Office Romances Off-Limits At Schiavo Workplace
Posted on Thursday, 9 of April , 2009 at 6:33 pm
COMMENTARY
By June Maxam
PINELLAS COUNTY—Office romances are off-limits at the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office under Sheriff Jim Coats’ anti-adultery policy.
Not only is adultery a criminal offense in Florida, but an employee at the sheriff’s office is prohibited from having an intimate relationship with another employee who is married.
The policy also prohibits anyone who is married from having a relationship with another employee.
Two more Pinellas Counties deputies have received written reprimands for violating this policy. Cpl. Randy A. Corlett and Deputy Amy White did a bit more than fraternize, they had a child. Corlett is married.
During an investigation, White said that while she and Corlett were attending a conference of the Florida Association of Hostage Negotiators last June in Cocoa Beach, they had a few drinks and went to White’s hotel room. According to white, they had sexual relations three or four days of the five-day conference.
After the conference, White said Corlett stopped speaking to her. He is now reportedly attending marital counseling with his wife.
The adultery policy at the sheriff’s office was instituted in the fall of 2005, after the death of Terri Schindler Schiavo. Her husband, registered nurse Michael Schiavo, was hired in late 2004 by former Sheriff Everett Rice to work in the Pinellas County Jail. Schiavo had lived in adultery for nearly 10 years prior to Terri’s death with his concubine Jodi Centenoze,
Schiavo has lived with Centonze since at least 1995 while still married to Terri. He fathered two illegitimate children with Centonze and refused to divorce Terri, instead determinedly seeking the court’s permission to kill her.
Florida Statutes state that whoever lives in an open state of adultery, such as Schiavo and Centonze did for over 10 years including while he was employed by the sheriff’s department, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree. Where either of the parties living in an open state of adultery is married, both parties so living shall be deemed to be guilty of the offense.
Although Schiavo was clearly in violation of the law while employed by the sheriff’s department, he was not arrested.
The sheriff’s order also prohibits adultery among employees regardless of where they work or whether they have contact with each other on the job.
He and Centonze married in January, 2006, 10 months after Terri was killed at the behest of her husband by the removal of her feeding tube. As Terri lay dying in her hospice room on March 30, 2005, Schiavo, his brother, Brian; and attorneys George Felos and Deborah Bushnell “camped in the room with Terri, whose breathing was becoming more labored”, and had pizza and salad as ordered for them by the hospice, and waited for Terri to die.
The policy enacted by Coats bans adultery among employees regardless of their departmental assignment or if they have any contact with each other in their job duties and prohibits two employees from “associating” when at least once of them is married.
At the time he had implemented the policy, Coats said that he felt it was “necessary to make it clear to the members of our agency that we have a moral image and obligation to the public. If we openly allow it, what kind of example does that set?”
Perhaps he should ponder that question to Michael Schiavo.
In 2007, allegations were raised by former sheriff’s office employee Diane Cross, also a nurse at the jail, that Schiavo may have had an affair with her and then allegedly fabricated a claim to retaliate against her because he was angry with Cross for rejecting his advances and not agreeing with his decision to kill his wife.
There were also allegations made during court proceedings earlier this year that Schiavo may have been engaged in a relationship with co-worker Merry Caldwell. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/09/30/fabricate_claim/
According to Schiavo’s disciplinary file, he was not disciplined in either case for allegedly violating the adultery policy although he was married to Centonze at the time.
Cross was fired in February, 2007 from her job that she’d held since 1999 after Schiavo filed a complaint against her last September, claiming that she had allegedly illegally dispensed Robaxin, a prescription medication, to David Richardson, another nursing and clinical supervisor. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/09/30/fired-nurse-says-schiavo-fabricated-claim-in-retaliation/
Cross appealed her termination and during court proceedings, said that in addition to apparently being enamored with her, Schiavo was also engaged in a “flirtatious” relationship with nurse Merry Caldwell who was also involved in the medication incident involving Cross.
“Schiavo initiated a complaint against Ms. Cross that culminated in her termination. At the time that Schiavo initiated the complaint, his relationship with Ms. Cross which had previously been very friendly—had soured”, the court filing stated. It was inferred that because of the “relationship” between Schiavo and Caldwell, that Caldwell would lie for Schiavo in order to further Schiavo’s complaint against Cross.
There’s no indication if the alleged relationships of Schiavo with other department members was investigated by Internal Affairs.
