SG senator clashes with University Police

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By James Bennett III

A senator in Student Government who was detained and handcuffed by university police for interfering with an investigation earlier this month has filed a misconduct complaint against the two officers.

The senator, Karla Correa, and police Chief David Hendry agree that Correa objected to the way the officers were treating a young black man who was seen trying to get into Residence Hall One about 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 7.

But they disagree on the particulars of the incident.

Hendry says his officers had watched the young man — who Hendry said was not authorized to be on campus — walking around campus and approached him after he tried to get into RHO.

The man, whom police had encountered before, was ultimately given a trespass warning and barred from campus, the chief said. 

When Correa confronted the officers and refused to leave, Hendry said, they handcuffed her for obstructing their investigation and took her briefly to the university police office.

Police then referred the case to the university’s Office of Student Conduct, which investigates alleged violations of the campus code of conduct, and to the Pinellas-Pasco state attorney’s office for possible prosecution under state law.

Correa denied that she interfered with the officers and said she never got between them and the young man they were questioning.

She accused the officers of “being very violent” with her and pushing her several times.

She also accused the two officers, who are white, of racism. She and Naya Payne, a friend who witnessed the incident, went back to the police office the next day to file a misconduct complaint against them.

Correa said the incident typifies what she called racial tension on campus.

“I can’t imagine being black and going (to school) here,” she said. “It’s not safe to live on campus and go out at 9 o’clock.” 

“All around the country, African American people are being arrested in mass and put in prison,” she said. “And this is a problem. This isn’t like something that I’m making up in my head.”

What happened?

The incident began about 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 7. Correa and several friends had been celebrating a birthday and left RHO to walk to the public park adjacent to Albert Whitted Airport.

As they walked outside, they said, they saw police officers Michael Wasserman and Patrick O’Donnell questioning the young black man under RHO’s awning.

After watching the man wandering around campus, Chief Hendry said, the officers “went to speak to him, identify who he was, what his authority was on campus. What was his business? Did he know anyone? That kind of thing.”

Correa said the man looked like he needed help, so she stopped to ask if he was all right. He said he wasn’t, she said, so she decided to stick around.

When she continued to ask questions about what was going on and whether the man would like any help, the university police officers turned their attention toward her.

The officers asked Correa if she knew the man they were questioning.

“I didn’t know him. But I said that (I did) because, I don’t know, I just didn’t trust them at that point,” Correa said. “I was just trying to make sure he was OK. I wasn’t trying to lie to the police. I wasn’t trying to cause any trouble.”

Correa remembers one of the UPD officers saying “get her for obstruction.” She says she kept a healthy distance and never got in between the officers and the man they were questioning.

The young man who was being questioned by UPD was issued a trespass warning from campus. Hendry said UPD has “prior history” with the man.

“I saw officer Wasserman push Karla in my direction,” said Jenna Sierra, one of Correa’s friends. “And then I also saw officer O’Donnell grab her wrist and pull her away. They arrested her. They put handcuffs on her. They didn’t read her Miranda rights in front of me.”

“They were being very violent,” Correa said. “They were holding my arms and stuff and I kept saying ‘Oh, that hurts,’ and officer O’Donnell was like, ‘No, it doesn’t.’”

Correa said she was pushed multiple times during the incident.

After being detained, Correa was taken to the campus police office. She says she kept asking what she did to obstruct justice, but they wouldn’t give her any answers.

While she was detained, Correa said, she also said she overheard Wasserman making racist comments in the past. 

“I was just kind of like, if you guys want to do this, we can do this. Because everything’s going to come out,” Correa said.

Meanwhile, her friends waited in the police office and did what they could to help.

“I kept saying that if you’re arrested you’re entitled to an advocate of your choosing,” Sierra said. “They can’t speak for them, but they can be there. Wasserman continually denied her having one because I kept saying, ‘(I) or someone else in the room would like to act as an advocate. I want to be in the room with her.’ And he kept saying, ‘No, she doesn’t need it. She’s doing paperwork.’”

Originally, the officers intended to deal with the incident through a system called Adult Pre-Arrest Diversion, which, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office website, allows people who commit certain misdemeanors to complete community service at various nonprofit agencies in lieu of a criminal charge.

