Rule #1: Don't press the delete button
Rule #2: If you violate Rule #1, find someone to blame, do it fast, and then STFU
-- Venice Police Department, data retention guidelines (not really, but it might as well be)
On July 25, 2008, seven months after he had been rehired by the Venice Police Department as a police officer, Michael Frassetti was fired for his involvement in what had now become known as the Harpster Incident. The case against Frassetti seemed to be deliberately based simultaneously on two opposing allegations:
A.) That he didn't do a report at all on the Harpster Incident, and
B.) That he did a partial report and then later tried to wipe out any evidence that he had ever started a report.

Thus, the case against Frassetti as put together by Police Lieutenant Mike Rose, Police Chief Julie Williams, and City Attorney Bob Anderson had been seemingly deliberately built on opposing shifting sands from the beginning due to a desire to cover up their lack of technological understanding. More important than the missing document, though, was Rose, Williams, and Anderson's asserted beliefs that Frassetti had lied about it. Meanwhile, all of the underlying evidence in the case against Frassetti was based on the "expert testimony" of the city's IT guy assigned to the VPD, Mike Deneweth, with some support from Pablo Morales, who works for the VPD's software vendor, SunGard (formerly known as HTE).

Frassetti's defense, one backed up by a plethora of sworn accounts of similar data failures, was that he completed an Offence Incident Report and sent it in electronically exactly as he had been trained to do, and that somehow the department's computer system dropped and/or ate the data.

One thing that I found very odd that nobody ever brought up during the arbitration hearing was something that was documented by Rose and tucked away in the internal affairs investigation report: an admission by Deneweth that he may have inadvertently destroyed the very document everyone was looking for.

In the investigation report, Rose writes: "Deneweth states he did not initially find the missing case because he assumed he was looking for a completed report. After I told him the case number had been canceled, he checked Vehicle 51's computer again and found a blank master [the so-called incomplete report for the Harpster Incident]. [Deneweth] said he [Deneweth] sent this blank master to the server and it 'overwrote' the original copy."

I've followed the text carefully in the IAI report. The so-called "original copy" on the server that Deneweth mentions? According to the IAI report, that would be the incident report that Deneweth originally claimed that he couldn't find, but now he is now admitting to deleting it by overwriting it with another incomplete copy BEFORE he ever got a chance to look at what he was deleting.

Nope, nothing wrong here. Actually, that all sounds very Venice to me.

DELETED!!!   DELETED!!!   TILT!!!   GAME OVER!!!
Undeterred, Rose forges on. Rose glosses over this by using it as proof that Frassetti deleted the document himself, as Rose writes the following about Deneweth's accidental data deletion: "This process proves the deleted blank was the original master sent to M. Frassetti under his screen name and password."

Heh? Huh? What? Rose's documented process proves something, alright, but not quite what Rose is stating.

What Rose's text should have proved to anyone with a few months or so of basic computer experience with document software no more complicated than Microsoft Notepad: that Deneweth, in the course of investigating the chain of events, had inadvertently destroyed evidence in the chain, evidence that resided on the server in the form of what he termed the "original copy" of the Harpster report (how you can have an "original copy" is a whole different discussion in oxymoronic phrases -- it's either the original or it's a copy, but it can't be both). Furthermore, Rose is stating, perhaps inadvertently, that Deneweth admitted deleting the "original copy." To complicate matters even more, either Deneweth or Rose drastically changed the import of Deneweth's stated actions, as documented by Rose, by pointing to a different result than one that a line of logic,  based on Rose's account of events, should have provided.

This is assuming that Rose's narrative, as quoted above, accurately reflected what the pair of them were actually doing. Rose's text  in this part of the IAI is incredibly difficult to follow without plotting it out graphically on paper. For all I can tell, the pair of them spent an afternoon downloading midget porn and then hastily came up with this mish-mosh of a tale just to keep the boss from asking questions.

God help anyone in Venice ever investigated or accused of an electronic crime by the VPD.

