Pinellas sheriff secretly texted traffic stop video to former TPD Chief Mary O’Connor

Former Tampa Police Chief Mary O’Connor got a pass when a Pinellas County Sheriff deputy let her out of a traffic stop last month, but the professional courtesies didn’t end there.

Text messages show that Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri leaked  body camera video of the traffic stop to O’Connor while Creative Loafing Tampa Bay waited for the clip as part of a public records request from PCSO.

The video shows O’Connor and her husband Keith pulled over for not having a license plate on their golf cart and O’Connor using her badge to get out of the traffic stop. The incident made international news after CL first reported it on Dec. 1, and O’Connor resigned four days later at the request of Mayor Jane Castor.

But on Nov. 30—a day before the video was released to CL—public records show Gualtieri texting O’Connor a Google Drive link to a video named “TRAFFIC_STOP.”

Six minutes later he followed-up and wrote, “Did you get it?” There was no response from O’Connor included in the public records request.

Earlier on Nov. 30, CL was informed that the video had been found, based on information provided in a public records request. But PCSO said that it would be 24 hours before the video could be provided, because the legal team had to review the video for redactions.

CL agreed to wait, unaware that Gualtieri would leak the video to O’Connor. Tampa Police Department’s Professional Standards Bureau found that on that same day, O’Connor confessed about the incident to Castor.

On the afternoon of Dec. 1, the video was provided to CL and a sergeant said “You are the first to receive it all” in an email. Around the same time the story about the traffic stop was published on CL’s website, TPD shared the video in a press release with an apology from O’Connor.

The texts between Gualtieri and O’Connor were discovered via TPD’s response to a CL’s public records request. But in PCSO’s initial response to a similar request, the texts between the two were missing. When asked why, PCSO responded by apologizing for the “miscommunication” and provided the same text messages that had been provided in the request from TPD.

In the video of the incident from last month, O’Connor and her husband Keith were pulled over in Oldsmar, where they live, by PCSO deputy Larry Jacoby. O’Connor flashes her badge and tells Jacoby that she is the police chief in Tampa. She then asks if his body camera is on, and the deputy confirms that it is. O’Connor then says, “I’m really hoping that you’ll just let us go tonight.”

She hands Jacoby her business card, and they thank each other for their service before Deputy Jacoby lets the couple go.
         
Earlier this month, PCSO told CL that Jacoby will not be reprimanded for giving preferential treatment to a fellow officer. And during a press conference  on Dec. 6, Gualtieri defended the deputy’s behavior.

“Deputy Larry Jacoby did absolutely nothing wrong. I stand by him 110%,” he said.

This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2022.