Tag Archives: Mike Gilmore

Bye Bye Scotty!

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On January 9th, Scott Haines reported to Maxwell AFB Federal Prison Camp. It appears this is minimum security camp rather than prison. I still find it less than acceptable that this is all he gets. How ridiculous! Terrorizing a family; stealing; conspiring; exploiting and he gets camp for a year.

Previously, I have voiced my disgust over this situation, and it may seem like I’m harping on this, but seriously, Scott was targeting Matt Groelinger. TARGETING! For 5 years, the SRSO employees ran him through NCIC/FCIC repetitively. Adam Riddle, the Public Information Officer, ran him in 2020 as well. This can’t be a case of “no harm-no foul” because there is harm. In Matt’s case, it’s his well-being. You know thee guys were not just looking at his info for kicks. There was something else going on. Yet they face no penalty whatsoever.

(Only a portion of the full report)

Why aren’t these other people being reprimanded? There are so many of these people on the state’s payroll. For example, Mike Gilmore failing to act in the JadeKiss case, forget the moral reprehensibility of it, how do people keep jobs when they are risking the legal liability of the agencies they represent?

But Mr. Gilmore like Adam Riddle, still has a job. Steve Cappas has a job. Yet Philip Nix doesn’t. There is no logic to this at all.

But I digress. Getting back to Scotty. I recently got a copy of the transcript of his sentencing in federal court from November. It’s quite amusing. His attorney attempts to argue and split hairs as to whether he should be punished in federal court since he pled guilty in state court. His attorney attempts to argue that Ms. Dot was there and would be willing to testify that Scott never broke the law. Thankfully the judge begs to differ.

So then, the federal prosecutor spoke:

But naturally Haines’s attorney kept trying to press the judge:

Then Scott got to speak:

Then the federal prosecutor spoke again:

Thankfully the judge wasn’t impressed.

Apparently, I am told, Scott did not anticipate jail time and that was judicial discretion. Bravo is all I have to say!

For a full transcript of that hearing, click here.

ECSO Litmus Test

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EDITORIAL: I want to acknowledge the handling of a serious matter, a little less than 2 weeks ago. My son, who lives in Pensacola, was missing and possibly endangered. I was apprehensive about involving ECSO due to my history with the leadership. However, Chip Simmons, Investigator Lee and Sgt Calogero were fantastic. My son is fine, but I was a wreck. I will never forget what they did.

Having said that, I am still compelled to post on issues I believe are public worthy regarding the agency. Chip’s personnel decisions and actions or inactions, still will ripple through history. I will not pull punches on this matter, because someone should.

Now that the ball is in Chip Simmons’s court, we will all be able to see if he is more of the same (ie Morgan) or whether he will turn the agency around as is hoped. It appears he is riding the fence on the most recent morally bankrupt employee, David Craig. Craig has recently been on administrative leave. It is alleged he exposed himself to a little girl. Can’t confirm for sure but knowing Craig’s history, this certainly fits the pattern of inappropriate actions he has had in the past.

Right after Craig was hired in January of 2009, he immediately began abusing the trust that should be associated with working for a law enforcement agency.

To a layperson, this seems like a string of misdeeds that should not be punished by anything less than termination. Destroying evidence? Fake badge? Interfering with Investigation? Dissemination of official personnel records by someone without the authority to access those records legitimately?

In early 2015, I received an email from a source about Craig:

Hey Jimmie, just thought of something when I saw your comment about chatting with David Craig on Facebook.  Are you aware that David was a Reserve Deputy but lost his certificate for policy violations?  And, that he contributed a ton of his BLAB tv show time to Morgan during his first campaign and some during the second campaign?  Morgan created a job for Craig  with a starting salary roughly $10,000 over what a starting deputy makes.  I started getting complaints on Craig from Investigations in regards to his interfering with several investigations.  The Captain of Investigations at the time, sent me a letter asking me to stop Craig’s getting involved before he blew a case.  After several other complaints, one from his immediate supervisor, another Investigator and a complaint about Craig impersonating a law enforcement officer, I went to Morgan.  Morgan refused to involve himself in Craig’s situation, other than to tell me to just warn him to be careful.  I eventually wrote Craig up and warned him that if he continued to talk to witnesses, take pictures of suspects homes, and other such activities he could be arrested.  Craig also has a Domestic Violence past and I’m correct he is not allowed to carry a firearm but does and Morgan knows this.  Craig acted as a Bodyguard for Morgan during his election campaigns and carried a gun on him then.  

Since then, I have been approached by witnesses who claimed that Craig was banned from the Creighton Road Walmart for urinating in public, and thus exposing himself to shoppers. Somehow or another, even after PPD was on the scene, Morgan was notified and got the PPD to not issue a report. The witnesses heard the call on the scanner and showed up to witness firsthand the covering up of this offense. There is no report or any paper trail on this other than the witnesses, which doesn’t surprise anyone.

I am also hoping to see Chip step up to deal with Steve Cappas. The man confessed to tampering with evidence in the Joe Zarzaur case for the Rodgers twins. Lest we forget.