     (Note -- I had a whole slew of prepared questions for Rose for clarification, however Rose refused to speak to me. Rose stated that the only thing he would say to me in answer to any question would be "no comment."
     I briefly interviewed Deneweth shortly after reading the IAI back around July of this year -- Deneweth stuck to his story at the time, to wit: that Frassetti's Harpster report had partially existed at one time, but that Frassetti never completed it and that he subsequently deleted it. Deneweth further stated that the only way the report could have disappeared in the manner that he observed was if it had been manually deleted by Frassetti and only by Frassetti. Deneweth went on to emphatically say that the police department's computers have NEVER lost any data in the three or four years he has been maintaining them.
     When I told Deneweth that I was hearing from other officers about how data was disappearing into the ether, Deneweth stated that he had never heard any stories like that and suggested that the cops who were telling me such tales were lying to me.
     I'll address Deneweth's statements about Frassetti, the computer system, and disappearing data in Part 3.)

City Attorney Anderson on Frassetti: "He lied, he lied, he lied.... and then he lied"
If there ever really had been a case against Frassetti for destroying police documents, the case should have been dropped right then due to tampered evidence.

But it wasn't. Instead, Rose, Williams, and Anderson pushed on to the point where Bob Anderson, in his summation during the arbitration hearing, called Frassetti a liar. Not once. Not twice. Anderson said it over and over and over and over again (from video #1, linked to above): "For reasons that will only be known to Officer Frassetti, ... [he] decided to lie about it. He lied about it under oath at the internal affairs investigation, he lied about it again at the pre-determination hearing, and he's lied about it again at the two hearings held in this formal evidentiary hearing. He's offered no expert testimony [to the effect that] ...the system cannot lose a report in the way Michael Frassetti says it happened. A law enforcement officer lying over the discharge of his required responsibilities is conduct reprehensible for a law enforcement officer and is not condoned by the City of Venice."

Hold that thought, Bob. I'll come back to that holy trinity concept of honesty, integrity, and the badge just a bit later.

Frassetti the slob
Unofficially, one VPD officer told me about the official in-house story that was being sold to the troops, to wit: that Frassetti was a lazy cop who constantly slopped up his reports, that he often sent them in incomplete, and that this was just another case of Frassetti trying to cover up his own ineptitude. The officer who told me this was one of Williams' true believers, and he had totally bought into this version of events.

If it was true that Frassetti was Oscar Madison with a badge, this would innocently explain why Williams, Rose, and Anderson wanted Frassetti off of the VPD payroll. If Frassetti was truly lying about what happened to the paperwork stemming from the Harpster Incident, that would legitimately explain why Williams had pushed the FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) into investigating the case in the hopes that Frassetti would lose his CJST (Criminal Justice Standards and Training) law enforcement certification, and thus the right to be a law enforcement officer anywhere within the State of Florida.

Two really big problems arise from this description of Frassetti.

First: No evidence, or even mention, of Frassetti's alleged sloth-like work patterns ever showed up in the arbitration hearing. Rose, Williams, and Anderson were treating this Harpster Incident as a one-off. If Frassetti was a constant screw-up as alleged to the department staff by VPD management (as relayed to me), that evidence would have been all over the table.

But it wasn't. I can't help but wonder why? But that pales in comparison with the next problem.

Williams to FDLE: Get him, he's evil
FDLE to Williams: Chief, check your meds
The second big problem with the department's picture of Frassetti as a lying and lazy incompetent comes from the FDLE's assessment of Rose and Williams' case against Frassetti.

A complaint against Frassetti was filed by Williams with the FDLE in the hope that FDLE would pull Frassetti's law enforcement certification and for FDLE to, hopefully, file their own criminal charges. On January 28, 2009, a CJST review panel met in Orlando to review Williams' case against Frassetti. Frassetti did not attend as this was considered a preliminary inquiry and would most likely be bumped up to a full hearing where Frassetti's attendance would be mandatory if he intended to fight Williams' charges. Instead, Frassetti was represented by union reps from the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police).

The CJST board took very little time to determine that there was insufficient evidence to support Rose and Williams' contentions.  Based on what Rose and Williams had brought to the table, the CJST not only stated that there was not enough evidence to support a guilty verdict, there wasn't even enough evidence to establish probable cause to investigate further.

According to one FOP union rep that I spoke with under condition of anonymity, that's unheard of. Normally, the CJST review team rubber stamps such departmental complaints and sends them on, almost automatically, for further review. This, then, is normally followed by a hearing through FDLE's disciplinary process. The CJST review panel's criteria for establishing probable cause to sustain an investigation is incredibly and almost ridiculously low.

Here, however, in a nearly unprecedented action, the CJST review team in Orlando was politely telling Williams: Pick up your stinking pile of brown goo, take it back to Venice with you, and don't come back here again until a physician gives a thorough review of your meds.

