Pasco Sheriff Denies Using 'Big Brother' Tactics To Curb Crime

PASCO COUNTY, FL — The Pasco County Sheriff's Office is once again under the gun after handing out four-page letters to select residents informing them they'd been selected for a program targeted at repeat criminal offenders in the community.

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said his office is collaborating with the University of South Florida's Department of Criminology to evaluate and implement a new "Focused Deterrence" program.

The sheriff's office and USF received a $700,000 grant from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance to examine this strategy aimed at reducing violent crime and opioid-related offenses in Pasco County. The grant includes funding for several USF criminology doctoral students to research the Focused Deterrent program that a 2019 study by criminologists Anthony A. Braga, David L. Weisburd and Brandon Turchan called the most effective program to reduce violent crime across 24 cities where it was implemented.

The letters were handed directly to offenders with a history of violent crimes or multiple drug offenses by detectives on the sheriff's Behavioral Health Intervention Team. The program's goal, said Nocco, is to reduce recidivism among this population by offering them the opportunity to take part in free social services, mental health and addiction treatment, therapy, housing and education.

For the past six years, the Pasco sheriff's office has been collaborating with Dr. Bryanna Fox of the USF Department of Criminology on projects designed to deter crime including an Intelligence-Led Policing program that led to a 74 percent reduction in burglary rates in the county during the past 10 years.

The USF criminology department described the sheriff's office as "a model partner agency to conduct impactful evidence-based research," awarding the sheriff's office a place on its "Wall of Fame" in 2019.

Nevertheless, the Focused Deterrence program is causing an outcry among members of the media and civil liberties groups who claim it's an extension of the sheriff's controversial program that uses data on students obtained from the Pasco County School System in an algorithm to predict which students are most likely to engage in criminal activity.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of the parents of four Pasco County children, the Institute of Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, said the sheriff's office is labeling children as criminals "for crimes they have not committed and may never commit" based on failing grades and behavioral issues. The suit accuses him of using a "dystopian" policing program to label and harass children.

Over the weekend, articles published in national publications around the country compared Nocco to the fictional Big Brother character in George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel, "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the leader of a totalitarian state in which every citizen is under constant surveillance.

In a lengthy response to critics on the Pasco Sheriff's Office Facebook page Monday, Nocco said the Focused Deterrence program has been implemented in major cities, including Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans and Kansas City, and has been rated "Promising" for reducing crime by the National Institute of Justice.

"To be clear, this program is blind to race, gender, creed and other identifying factors, and participation is determined solely by an individual’s criminal history within Pasco County," Nocco said. "In addition, this program seeks to directly connect those who have previously offended on numerous occasions with resources available within our community and, at its heart, is designed to break the cycle of recidivism. Those who refrain from committing violent or narcotics crime for two years are removed from the prolific violent offender program, although they may continue to participate in services at no cost if they so choose."

He said USF and the sheriff's office is working with credible institutions such as BayCare Behavioral Health to help repeat offenders turn their lives around.

"In no way does PSO participate in any predictive policing tactics, techniques or surveillance, contrary to media reports," he said.

He said participants are identified based on their history as offenders, "and does not in any way implicate them in future crimes. To the contrary, the measure of success of this program is that individuals who participate will refrain from offending, and never be arrested or victimize another member of the community again."

Nocco noted that repeat offenders often lament that their criminal history keeps them from finding a good job, obtaining housing or getting help overcoming an addiction.

"We hope these resources will allow these individuals to have a stronger chance of a positive future outside of incarceration," he said. "It is disappointing that this program is being misconstrued to our citizens when it is one of which we are very proud. We are committed to helping those who have extensive criminal histories in our community succeed and make a meaningful positive change in their lives, which is not achieved by 'harassing' these individuals."

So far, said Nocco, about 50 percent of the habitual offenders contacted by the sheriff's office has accepted the offer of assistance through the program.

See related stories:

• Intelligence-Led Policing Results In 74 Percent Fewer Burglaries
• NAACP Requests Records On Student Data Shared With Pasco Sheriff
• Suit Filed Against Pasco Sheriff For Use Of 'Predictive Policing'