Sheriff Investigating Foster Care Agency Eckerd Connects For Abusing, Neglecting Kids

LARGO, FL — They were removed from their homes due to deplorable and dangerous conditions. But instead of being taken to safe, secure homes, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said foster children were placed in conditions that were just as bad or worse than the homes from which they were removed.

As a result, Gualtieri said his office has launched a criminal investigation into the lead foster care agency for Pinellas County, Eckerd Connects Community Alternatives.

He said his office will determine if the actions of Eckerd Connects as a corporate entity as well as its senior management constitute criminal child abuse and neglect.

Although Gualtieri said the sheriff's office has been aware of problems with Eckerd Connects for a while, he said he was motivated to take action as a result of "more egregious transgressions that came to our attention within the last week."

The incidents involved older kids that were taken to the Eckerd Connects' administrative offices at 8550 Ulmerton Road in Largo to sleep for the night because there were no available foster homes.

In one case, three youngsters snuck out of the office and climbed a ladder behind the building to reach the roof. One of the children fell and lacerated his stomach on a piece of metal on the ladder. The children flagged down a Largo police officer and the child was taken to the hospital by ambulance.

In another case, Gualtieri said kids were taken to the administrative offices to sleep, and their medications were left unsecured in a conference room. One child took another child's medication, and another overdosed on his own medication and had to be taken to the hospital.

On average, said Gualtieri, Eckerd Connects has been housing six children at its office each night. He said they sleep on cots or under a desk in dirty clothes. They don't receive hot meals or have access to toiletries or towels. There is a shower but Gualtieri described it as "filthy."

"The conditions these kids are living in are, frankly, disgusting and deplorable," he said.

Gualtieri said the Largo police have been called to the administrative office about 30 times over the past month because the children are disruptive, run away or cause problems with the staff supervising them.

"Apparently, from the best information we have right now, Eckerd has about 60 to 70 children who are on what they call a night-to-night status where they don't have housing for them, so they move them to a different place to sleep every night," he said.

"Some of the kids, Eckerd can't place at all, even in some of these night-to-night locations, so they are housed in their administrative offices," Gualtieri said. An average of six children a night fall into this category.

"These night-to-night situations have also led Eckerd to place children in unlicensed facilities overnight," he said, indicating that most of the ffacilities are run by organizations.

In one case, a 14-year-old boy was being driven to one of these facilities and was able to get his hands on an unsecured gun in the car.

In another case, the sheriff's office discovered the employee of the unlicensed organization supervising the children had been charged with trafficking in hydrocodone and racketeering.

"They put a drug trafficker in charge of vulnerable kids," he said.

"Think about the situation. We have children who are abused and neglected by their parents. We remove the children because the environment they're living in is so bad, is too dangerous to keep them in their own homes with their moms and their dads and their caregivers," Gualtieri said during a news conference Thursday afternoon. "We turn these kids over to the organization that receives tens of millions of dollars in state money and is supposed to be a safe place. And that organization houses them in deplorable, dirty conditions, allows them to take drugs they should not take, injure themselves to the extent that they have to be transported to the hospital by ambulance and sent to spend the night at a location run by a drug dealer with criminal charges for racketeering. All this for an institution that is duty-bound to protect children and keep them safe."

Gualtieri said he doesn't have a timetable on how long the investigation will take, "but I assure the public we will conduct the investigation thoroughly and diligently."

He said he's been in close contact over the past several days with Department of Children and Family Services Secretary Shevaun Harris and is helping DCF transition to a new provider. He said DCF has sent a number of employees to Pinellas County to oversee the transition.

On Wednesday, DCF needed confirmation that 93 children in the 3-year-old range were in safe foster homes, and Gualtieri sent out 30 detectives to check on all the children.

In a news release issued Monday, Eckerd Connects board chairman V. Raymond Ferrara said the foster care agency had decided to pull out of Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties because the state wasn't providing enough funding for Eckerd Connects to do its job properly.

Gualtieri was unsympathetic.

"I don't know whether they had money problems or not. We all have money problems," he said. "This isn't about money. it's about doing the right thing. You don't whine about it. You fix it. You call Secretary Harris, you call the people in the Legislature. The rest is all excuses as far as I'm concerned."

In a statement issued following the news conference, Eckerd Connects responded: “Eckerd Connects takes extremely seriously the criminal investigation announced today by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. Eckerd will provide its full cooperation to the sheriff’s office in its investigation."

See related story: Foster Care Provider Pulls Out Of Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco