In 2013, I started blogging because I felt I had a civic duty to start a conversation about the stories & issues not being discussed in the media. No one was acknowledging the shameless abuses of power. Today, I still have that same fire and passion. I absolutely believe that people have an aversion to those who violate public integrity. Nevertheless, with the 24 hour news bombardment, we have been anesthetized to things that don’t affect us directly. We want to believe that people who are arrested are justifiably guilty or else they wouldn’t have been arrested. How could we live without certain axioms or presumptions about society? The trust in officials is ingrained into the consciousness, as it should be. In researching and investigating Escambia County justice, my understanding of crime and criminals changed. The good guys aren’t always the “good guys”; the bad guys don’t always get punished. While I knew sociopaths gravitate to positions of power to get the juice they need to indulge their every whim, I never conceptualized the extent of truth about that. Ultimately, respect is  lost for the law and justice system, starting with the officers themselves in these cases. I was told once, “there is no justice to be had in Florida.”  Indeed, the administration staff in the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office, as is the admin staff of Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, shows no semblance of integrity or duty of care to the public.

In this blog, I will be posting THE Internal Affairs Report that sent Scott Haines out of the agency, but I would like to first put a podcast clip up that seems more propaganda than fact, based on the documentation.

On September 6, 2021, Santa Rosa Sheriff Bob Johnson spoke on NewsRadio923. I clipped this portion of interest. 

Here is a transcript of that clip:

Andrew
…. But I did want to at least give you a chance to address the situation with Scott Haines,
who had prior disciplinary issues within the Department. Whatever you can tell people, I’ll let you give you a chance to tell people.

Sheriff Bob Johnson
Yeah. And unfortunately, there’s an ongoing investigation by another law enforcement entity, so I can’t really discuss it much. But I can just tell you if you looked at our agency over the past five years that I’ve been shared, we take care of discipline. So if one of our guys or gals acts out and does
something, they get punished for it and you make bad choices, you get bad consequences. And that’s just basically what occurred here is that.

Andrew
And I know it’s not that common, but having to discipline internally your officers, how frequent of a
thing is that? And I don’t just mean they make some mistake. That’s a training issue where they’re
really doing something that they definitely shouldn’t be doing where it’s a problem.

Sheriff Bob Johnson
It’s not that common. We’re pretty blessed. We have probably 400 sworn counting the deputies that
work in the jail. And it’s not very common. It’s like you hear in the national news when my officer does something stupid on camera and we all get blamed for it. Less than 1% of the officers in this country tarnish the badge less than 1%. That’s better than doctors and lawyers. So we take care of our own in that aspect of if you’re a bad cop, we don’t want you there. It makes us all look bad.

Sheriff Bob Johnson
And sooner or later, a bad cop is going to do something to where we can get rid of them. And
unfortunately, we have to do that not on a regular basis. But since I’ve been shared, probably in five
years, fire and law enforcement officers and Correctional officers, probably in five years, maybe 15
times at the most. Maybe I’d say closer to ten, probably. Yeah, it’s not very common.

Andrew
And it’s, as you say, it’s the very few that make for the vivid news story. Just like when you watch
fictional accounts of police, it’s the corrupt one to the vigilante style or the incompetent one that
creates an expectation which just isn’t borne out by the reality. And it’s hard to tell the good story
when things go right. Because when things go right, that typically doesn’t. We try to focus on the good as much as we can. But that’s not really going to grab the headlines most of the time

So what Bob is insinuating is recently committed violations of policy or law, committed by Scott which required discipline. But is that true? NO! The 9 Supervisory Inquiries that repetitively involved sexual misconduct or harassment, surfing porn, etc. Let’s not forget the 2020 shitshow in Escambia County, where Scott feigned suicidal ideations to get access to a co-worker. There is dispatcher to dispatcher reporting of this to Sheriff Johnson. Yet not only is it never cited within his disciplinary history, never psychologically evaluated. This is Baker Act material—no question. Yet it was swept under the rug and never gets even an “honorable mention” in his moral integrity evaluation.  C’mon Bob. This guy did more than any one officer should be

It is clear Bob Johnson has been aware of Scotts hijinks for years. He oversaw many disciplinary concerns prior to being elected as Sheriff. Prior to Jan 2017, there were 5 Supervisory Inquiries & 3 full on IA’s. “Porngate” & “Repo Nights” are among the highlights.

Now we see what the straw was that broke the camel’s back. The IA (that was not disclosed even after I balked at the number of IA’s. Even on 9/14/2021, when Adam Riddle informed me the 3 were all there was but there was 10 Supervisory Inquiries) that caused Scott to be terminated is revealed.

There are so many things that need to be pointed out and discussed. There are numerous highlighted areas that I will be delving into but for today, notice the dates and the one glaring issue is the unanimous vote to terminate Scott, yet he “retired”. Once everyone agrees there is a violation and agreed on the punishment, he should be terminated. Allowing him to resign only works prior to that board vote. They voted. He is fired before he “retired”. Don’t know how that works.

I am going to put this out there for everyone to draw their own conclusions. Without further adieu: