July 2, 2020

SENT VIA EMAIL: Warren_a@sao13th.com

The Honorable Andrew Warren

State Attorney, 13th Judicial District
419 N. Pierce Street
Tampa, Florida 33602

Re: Joneshia Wilkerson

Dear Mr. Warren:

When we met with you on June 18, we mentioned the perception (and
experience) in the community that initiating a complaint with the Tampa Police
Department’s Professional Standards Bureau invites retaliation by the police. You’ve
likely heard about the experience that Joneshia Wilkerson had with TPD on the same
day that we met with you, June 18, 2020. We are asking you to investigate whether
TPD personnel violated Florida Statute § 817.568(4) by publicly posting her name, date
of birth, phone number, and home address on YouTube, causing her to receive
numerous threats.

Here is what we know. Ms. Wilkerson was pulled over on June 18, 2020. The
officer who pulled her over ran the license plate of the car she was driving and saw an
indication that it was stolen. The stop occurred in a residential neighborhood, and
Ms. Wilkerson brought the car to a stop in a driveway. Rather than approach the
vehicle, the officer stepped out of the car and pointed his gun at her while he called for
backup.

You know it’s not an exaggeration to say that Ms. Wilkerson, at that point,
became afraid of becoming the latest Black American to be killed by a white officer. She
had the presence of mind to place her cell phone on her dashboard and record the
encounter.

Other officers arrived, handcuffed Ms. Wilkerson, and placed her in the back of a
squad car. The officer’s body camera recorded the conversation, during which she
provided her name, date of birth, phone number, and home address. She explained that
a friend of hers had allowed her to borrow the vehicle to pick up a friend. She was
unable to explain why the car was showing as stolen, speculating that her friend
purchases rental cars and that it might have something to do with that. After questioning
her, police impounded the vehicle and released her. As we understand it, it turned out
that Ms. Wilkerson’s friend had purchased the vehicle from Hertz Rent-a-Car, which
reported the vehicle as stolen when her friend had stopped making financing payments.

But, even at the scene, it became apparent that two competing narratives were
beginning to develop as to how the traffic stop was conducted, and the police wanted
Ms. Wilkerson to abandon her account of what occurred and endorse the police officers’
narrative. While Ms. Wilkerson was still in handcuffs, police began arguing with her
about her characterization of the events. She had complained to the backup officers that
the initial officer had “put a gun to my head,” and the officers objected to this
characterization, insisting that the gun was not pointed at her “head” but, rather, was
pointed only “in her direction” but at the “low ready,” which firearms experts dispute.1
But, regardless of whether it was true or not, it’s unclear to us why the officers thought
that this distinction would be a meaningful rebuttal to the argument that the officer had
no legitimate reason to raise his gun to her at all. While we certainly take a side in that
disagreement, it’s not relevant to the purpose of this letter. What’s relevant is that it was
the beginning of a dispute between officers and Ms. Wilkerson as to whether the officer
comported himself properly during the stop.

Ms. Wilkerson initiated a complaint with the Department of Professional

Standards the following day (Friday, June 19, 2020). By this point in time, the recording
of the encounter on Ms. Wilkerson’s Instagram page had received tens of thousands of
views. TPD personnel went as far as to make statements to her on her Instagram page
claiming that her account of the encounter was inaccurate. She perceived these as an
attempt to pressure her to remove the video from her Instagram account, but she did
not take it down at that time. (It has since been taken down.)

The next day (Saturday, June 20), Tampa Police Department issued a press
release setting forth the officers’ counter-narrative. The press release stated, “There is a
post circulating on social media that misrepresents the facts of a recent felony traffic
stop of an occupied stolen vehicle.” The press release went on to assert that the gun
was not pointed directly at Ms. Wilkerson and that the officer was “calmly explaining
each step to the occupants.” The press release stated that Ms. Wilkerson was not
charged with any crime.

On the same day, Tampa Police Department posted the officer’s body-camera
footage on YouTube. The description of the video, posted on TampaPD’s YouTube
page, stated: “At no time was the driver ever ‘smashed into the car’, nor was ‘a gun
pointed to (the driver's) head’, regardless of the false narrative presented on social
media.” The video footage contained audio of the questioning, during which

1Firearms experts we have consulted dispute official statements that the officer
in question was holding the gun at the “low ready.” Regardless, one needn’t be an
expert to see from the video that the gun was, in fact, pointed sideways and pointed at
Ms. Wilkerson.
Ms. Wilkerson was asked for, and gave, her date of birth, phone number, and home
address. Notably, Ms. Wilkerson’s passenger also gave her personal information, and
Ms. Wilkerson also gave the identity of the person from whom she had borrowed the
car. These other individuals’ personal information was redacted from the video, but Ms.
Wilkerson’s information was left public.

Ms. Wilkerson is a 23-year-old single mother who was on leave from active duty
in the U.S. Army. Almost immediately upon having her information posted,
Ms. Wilkerson began receiving threatening phone calls and messages from complete
strangers. The calls contained threats and racial slurs. One caller even pretended to be
a police officer and tried to lure her somewhere by telling her that the police needed to
speak to her in person. Ms. Wilkerson has stated she became afraid for her life and has
been living in a hotel since Saturday, June 20 because she is justifiably afraid that
vigilantes will attempt to harm her as revenge for what they perceive as hostility toward
law enforcement. On Monday, June 22, 2020, Police Chief Brian Dugan made the
following statement at a press conference:

The driver of that car portrayed a narrative where we had to

respond by releasing our own body-worn-camera video to
show the facts of what happened. The entire time the officer
remained calm, followed protocol, keeping the occupants
informed of what was expected. These are the difficult times
that are going on right now. People are making their own
version of the facts, condensing it to their story or whatever
their narrative is, and it’s not helping things right now in the
current climate that we’re in.

