(Tampa Bay Online) The sheriff’s office this morning released 11 memoranda regarding employees who had recently been fired or suspended.
Deputy James Campbell was suspended for 40 hours following a May 30 charge of drunken driving. According to a sheriff’s memorandum, breath tests put his blood-alcohol levels at .309 and .307 – more than three times .08, the threshold at which a driver in Florida is presumed intoxicated. Campbell’s case is still winding through the judicial system.
Michael Celi, a registered nurse at the Pinellas County Jail, was suspended for 56 hours after deputies got a tip he had marijuana at his home while he was off duty. He eventually pleaded no contest to marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia.
A deputy driving drunk – no, hammered – gets 40 hours, a nurse smoking a bong at home gets 56 hours.
A man allowed to carry and shoot a gun is driving around with blood alcohol levels like a batting average, so we have to suspend him five days. But the nurse at the jail smokes pot at home! Not at work, not accused of bringing it to work and giving it to prisoners. He unwinds from a long day treating prisoners by puffing on a smoldering weed in the privacy of his own home, and would never have even been known to smoke marijuana but for an “anonymous tip” to his employer, the sheriff. That pot smoking guy who doesn’t carry a gun and works only with the incarcerated in a very secure facility, that guy we have to suspend for an extra two days!
Because… uh… we want to protect the children?
[...] Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office punishes drunk driving deputy less severely than pot smoking jail… [...]