Sheriff Grady Judd delivers remarks on deputy-involved shooting that left a woman dead

according to the marchman rules we can only keep her a maximum of five days but unlike baker acts once we take them there and put them in the door if they wave at them and say see you later i'm leaving they don't hold them so they can walk out at any moment in time and that's exactly what jessaram did after we picked her up on november 4th pursuant to the marchman act so on november the 10th jessaram's mother went back and obtained another marchman act order but this one said to lodge her in the county jail where she couldn't just get out and leave deputies attempted to locate her be in jessaram and we could not find her she was hiding from us is what we believe to have occurred based upon what i'm about to tell you in just a moment that was on the 10th so now we're at the 11th jessaram knows or we believe she knows that mom's taking out another marchman act order on her for us to pick her up and about 3 17 in the afternoon we get our first 911 call where it says a woman is walking in traffic on rifle range road and if you're familiar with rifle range road you know it's almost bumper to bumper every day it's very busy in fact we receive more than one 911 call we arrived we spent approximately 20 minutes looking for this woman that was walking in and out of traffic creating traffic hazards and we cleared about 3 29 in the in the evening in the afternoon the witness described at this particular time that this woman seemed agitated and angry so when we didn't find her we left a few minutes later one of the 911 callers calls back for a second time at about 3 41 and says she's back in the area sergeant speakman who is monitoring our live 9-1-1 arrives in less than a minute and sees jessaram understand sergeant speakman doesn't know that there is a marchman order out for her because he doesn't know who she is he's just responding to a woman walking in and out of traffic so he sees her holding the shovel she raises the shovel over her head and she slams it into some wood apparently a stack of wood on the side of the road up it's not just directly on the side of the road but kind of up off of the road sergeant speakman begins to approach her and try to calm her down because he can see that she's agitated and angry and she turns and starts advancing on him he tries to begin a dialogue with her she ignores him she brings the shovel up over her head as she's advancing on him and he's now telling her to drop the shovel drop the shovel and she's got it in a clubbing fashion over her head she responds to him i'm not afraid of you as she continues to advance on him and when he got close enough he believed the shovel was four foot 11 inches long that she in fact could strike him or stick him with a shovel and she continued to advance and after many opportunities to put the shovel down she didn't then he shot as soon as she went down he provided first aid for her and we called obviously ems and fire rescue and they came we had two independent witnesses that viewed this and they confirmed one saw her holding the shovel up the other heard the sergeant giving her multiple directions and instructions and talking with her to put the shovel down and she didn't do it so the end of the day that's what occurred it was that that that quick but that's not all of the story if i can get the page turned here we are now going back and doing the background and we find out now that her violent outburst in conduct that day was typical of her personality when you look at the arrest that she has she obviously has an explosive temper and a drug problem she was arrested in 2013 for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in 2016 she was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon apparently at that particular time her mother slapped her and she in turn cut her mother with a knife and this was in osceola county in 2017 the next year she was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer also in 2017 on the same date she was charged with criminal mischief and resisting with violence she has a fugitive from justice out for her from nebraska she's got failure to appear in possessions of meth and possessions of paraphernalia she's very very very violent and on that particular day as she said she wasn't afraid of the deputy and she was going to attack him with a shovel well you don't get to attack people with deadly weapons finally she attacked someone with a deadly weapon who protected themselves on this particular occasion now this family is is known to those of us in the system in fact the ledger quoted the mother talking about well she was what they wouldn't let her in drug rehab because she was pregnant the reality is there's lots of information about her and this family that we're not allowed to share because it's confidential according to dcf rules but this family is well known to the system i don't expect her mother to like it to approve of it to agree but let me make one thing abundantly clear attacking a deputy with a deadly weapon is not acceptable ever and my deputies have not only a right but an obligation to protect the community and themselves from deadly attacks or potentially deadly attacks and that's what happened on this particular occasion sean speakman is a sergeant with a lot of years of experience crisis intervention trained he's got more training than the the average deputy who has an immense amount of training he was there by himself and only he could make that determination based upon the amount of danger he perceived at that moment in time and he followed the law i don't know what else to tell you that's that's the information we have at this particular point i'll have a thousand questions but we gotta go no i i i'm gonna lose my job if i'm not getting the camera at four i don't want you to lose your job six minutes i'm leaving bye what i want to know is why couldn't he back up why couldn't he use a taser and when it comes right down to it it sounds like he followed the protocol but it seems to me that the protocol is kind of wrong in this particular case because the logic is just 90 pounds back off call back up any of those things seems like seem like viable options you know it's really easy for us to sit here in this air condition room and talk about coulda woulda should have in fact there's witnesses that says that the deputy was backing up and she was continuing to advance on him when he shot her so for all of those people with all of those great ideas where were you well that decision was his alone so we're looking at him and his decision was right under the circumstances that he had before him at that moment in time with that violent weapon and her angry and he could see her body language and she's attacking him with a deadly weapon you know she has a history of doing these things and she did it that day and he was by himself and he was backing up when he shot her and she was advancing on him and that's just the way that is here's a choice she made she made the choice she said i'm not afraid of you and she was advancing on him with a shovel so come on now you can monday morning quarterback this to death none of you were there at that moment in time when that danger presented itself but he was with a significant amount of training so next time next time we'll take our training and our experience and do everything we can to de-escalate and avoid a situation but if you continue to charge on toward us with a deadly weapon that's your decision we never decide to shoot people people decide for us to shoot them