Strangely, and with the full knowledge of how FDLE had treated this mess, Bob Anderson still thought this was a case worth going to the wall for. In a way, you can't blame him. After all, the client (in this case, the city's police department) was still will willing to pay.

Joshua Rose pulls a Get Out Of Jail Free card from the Community Chest pile
Frassetti was fired on July 25, 2008. As shown above, his hearing with the CJST review panel was on January 28, 2009. According to Frassetti's attorney, Nevine Weiner, both Frassetti and Weiner were in semi-constant contact with the cop shop and the city's legal department throughout this whole ordeal. Also of note was that Frassetti did not move or change his residence during this period. In fact, he still hasn't -- he's still living at the same address that he was living at on the day that he was fired.

Which makes this next set of facts nearly totally unbelievable, even by Venice standards.

Begin flashback.
From Part 1 of this article, you'll remember that Frassetti had arrested Joshua Rose for DUI and carrying a concealed weapon; that Joshua Rose is a blood relative of Frassetti's supervisor, Lt. Mike Rose; and that exactly one week after the arrest of Joshua, Frassetti was informed by Mike Rose that Frassetti was under investigation for deliberately destroying electronic police documents.
End flashback.

According to a memo to the VPD from then-Assistant State Attorney Jason Foust, dated November 21, 2008 (PDF file, 2 pages, pops in new window), the state was dropping all charges against Joshua Rose. The reason? According to Foust's memo, "When preparing for trial, the State learned of the fact that the arresting officer [Frassetti] in this case is not employed by the Venice Police Department any longer. After contacting VPD it was also learned that there was no forwarding information for the arresting officer."

Well, that's sort of true. There was no forwarding address information on file at the VPD... because Frassetti hadn't moved. He was (and still is, as of this writing) living at the same address that he had been while he was working for the police department up until his firing in July of 2008. Thus, the cops, and city hall for that matter, had his correct address all along.

So buried was this Joshua Rose memo that not even Nevin Weiner, Frassetti's attorney, knew this document existed until I found and provided a copy of it to him, this some days after the hearing had ended. Although the VPD, with several named officers, were the named recipients of the memo, the VPD never turned a copy of the memo over to Weiner as part of discovery.

Even stranger is that I asked Alan Bullock at the city's HR department if he had received any departmental requests for Frassetti's address back around last November. Bullock researched the matter and then informed me that he had had Frassetti's correct address all along and that nobody from either the State Attorney's Office or the Police Department had asked him or his department for Frassetti's address.

According to Weiner, both he and Frassetti were in constant contact with the department throughout the period in question.

There is no reason that the State could not have continued to pursue criminal charges against Rose simply because Frassetti was no longer a police officer -- it would still be up to a jury to determine Frassetti's credibility and the case against Rose still looked strong on paper. Unless, of course, somebody could make a witness disappear -- then the state would have to let Rose take a walk.

Close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears..... right about..... now!
So, if Assistant State Attorney Jason Foust was really told that by a VPD employee, then that VPD employee lied, and the direct beneficiary was Joshua Rose, nephew/cousin/whatever of Frassetti's supervisor, Police Lieutenant Mike Rose. Carrying that to the next logical step, if all that is true, take a look at what Anderson's and Williams' stated beliefs are about what should be done to liars who work for the police department -- this should warrant a full investigation into how that fictional wording ended up on a memo from the State Attorney's Office, right?

I asked Williams that very question when I ran into her at City hall on September 8. To say she blew up would be a bit of an overstatement, but not much. Oh, she howled like a wounded animal -- was I calling her a liar, was I saying that Mike Rose lied, just what was it that I wanted from her?

I tried to show her the Joshua Rose memo from the SAO, but she didn't want to look at it. She said she had never seen it. I tried to show her how somebody had clearly lied in order for that wording to exist on paper and the direct beneficiary was Joshua Rose, but she didn't want to hear it. I offered her a copy of the memo, but Williams only became angrier with me. Nobody lied, it was probably just a mistake, I am just making fast accusations (remember this, as I want to discuss those very words, "fast accusations," in just a bit), isn't that just like a reporter, etc., etc.

I don't care how Williams wants to dance around this, in this case the evidence is clear -- somebody lied, and it was somebody in law enforcement, either at the police station or at the SAO. So would Williams investigate how this happened as vigorously as she investigated her allegation that Frassetti lied?

Absolutely not, she very angrily stated, this was nothing that warranted an investigation.