In a fit of anger last September after Cross and Rick Brennan, another clinical supervisor at the jail, told their supervisor that Schiavo wasn’t “pulling his weight” in performing nursing duties at the jail, he retaliated against them, filing a complaint against Cross about an incident which he said had allegedly occurred in the nursing office, resulting in her termination and nearly causing her arrest and that of another nursing supervisor.
Neither Schiavo nor anyone else in the nursing office on the day in question reported the incident that Schiavo says happened but three of the four people allegedly in the office that day, excluding Schiavo, say Schiavo wasn’t even present.
Schiavo, who was suspended for failing to report the incident in a timely manner, also caused the demotion of another of his co-workers and the suspensions of two more. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/07/24/the_other_woman/
The North Country Gazette learned of Schiavo’s suspension while conducting a routine public records request for Schiavo’s time cards. Neither the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune reported the Schiavo suspension or the drug case within the jail and Cross’ resulting administrative appeal. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/10/27/schiavo_complaint/ http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/10/03/accusatory_fingers/ http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/08/25/then_and_now/ http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/08/11/schiavo_stonewall/
Cross has testified that as Terri Schindler Schiavo lay dying in a Pinellas Park hospice, Michael Schiavo was repeatedly on the phone with Cross. She says that on March 31, 2005, the day that Terri died after 13 days without food and water, her feeding tube withdrawn by Schiavo who had fought her parents in the courts for nearly a decade, Terri’s “loving” husband called Cross from the hospice parking lot to tell her of his wife’s death.
Cross said she had rejected his advances and disagreed with what Schiavo “did to his wife”. She said he later taunted her that she didn’t send him a sympathy card when Terri died and that she hadn’t sent him a congratulatory message when he remarried.
She said she tried to be friendly and professional. He apparently wanted more.
At an administrative hearing on Aug. 16, Cross accused Schiavo of “flirtations” with Merry Caldwell, the licensed practical nurse who Schiavo claims Cross called to bring the medication to the nursing office so she could give it to Richardson. Cross has alleged that Caldwell and Schiavo teamed up to bring false allegations against her. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/09/22/schiavo_flirtations
There are no indications in Schiavo’s personnel file if he or any of his female co-workers were investigated for alleged adultery since the 2005 policy was implemented by Coats.
While sheriff, Rice had steadfastly blocked all complaints against Michael Schiavo for the alleged abuse and neglect of his wife and refused to open a criminal investigation into the Schiavo case.
Schiavo was most recently disciplined in January by the sheriff’s department for using department computers during working hours to engage in public attacks on the Schindler family and others involved in the Schiavo case.
A investigation conducted by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office substantiated that for at least six months, from June, 2008 through December, 2008, Michael Schiavo misused government-owned computers during work hours to engage in a vicious, abusive public attack against the Schindler family, the in-laws and siblings of Terri Schiavo; attorney David Gibbs III who represented the Schindler family in their efforts to save their daughter’s life, and others involved in the case. Michael Schiavo has certifiably wasted untold hours on the public dole—a prima facie example of waste and inefficiency in the government workplace.
Investigations conducted by both the Administrative Investigations Division of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the command level of the Detention and Corrections Division substantiated that Schiavo violated department policy and was routinely been posting derogatory messages, even starting threads to post negative comments about the Schindler family and their representatives, on the Terri Schiavo Forum at topix.com.
Topix is a news aggregator and claims that it allows its posters to “edit” the news and provides links to “lively user-generated forums”. A particularly neurotic and abusive group of a half dozen Michael Schiavo fans still continue to carry forth a diatribe of bigotry, hate and misinformation about the Schiavo case daily on a Terri Schiavo forum at topix.com. Forum participants bully, abuse and harass individuals who dare to disagree with them and who are labeled Schindler supporters”.
Schiavo, posting under the screen names of “Tom of Saint Petersburg” and “Mike of Saint Petersburg”, often engaged in a virtual tag team attack on the Schindler family and others with Walter Gay, 62, of Dunedin, Fla., aka “Walter in FL”.
Gay’s wife, Cynthia, worked as a paralegal for Schiavo’s euthanasia attorney, George Felos, the man who, other than Michael Schiavo, benefited the most financially from the death of Terri Schiavo, both by promoting his ideological agenda and financially. 4-9-09
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This commentary may not be reprinted or republished in its entirety in any medium without the express written permission of the publisher of The North Country Gazette.
Category: Florida, Government, Labor, Police, Schiavo
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