Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Honorable Charlie Crist

Governor, State of Florida

PL-05 The Capitol

Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

Dear Governor Crist,

This is a follow up to an earlier correspondence to you regarding my request for an investigation into the death of a fugitive, James Rayford, who drowned in Hunters Lake, Hernando County, while fleeing capture by the Hernando County Sheriff’s Department.

Dustin Fusillo, Office of Citizen Services wrote me on January 6, 2010, if I was not satisfied with the internal investigation of the sheriff’s department, that I should contact the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Office of Executive Investigations, which I did.

We are awaiting their determination of our request for a state investigation into the matter.

However, simultaneous with Mr. Fusillo’s correspondence, I also received a letter from Attorney General Bill McCollum, dated January 12, 2010, indicating that if we were seeking an outside investigation, that the Governor, under part II of chapter 27, Florida Statutes, “has the authority to issue executive orders assigning ’special prosecutors.’ “

We request an investigation, whether it is inside the government or outside, as long as the issue is addressed, and that people can be put under oath in order to get to the truth of the matter.

Furthermore, last week there was a successful arrest of a fleeing criminal, Robert J. Keaton, on February 25th, by the St. Petersburg police department in a Pinellas County lake.

What was startling about this action was the similarity of circumstances to the botched effort by the Hernando County Sheriff’s Department on September 12, 2009, resulting in the drowning death of its’ fleeing fugitive, James “Little Man” Rayford.

The similarities of the two cases were hauntingly identical, but the subsequent outcomes were totally opposite of each other, due to the varying caliber of the two law enforcement pursuits.  That is why I am calling upon you, Governor, and on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to call for a “full-blown investigation.”

Both jurisdictions, Pinellas and Hernando counties, had fugitives who were both reported on, to the police, by a phone call from a Pinellas County teacher and a phone tip respectively, possibly from a jilted girlfriend near or within Hernando County.  Both the fugitive and the suspected criminal, were in flight from the police; both individuals were black; both fled to the safety of a body of water, a lake; both escapees refused to heed the law enforcement efforts to turn themselves in; and both remained in the water, one standing in 5 feet of water in Pinellas County’s Lakepoint Reserve, and the other, in an 8-foot kayak, in the middle of Hernando County’s Hunter Lake, in six feet of water.

However, the police tactics to pursue the criminals were completely the opposite of each other.  St. Petersburg police used at least one boat, several officers jumped in the water to pursue Mr. Keaton, 50 feet into the water, and tried diplomatic conversations with him to get him to surrender, actually even providing him a cigarette. They had Mr. Keaton’s girlfriend and mother speak to him by cell phone to urge him to surrender, and finally turned a tazer gun on Keaton to overcome him successfully. This action was taken out of concern for Robert Keaton’s well-being, due to the hypothermia that appeared to be setting in from him standing in the frigid water for over an hour. The result was that the St. Petersburg Police was able to successfully overcome their suspect, without injury to him, or to the pursuing police, as well as not endangering the surrounding community.

On the otherhand, the rural county sheriff’s department in Hernando County did the exact opposite in their pursuit. The eleven sheriff deputies, in six patrol cars, while at Hunter Lake’s edge, either did not initially bring a boat or they did not try to use a boat to pursue the individual who was fleeing in a kayak on the lake on a late Thursday afternoon.

Furthermore, none of the eleven deputies got into a boat to pursue fugitive Rayford; no conversation or communication was attempted by the sheriffs other than to call Mr. Rayford on his cell phone initially, while he was fishing on the lake, just to make certain it was him, and two bail bondsmen, who listened in, identified his voice as the fugitive.  Then the deputies immediately hung up the phone.   Apparently, the sheriff deputies did not identify themselves, nor attempt to persuade the fugitive over the cell phone to return to shore to turn himself in.

The Hernando County deputies attempted to borrow a boat from a neighbor, according to their internal affairs report later; and simultaneously, or immediately, they called in a sheriff department helicopter to pursue and hover over the fugitive in a kayak in the lake, three feet over the water surface and within six feet of his boat. The helicopter pilot was quoted in the sheriff’s internal investigation report that he kept trying to pressure and move the fugitive back to shore with his helicopter near the water and menacing the fugitive with the copter movement.

When the fugitive either was knocked out of the boat into the water, due to the power of the helicopters’ rotating blades, or the sheriff’s department said “he jumped” into the water, and the helicopter ended up directly over the swimming/fleeing fugitive when Rayford surfaced from under the water the first time.  Mr. Rayford then disappeared under the water a second time, directly beneath the hovering helicopter.

None of the reported 11 deputies, on both sides of the lake, upon seeing the fugitive fall or jump into the lake, or after seeing him disappear under the water, did not try and dive into the water to attempt a rescue or to try and save him. Nor, apparently, did any deputy obtain or use a boat to go out to attempt to save, much less search, for the disappeared fugitive, until an unknown amount of time had lapsed before they began their search for either a body or for a fleeing fugitive.

Because the deputies were unable to locate the fugitive, or his body, they had to alert the community that “a fugitive was on the loose,” who was “armed and dangerous,” and was a “threat” to the neighborhood.

For two days, the local neighborhood, and lakeside area, was in a state of fear, while the sheriff’s department searched both the land and the water for the escaped fugitive, James Rayford.

Included in this letter is a copy of a recent newspaper article in the St. Petersburg Times, with a picture of the captured suspect and the police (article attached below) which reported on the St. Petersburg chase of February 25th.

A similar incident that was reported in the St. Petersburg Times on December 24th, reported that the U.S. Coast Guard had rescued three fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, 60 miles from shore, with the use of a helicopter.  However, the large helicopter was kept away from the 32-foot boat, for fear of capsizing the three fishermen into the deep waters.  Instead, the Coast Guard, according to their spokesperson, conducted a “textbook search-and-rescue case.“  Spokesperson O’Leary said “They were prepared” to rescue people in danger in lake or sea waters.

The discrepancy in the two law enforcement pursuits, obviously points out dramatically how one law enforcement agency handled a fugitive pursuit efficiently and responsibly, while the other, in our opinion, failed miserably in both counts, as well as tragically causing the death of an individual, who did not have to die because of his actions.

I hope that the state of Florida government agencies would hold those officers, and their superiors, responsible and accountable for their deadly actions, even if it means going to the top of the agency.  A proper investigation, would accomplish just that. 

Thank you for your consideration of our request.

Sincerely,       

Brian P. Moore

Copies: 

Florida Depart. of Law Enforcement, Executive Investigations, Tallahassee

Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Wash., DC,

Steven E. Ibison, Special Agent in Charge, FBI, Clearwater, Florida

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