viral golf cart traffic stop<\/a>, was placed on paid administrative leave from his city job in September. A city spokesperson said in a text message on Monday that Keith O\u2019Connor is still on administrative leave.<\/p>\nThe investigation was regarding \u201ca disposition of some lottery proceeds,\u201d Fernandez said in September. He said it was \u201crelated\u201d to the August arrest of another code enforcement employee, Aubrey Pierce, with whom Keith O\u2019Connor shares decades-long ties.<\/p>\n
Keith O\u2019Connor was alleged to have cashed a winning lottery ticket on behalf of Pierce, who reportedly has outstanding child support payments, Fernandez said in October. The pair were alleged to have communicated about the ticket over text message, he said.<\/p>\n
Keith O\u2019Connor, a former deputy police chief, \u201cmay have played a role, most likely an innocent role in something, but the underlying act is not a crime,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cYou have to impute that Mr. O\u2019Connor would have known the exactitude of child support rules and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Records obtained by the Times show that Keith O\u2019Connor claimed a $20,000 lottery prize from a scratch-off ticket purchased at a 7-Eleven in Tampa on March 7. It is not clear what he did with that money.<\/p>\n
Fernandez said in October thatKeithO\u2019Connor \u201cdidn\u2019t get anything for whatever it is that he supposedly did. He didn\u2019t make a nickel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Less than a month before the probe began, Pierce was arrested and suspended without pay from his city job. An arrest affidavit filed in August alleged Pierce\u2019s involvement in an illegal tire-dumping scheme. He was accused of bribery by a public servant, unlawful disposal of hazardous waste, violation of litter laws and grand theft.<\/p>\n
Fernandez said \u201ceveryone seems to be reporting\u201d that messages between Keith O\u2019Connor and Pierce regarding the lottery ticket surfaced during the tire-dumping investigation.<\/p>\n
The genesis of Pierce and Keith O\u2019Connor\u2019s relationship is unclear, but Fernandez said it is \u201cboth personal and professional\u201d and \u201cspans decades.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pierce has served numerous prison sentences in Florida. In 2014, while incarcerated, he penned a letter to a judge that read, \u201cIf I am (released) soon I have a good job waiting on me with the City of Tampa… thanks to the help of Major Keith O\u2019Connor of the Tampa Police Dept.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, Pierce \u2014 who was hired by the city in 2023, according to the arrest affidavit \u2014 spoke at City Hall when the Tampa City Council confirmed Mary O\u2019Connor as police chief. It was a disputed pick, as she was arrested as a rookie officer in 1995.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been to prison several times,\u201d Pierce told council members. \u201cBut I believe that everybody deserves another shot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into Keith O\u2019Connor, Tampa\u2019s top code enforcement officer, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[39486,39483,6184,4860,39484,39488,39487,39485,135,19880,137,136,36853],"class_list":["post-67665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-aubrey-pierce","tag-code-enforcement-officer","tag-downtown-tampa","tag-florida-department-of-law-enforcement","tag-keith-oconnor","tag-law-enforcement-department","tag-mary-oconnor","tag-ralph-fernandez","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-times","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-the-investigation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}