But the officers realized obstruction of justice didn’t apply to the program. Instead, they told Correa the incident would be handled through the student conduct committee.

“I would say I was not being very nice to the police officers, and it’s very telling that they didn’t send me to jail,” Correa said. “I felt that I didn’t do anything wrong. If I was actually doing something and I get arrested, that’s when I would be on my best behavior with the police. 

“But, you know, I didn’t do anything. I knew that I was going to end up reporting this. I knew this wasn’t the end of it. I knew it wasn’t just me getting arrested.”

Hendry said the officers’ decision to refer Correa to the conduct committee is fairly standard.

“We do a referral, and the Dean of Students Office has a conduct officer, and they review the circumstances. And if there are violations of the student code of conduct, they take action that is separate from any action that we might take,” Hendry said.

Correa said she was released from the office around 1:23 a.m.

State Attorney

The next day, Correa and a couple of her friends went to file a complaint of misconduct against officers Wasserman and O’Donnell. While she was in the office, Correa was informed that UPD referred her case to the state attorney’s office.

“The whole thing is kind of fishy because they said they weren’t going to charge me,” Correa said. She added that she believes her case was sent to the state attorney in retaliation against her for her filing a complaint.

Correa said she wasn’t “fazed or shocked” by the news.

“They felt threatened by me. I think it was kind of like, ‘How dare you like to say anything about this? How dare you question our authority?’”

Hendry said O’Donnell and Wasserman decided to send her case to the state attorney the night they detained her.

“That seemed to be the most appropriate course of action. Obstructing a police officer is a misdemeanor offense. It would not be uncommon, necessarily, that we would refer to the state attorney for review,” Hendry said.

He explained that the state attorney will review the evidence and, if they decide UPD has a case against Correa, issue a summons for her to appear in court. 

Although varying workloads make it difficult to determine how long Correa will have to wait for a response, Hendry said the state attorney usually takes about two to five weeks.

Misconduct

Naya Payne, a second-year political science major who witnessed the incident, filed a report of misconduct against the two UPD officers with Correa.

He recounted overhearing multiple instances of Wasserman acting inappropriately.

“I’ve heard so much about Wasserman in particular, and I guess nobody just felt the need to go report him,” Payne said. “I’m guilty of that, too.

“Now that I know that this isn’t just an isolated incident —  that a lot of people have had terrible interactions with Wasserman… Now I have enough, and we all have enough to come forward.”

“There were some complaints about (the officers making inappropriate comments) and that’s a part of the investigative process, to determine what the facts are,” Hendry said.

“It would be comparable to what you would think an investigative process is: Interview all the parties, gather the facts, compare them to policy and statute and make a determination based on that. How to best conclude the case. And that could be the exoneration or some other aspect from there,” Hendry said.

The investigation should take four to five weeks, and the two UPD officers will continue working while they’re being investigated.

“It’s important to us that we’re transparent. We share information. We have real strong relationships and it’s important that we maintain those,” Hendry said. “I always say (there are) different sides, different versions to the story. 

“I never take one side of the other. We do an investigative process. We bring all the facts together, and then the facts speak for themselves.”

Is the system ‘broken’?

Correa said this isn’t the first time she’s felt racial tension on campus. She added that it didn’t “feel right reporting the police to the police.”

“It’s obvious that these people are in close proximity together while they work together,” Payne said. ”They’re going to be friends, and they’re going to want to defend each other.” 

They share the same sentiment toward UPD and the Conduct Committee.

“I know that UPD and conduct and all these people work together very closely all the time. They’re friends. So I know that both of them are complicit and complacent with their own corruption and they already know what the outcome is going to be before it’s even investigated,” Payne said.

“What I can tell you is when we come upon a student who might be in violation of what we might believe is a student conduct violation, all we do is refer it to the conduct office. We don’t have a relationship where we sit together and make determinations and decide things. We’re completely hands-off in that regard,” Hendry said.

He explained that he knows “virtually everybody on campus,” but that’s due to the nature of his job and the campus being relatively small.

“We claim to be for diversity inclusion, but when somebody of the LGBT community or a person of color actually speaks of problems that they’ve experienced, they get shut down immediately and they get punished for it,” Payne said. “This is just a microcosm of that. This whole interaction that Karla’s had with UPD, it’s indicative of the entire university as a whole and other situations that have happened.”