For more than three years, the Pasco County, Fla. Sheriff vigorously resisted a federal lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice (IJ) challenging a controversial policing program that resulted in repeated harassment of children and their families. Today, on the eve of trial, the Sheriff capitulated—admitting that the program resulted in repeated constitutional violations and pledging that it will never resume.
The challenged program has been compared to a real-life version of Minority Report. Using a crude computer algorithm, designed to predict who would commit future crimes, the Pasco Sheriff’s Office identified a list of “prolific offenders.” Many people listed were under the age of 18. People on the list, and their families, were subjected to “prolific offender checks,” during which deputies looked to cite them for issues like having grass that was too long, missing house numbers, unvaccinated pets, and excessive window tint on parked cars.
“For years, the Pasco Sheriff ran an unconstitutional program, harassing kids and their parents because a glorified Excel spreadsheet predicted they would commit future crimes,” said IJ Senior Attorney Rob Johnson, “Today the Sheriff acknowledged that dystopian program violated the Constitution and agreed never to bring it back.”
In the settlement agreement, the Sheriff’s Office agreed that the program violated the Constitution in three separate ways:
- First, the Sheriff admitted that the program violated the Fourth Amendment. Law enforcement has the “implied license” to knock on an innocent person’s door “just like any member of the public.” But, as the settlement agreement finds, “prolific offender checks were performed at the Plaintiffs’ residences that exceeded that implied license.”
- Second, the Sheriff admitted that the program violated the First Amendment, which protects people from being punished for their “intimate associations,” like with their family members. The prolific offender checks “directly and substantially interfered with the Plaintiffs’ right of intimate association.”
- Third, the Sheriff admitted that the program violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process because the prolific offender checks “interfered with Plaintiffs’ liberty interests.”
The settlement agreement includes a six-figure settlement for the plaintiffs, along with a promise that the Sheriff has ended the program and that it will never resume. The federal court retains jurisdiction to enforce the settlement.
“For years, the Pasco Sheriff’s Office treated me like it could do anything it wanted,” Darlene Deegan said. “But today proves that when ordinary people stand up for themselves, the Constitution still means what it says.”
As the case proceeded, IJ uncovered explosive documents in which Sheriff’s Office employees laid out objectives of the program. In one email, a deputy stated that “the goal is to get them to move away or go to prison.” Another deputy, responsible for code enforcement citations, bragged in his annual performance review that his “most significant work related accomplishment” was that he “assisted in getting the people (mainly prolific offenders) from [thirteen] addresses evicted” from their homes. In response, his supervisor praised him for his performance.
IJ also uncovered hundreds of hours of body camera footage, vividly depicting the harassment of plaintiffs and their families. In one video, deputies walk around the back of a plaintiff’s house late at night and knock on his window, telling him to come out of the house so they can write him a code citation. In another video, a deputy expressly tells a plaintiff that they are writing her citations because her son was on their offender list. In another, one deputy tells another they are going to “keep on harassing them, every single day.”
“Pasco County’s prolific offender program turned the criminal-justice system on its head,” concluded IJ Senior Attorney Ari Bargil. “In America, we deal with crime by convicting criminals in court, not by punishing people we think might be criminals in the future. It took three years to teach the Pasco Sheriff’s Office that lesson, but we expect today’s settlement will help other jurisdictions learn a little quicker.”