Serianni v City of Venice, Days 2 & 3

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The trial of Venice Police Officer Demitri Serianni v City of Venice continues today in Federal Court in Tampa. Serianni's attorney, Thomas Sadaka, will likely conclude his prosecution of the civil charges against the city today after calling his two final scheduled witnesses: former City Manager Isaac Turner and Serianni himself.

Over the past three days, the five-woman three-man jury has heard numerous stories of abuse of authority by police officials aimed not just at Serianni, but at a number of lower level police officers. The tale that is being told to the jury through the collective testimonies is that in order to gain rank under ex-chief Julie Williams, you had to have a flexible or non-functioning conscience and a natural penchant for thuggery and bullying.

Jurors heard testimony about the investigative white board in the squad room, usually used to put up details of ongoing criminal investigations, informing officers of new operating procedures or upcoming classes. However for several days in May 2010, then-Chief Julie Williams used the board to post pages from this web site's message board where citizens and police officers had posted information that was critical of her and her leadership along with derogatory pages from Serianni's personnel file.

The question posed on the white board was "Are we going to let Serianni and Patten destroy this department? Yes = Do Nothing, No = Do Something!"

Williams maintains that "Do Something" meant to attend an upcoming city hall meeting. I can't speak for Serianni, but when I first saw photos of the board, I was deeply worried that "Do something" had more sinister connotations.

Officer Pete Sorrentino was the first to bring up the white board in his testimony on Tuesday morning, but the incident played in the background of nearly everyone's testimony through Wednesday afternoon.

Current Chief Tom McNulty, in an hour or two's worth of testimony that was a scathing review of Williams' tenure, stated he was out of town when the incident happened but that he saw photos of the white board and the story surrounding it on this web site and stated "I was shocked. I felt it was highly inappropriate."

In later testimony, responding to a question about Williams' now famous quote that she was more powerful than the President of the United States, McNulty responded "That caused me some concern. It sounded crazy."

Attorney Sadaka then asked McNulty, "Is it safe to say that Williams is thin-skinned?"

McNulty replied, "It was her way."

"Or?

"It was her way."

All of which would seem odd as McNulty is the city's representative, sitting at the city's defense table strategizing with the city's insurance lawyers (City Attorney Bob Anderson is barred from these proceedings due to being on the potential witness list). It's all very odd until you realize that the city's strategy is that it is reluctantly admitting to some degree that all these things happened, but Williams is gone now, so What's The Big Deal?

If the city ever had any hope in winning this case, McNulty's own testimony killed that dream.

Example: Several officers, including Sarasota County Deputy David Miller (a former Venice Police Officer) and VPD Sgt. Ron Perishio testified about the internal affairs investigation into Serianni for making derogatory comments about Miller. Miller claimed he made the complaint on his own after some limited coaching from Sgt. Jason Adams and Lt. Eric Hill, both Williams loyalists. He downplayed their coaching as much as possible, denying that they were the instigators of the complaint, an incident that would later cause Serianni to be suspended for 40 hours without pay (only to have Williams eventually rescind it under legal threats demanding a required evidentiary hearing from Serianni's then-attorney, Andrea Mogensen).

McNulty stated he was present when Serianni made the so-called derogatry comment, and it was not anything close to how it would be later described.

According to McNulty, Serianni, as VP of the local police union chapter, was asked in a meeting to name some things that could be done to improve the department. Serianni responded by saying that the department could use more ongoing training periods with new officers. As an example, he referenced what he characterized as a dodgy traffic arrest that had then been recently made by Miller that had all the markings of a false arrest and that had a good chance of getting tossed in court if the defendant chose to fight it.

When questioned if Serianni was going after Miller, wanted Miller brought up on an internal affairs investigation, etc., McNulty responded no, insisting that Serianni told the story of the arrest only as an example of something that could be avoided in the future with more ongoing training of rookie officers.

And yet...

That one incident would be used by the department to try to force Serianni out of the union and, ultimately, out of the VPD. Officer and then-union president Dan Whittaker testified that Williams used the incident top try to force the union to strip Serianni of his membership. Williams, in her later testimony, denied that and stated that Whittaker had come to her asking for her help in ousting Serianni from the union.

The end result of all of this was that the jury was left with several impressions, all negative: that Deputy David Miller is a whiney-assed little bitch; that IA investigator Ron Perishio is a thug who was not only just obeying orders to viciously destroy a fellow officer but but doing so with great joy and gusto; that Williams was and still is psychotic; that McNulty silenty watched all of this but kept his head down and said nothing at the time "out of respect for the chain of command;" and finally, that applying for a job at the Venice Police Department should be avoided at all costs unless you are either extremely self-loathing and enjoy intense psychological abuse.

And I haven't even begun to tell you about attorney Andrea Mogensen's testimony yet.

...to be continued? Oh yeah.