He stated that “the car had been leased by someone else, and it was a rental car, and
she didn’t know that it had been reported stolen.” He stated that Ms. Wilkerson “was not
charged because she didn’t have the knowledge that it was stolen” and lamented that
“all this drama is created when someone wasn’t even arrested; they were detained and
released when they were driving a stolen car.”

At the Civilian Review Board meeting on June 23, 2020, Ms. Wilkerson
addressed the Board and explained that Tampa Police Department had published her
personal information, causing her to receive threats and fear for her life. The Civilian
Review Board passed a motion to send a letter to TPD requesting TPD to remove her
information or explain why it will not. Shortly after that, TPD redacted Ms. Wilkerson’s
personal information from the video but left the rest of the video up on YouTube. The
entire video has since been removed from Tampa PD’s YouTube page, though a
version of it remains posted on the Tampa Bay Times YouTube channel without Ms.
Wilkerson’s personal information.

A reporter from Creative Loafing contacted TPD’s Public Information Officer,

Jamel Lanee, for a statement as to why TPD had published Ms. Wilkerson’s date of
birth, phone number, and home address on its YouTube channel. Lanee responded:
“We responded with information that was public record. In our efforts to ensure we’re a
transparent agency, we released all public information in an effort to combat the false
narrative of police brutality being presented on social media.” The reporter asked
whether, given the current political climate, the publication of Ms. Wilkerson’s personal
information puts her in danger. Lanee replied: “If Wilkerson feels endangered, she can
contact authorities.” You can understand why she would not feel safe contacting the
very same authorities who had placed her in danger.

The timing of the foregoing suggests that TPD published Ms. Wilkerson’s
personal information, when they knew that it would cause her to receive harassment
and threats, to retaliate against her for publishing a video of an officer raising his gun to
her and for initiating an internal-affairs complaint.

“Any person who willfully and without authorization possesses, uses, or attempts
to use personal identification information concerning a person without first obtaining that
person’s consent, and who does so for the purpose of harassing that person, commits
the offense of harassment by use of personal identification information, which is a
misdemeanor of the first degree . . . .” § 817.568(4), Fla. Stat. (2020). “Personal
identification information” includes “[n]ame, postal or electronic mail address, telephone
number . . ., date of birth . . . .” Id. § (1)(f)(1). “Harass” means “to engage in conduct
directed at a specific person that is intended to cause substantial emotional distress to
such person and serves no legitimate purpose.” Id. § (1)(c).

We are asking you to investigate whether TPD personnel might have willfully and
without authorization used Ms. Wilkerson’s personal information, without her consent,
for the purpose of causing her substantial emotional distress without a legitimate
purpose in violation of section 817.568(4), Florida Statutes. Though TPD personnel will
tell you that they were only countering a “false narrative” on social media, the
publication of Ms. Wilkerson’s name, date of birth, phone number, and home address
was not part of the narrative and needn’t have been published. TPD could have
combatted what they say is a “false narrative” without publishing her personal
information.

And it wasn’t an accident, either. The passenger’s personal information was

removed from the video. The name of the friend from whom she borrowed the vehicle
was also redacted. Someone had to have deliberately made the decision to redact the
other individuals’ information from the video but to leave Ms. Wilkerson’s name, date of
birth, home phone number, and home address on YouTube for absolutely anyone to
see. At the June 22 press conference, Chief Dugan stated: “I have no problem with
people recording the police, and I think that’s what is important. I have no problem with
that. What I have a problem with is when you’re editing video and posting things that
just aren’t accurate, that just didn’t happen. And then they’re going back now, this
particular person went back and has already edited their post that they put up originally.
That’s where it’s problematic.” The implication was that the video she posted was
somehow edited to make it appear as though the officer’s conduct was worse than it
was. Our review of the two videos does not reveal this concern to have been justified.
Moments later, he stated: “I want the good people who support the police to start
stepping up. I need them to step up and support the cops.” At the moment he made this
statement, Ms. Wilkerson’s personal information was still publicly available on TPD’s
YouTube page, meaning some members of the public who may have interpreted Chief
Dugan’s comments as a call to action – potentially violence – could have still acted
against her.

TPD had every reason to know that Ms. Wilkerson would be on the receiving end
of harassment and threats from complete strangers if it were to publish her personal
information on YouTube along with an insinuation that she was telling lies about police
to spread, in TPD’s own words, a “false narrative of police brutality.” It’s certainly
consistent with such an intent that the video redacted the personal information of
everyone except Ms. Wilkerson, that Chief Dugan publicly called upon “the good people
who support the police” to “step up and support the cops,” and that TPD has previously
done something similar when it published the name and date of birth of a seventeen-
year-old minor along with a link to a video claiming that she “attempted to strike officers,
thrusting the metal tip of an umbrella toward the face of a police officer who was on a
bicycle,” though review of the video itself indicates that she did no such thing. All of this
warrants an investigation into whether TPD personnel conspired to violate section
817.568(4) by publishing Ms. Wilkerson’s information to retaliate against her for
complaining about their conduct to the Professional Standards Bureau and criticizing
them online, and perhaps also to serve as a warning to others who might be thinking
about making similar complaints.

The matter is worthy of being investigated, and no one else in Hillsborough

County is going to do it unless you will. Please use your position to right this wrong.

Sincerely,

s/ Gretchen Cothron
Gretchen Cothron, Esq.
President, Greater Tampa Chapter
ACLU of Florida

James Michael Shaw, Jr., Esq.

Legal Panel Chair, Greater Tampa Chapter
ACLU of Florida