieri announced the terminations Wednesday afternoon. He said the five deputies “forfeited their right” to work for the sheriff’s office with their “reprehensible conduct.”
“I’m disgusted and let down,” Gualtieri said. “It’s awful that people would treat other human beings like this. Both of these people were in vulnerable positions.”
Lt. Jason Franjesevic, Sgt. Keri-Lyn Colosimo, Cpl. Emmanuel Nomikos and Deputy Katherin Cantrell lost their jobs Tuesday over an incident that occurred May 15. The saga began after a woman was arrested at a Seminole bar for disorderly intoxication.
The woman, whom Gualtieri did not name “due to the nature of what happened here,” had a “few drinks too many” and “got a little loud” at the bar. “That could be anybody,” he said.
She sat in a van outside of the jail’s processing area for over three hours due to an influx of new inmates. Deputies deemed her uncooperative, which contradicted video evidence, and placed her in a cell without a toilet, despite her pleas for a restroom.
The cell did have a camera that recorded and transmitted video to the front desk. Gualtieri said the woman eventually pulled her jail-issued pants down to urinate into a floor drain “because she was placed in the cell without a toilet.”
The woman, still handcuffed and shackled, urinated into the drain several times over the next 40 minutes. Nomikos watched as she moved to a bench, lay on her belly, struggled to readjust her pants and exposed her bare buttocks and genitals.
“All of that is a really, really nice way of saying that she was on the bench, her butt was in the air and she was showing everything,” Gualtieri said. “Because she was trying to pull her pants up, not because she’s doing anything else.”
Nomikos, rather than help the woman, allowed Cantrell to photograph the exposed woman from the video monitor with her personal cell phone. He also made “very disrespectful and degrading” remarks that Gualtieri did not want to repeat.
Cantrell showed the picture to Colosimo, who joined in the ridicule instead of reprimanding her subordinate. Cantrell also sent the photo to a Facebook group chat with fellow officers and her husband, who is not a sheriff’s office employee.
“Nomikos then retrieved the stored video of the woman in the compromised position, showing her buttocks and genitals, and he freeze-framed that on a … larger computer monitor on the booking desk, in an area that could be easily seen by deputies, inmates and anybody else passing by,” Gualtieri said.
He noted that a female supervisor and deputy made “derogatory remarks about the woman’s female anatomy and what they were seeing with her genitals.” Cantrell continued sharing the photo with other deputies, including a lieutenant, while a large monitor displayed the screen grab for over an hour.
Gualtieri noted that Franjesevic, the highest-ranking officer on duty at the time, “responded ‘Oh God,’ and he turned away, taking absolutely no action regarding Deputy Cantrell’s misconduct.”
Franjesevic also instructed Cantrell to print her photograph so he could show it to several other subordinates. Gualtieri said Franjesevic “totally dismissed the inmate’s explanation, which was truthful and accurate.”
The sheriff reiterated that the deputies “created this whole mess” by forcing the woman to remain in a van without a restroom for over three hours, falsely deeming her uncooperative and not removing her handcuffs and shackles. “And Deputy Cantrell said she found the situation humorous,” Gualtieri added.
“So, all this speaks for itself. It’s horrible.”
The Pinellas County Jail has faced overcrowding issues and no longer allows in-person visits.
Deputy Jovan Hardwick, assigned to an area of the jail that houses inmates with mental health issues, was fired Monday following an incident that occurred Aug. 11. Gualtieri said an unnamed inmate was kneeling inside his cell with his arms protruding from a food tray slot in the door.
The inmate refused to move his hands as he tried to talk with other jail workers. Hardwick retrieved a can of Lysol out of his personal backpack and sprayed the inmate in the face through the open “food trap.”
Hardwick then slammed the can onto the still-noncompliant inmate’s hands. He ordered another deputy to open the door, and the man, “who was then agitated,” tried to rush past Hardwick.
Gualtieri said Hardwick then “used force” and “placed the inmate on the ground.” Hardwick subsequently told his supervisors that he dumped water on the man.
Hardwick also lied in a report and submitted false documents. Gualtieri said he attached a photo labeled “water bottle,” which “actually showed the bottom of a Lysol can.”
Hardwick continued lying to supervisors and sent one a photo of a water bottle he found on the internet. He eventually confessed to spraying the inmate’s face with Lysol and fabricating “this whole cover-up” during an Administrative Review Board hearing.
“We’ve looked at some criminal charges in this case, and for a whole lot of reasons, we’re not going to pursue any criminal charges,” Gualtieri said. “There are some considerations with it, and some barriers to that.”