And Mike Gilmore. He failed to act on information regarding a missing child. Let a lead sit in a file for 2 years, knowing the witness saw the girl in a sex trafficking setting. Not even a footnote in his file.

There are so many issues with personnel. If Chip doesn’t step up and eradicate the vermin, he is just as bad as that vermin. One bad apple ruins the whole bunch, right? What about 3-4 bad apples?

Evil Knows No Bounds

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In previous posts, I have covered how Naomi Jones’s investigation was bungled; how the ECSO refused to do a missing person report when Gavin Clarke’s mom attempted to get help in her son’s disappearance; how so many children have been discarded because the ECSO failed to do their jobs. This story is more than that. When children go missing, there MUST be trust in law enforcement by the community. However, the distrust in this case is well earned by the ECSO.

The case I am speaking of is Jada McNeal aka Jadekiss McNeal. She went missing in December of 2015.  This case has been mishandled by the ECSO since day one. The original missing personsimage0000001 report was “lost” apparently by the agency without anyone as much as attempting to look into the disappearance. She was labeled a chronic runaway.

Three months later, when Jada’s grandmother contacted the ECSO, she was told no report was done in December, so she proceeded to file one right then. However, since Jada had been gone so long, the ECSO considered the case “cold” and used that as an excuse to do virtually nothing. Sometime soon after a lead came to the ECSO that the young girl was in a sex trafficking ring that ran from Louisiana to Las Vegas.4829175381491712.png

Until May of this year, nothing has transpired in this case, or so it appeared when the family did a press conference to refresh interest in the case. In typical Morgan fashion, Sir David held his own press conference lashing out at the family for doing such a thing. The investigator assigned to the case was promptly demoted for not making Sir David aware of the family’s press conference prior to it happening.

Skip ahead 2 months, I got a call from a colleague in the media who received a lead on Jada’s case. My colleague’s source claimed that a lead came to the ECSO about an inmate in Miami/Dade County jail  that had told investigators there that he had information on Jada being trafficked throughout the state of Florida and the last time he had seen her she was alive. The authorities in Miami contacted the ECSO and spoke to Mike Gilmore head of investigations. Gilmore told him the ECSO was not interested in sending anyone down to speak to this guy who had apparently been arrested in connection with sexual crimes. The authorities in Miami were shocked that the ECSO wasn’t interested in at least hearing what this man had to say. But that wasn’t the end of it. Mike Gilmore called Miami back later and made a request for the original statement this inmate made regarding Jada. Gilmore’s request for the “original” documentation concerned the authorities in Miami and they refused to send any original documentation to the ECSO. Chatter on LEOAffairs.com reflects this corroborating the story I was told

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I was stunned by this news. If I had a child missing and I found out even one lead–no matter how far fetched–wasn’t followed up on, I would have someone’s head on a pike. I proceeded pass along this information to a member of the ECSO admin who has attempted to convince myself and colleagues of his interest in correcting the problematic issues within the ECSO. I was apprehensive about this because anyone associated with this agency who either sees the issues of cutthroat behavior towards the employees not to mention the detrimental effect on the community this agency has built up or is there but unaware of these issues, wouldn’t typically get any benefit of the doubt from me. The list of casualties of this agency to the people within it and the community will take years to rehabilitate. I simply don’t know that it can be rehabilitated with the administration in place particularly Eric Haines and David Morgan.

Without any real options, I took a leap of faith and told this one person in a position of authority about the lead I got. He said he would look into it and keep me posted. In the meantime, my colleague I received the original tip from contacted me to tell me that her source clarified that the ECSO received this tip 2 years ago and failed to follow up. This tip sat–unfollowed–in a file for 2 years. I lost my mind. Statistically, the chances of finding this little girl alive are exponentially less every day; in the last two years, the lack of give a shit by the ECSO very likely cost this little girl’s life or depleted the chances of finding her to NIL.

The person at the ECSO I confided this tip in with the hopes of helping this little girl corroborated that this tip was indeed two years old and unfollowed up on. He refused to assign blame but promised to properly handle this lead ASAP. Since then, 3 trips to areas around the Southeast have been made running down this lead. A few names have been given and they are being run down–2 years too late–but possibly to some end.

My heart has been broken by this story. I was put into contact with members of the family via Cindy Martin, an advocate in the black community who contacted me about doing stories about crimes against people of color that have been inadequately handled and less sufficiently covered by any media. For example, James Beasley who contacted Pensacola PD about someone who was tried to kill him, only to be shot dead two hours after they refused to assist him. Or Devin Kennedy of Pensacola who was killed in Seminole, Alabama with neither the Pensacola PD, ESCO or the Baldwin County Sheriff’s office investigating the crime.

How is it possible in this day and age that these things can happen? The fact they almost exclusively happen to minorities adds a level of perception of rampant racism or indifference to those socio-economically below the threshold of most politicians level of sight.

Getting back to Jada, if anyone has any information on this little girl at anytime since December 2015, please contact Milton Search & Rescue’s Steve Williams. He seems to be the only one seriously investigating for this family.FullSizeRenderIMG_6222