with their outrageous violent conduct these folks just didn't show up this morning they tried to run over a deputy this lady was going to beat one with a shovel that's not the way this works she had issues drug issues drug abuse issues and i suggest we don't have the report finishing the talks back but she was on drugs that particular day we'd already marched and acted her wants were trying to find her again when she was totally out of control that's her choice and her decision goodbye trust me nationally so you're done you go home and do whatever i don't get to go home i got to go to work in a little while plans that's next i know i apologize no problem ken i'll see you next time brother okay i know how you feel about the sanctity of people's homes when it comes to body cameras and and not passing that threshold but i just can't help but think that this this the shovel uh incident was yet another where i it would exonerate would it not to have something like that as you watch these other agencies in that area over the last couple of years adopt this is it just something that you're at least considering at this point for cases just like this how many different ways do i have to tell y'all that i'm not gonna have body cameras people have a constitutional right to privacy okay a constitutional right to privacy i am not going to ask the taxpayers to spend 4 million plus dollars a year for us to wear a camera and point at them they've all got cameras they can point at us and it doesn't cost the taxpayer one penny not one penny when we've got homeless people living on the streets that don't have housing they don't have food proper food they don't have medicine when we have the mentally ill that don't have access to medicine and services they need i am not going to spend 4 million plus taxpayer dollars a year on this until the priorities that really need to be covered are covered everybody with a cell phone's got a camera that they can point at us i'm not spending four million dollars to put a camera on a government agent and point at you and to take your privacy away i'm not going to put a camera on a government agent a law enforcement officer and break down that trust in security you see that's the unintended consequence and i've explained it to y'all until i'm blue in the face the other reason a small sector of the community wants cameras on us is so that people won't come up and talk to us anymore so that they won't give us tips they're not going to trust us with their secrets they're not going to trust to tell us who's doing the robberies and the murders with us wearing a camera they're not going to talk to us that's what they want to happen they want a divide between us and the community i can go through a litany of unintended consequences but i am not going to one do away with your privacy rights in your private space two i'm not going to create an environment where our sources and our people who come to us and say i need help my son's in trouble but i don't want it recorded i'm not going to create an environment where people are no longer going to talk to my officers or my deputies because they're wearing a camera and they're afraid that they'll get outed for trying to help law enforcement there's lots of reasons for that everybody with a cell phone has a camera and they can point it at us businesses point their cameras at us and that's fine but i'm not spending four million dollars of the taxpayers money why i got homeless people that need services i've got mentally ill people in this county that need services they'll get that four million dollars first take your own pictures of us so what do you know that the other agencies that have adopted this now don't i know what they're gonna learn and i've watched them i've watched that i've watched i've watched people not talk to the police anymore not create the trust in the relationships i've watched the police officers sue their bosses all over this nation because their bosses can sit in the office and magically turn on their cameras at any time they want to see that even why they're in the bathroom not that their boss would intentionally but they could have a whoops moment so what's next are we gonna are we gonna live stream the police officer the whole time he's at work i'm watching this social experiment and seeing if it if it stands the test of time there's no hurry i've got many other priorities like helping the mentally ill and helping the homeless that certainly deserves any of that tax money we can get when there's cameras all over the place so let me touch on that for a second you mentioned the mentally ill and the programs for that other agencies over the last couple of years have incorporated social services people that go out on scenes like this i couldn't help but wonder if maybe this might have been one of those circumstances despite mr speaker mr sargen speaking's training no you got that all wrong the there are co-responder models right this county's 2 000 square miles it's bigger than the state of rhode island do you have a mental health professional to put in every car every day all the time and see there's this magic about oh we got a mental health professional here mental health professionals here won't even follow up baker acts by themselves where we've had violence in the past we have the professionally trained people to deal with people in mental health crisis and then we hand them over to the mental health folks and the deal is to give them wrap around services so that we don't deal with them again this lady got a marchman act and they don't hold her and she walks out she was taken for services i suggest to you there's data that i can't talk about she's had data in services in the past but the media walks in after events over and monday morning quarterbacks everything it doesn't work that way in real life we have very well trained people and not once do y'all come in here and say hey let's all descend upon the police department of the sheriff's office and congratulate the 999 of them or the 9999 of them that they were able to disarm them successfully this one we weren't able to but the overwhelming majority we do this is a this is one of those events where you don't see the thousands the hundreds and thousands we successfully get services to and then you take this one event where she made poor choices because she was on drugs and go oh my gosh what did that sheriff's office do it's what she did i'm sorry for her family but she was a train wreck and her family knew it and her mama tried to get her help and she has cut her mama and there's been all kinds of issues there i can't help that this government agency can't help that neither can any other government agency when somebody wants to get on drugs and be totally out of control wander through traffic attack people with shovels stab people shoot people ram people with cars some things just happen in life they just do so put that on the evening news sometimes bad things happen when people make poor choices and she made a poor choice several times and we tried to help her and she ignored it it's not a perfect system but what you don't see here what we're not talking about is the hundreds and thousands we do help and and we there we are still the media is perpetuating the answer to all of this is mental health people in the patrol cars well if that was the answer she's interacted with mental health people it didn't do any good we are taught de-escalation techniques we are crisis intervention trained every deputy long before it was cool and i had a deputy 10 years ago a guy on the porch mentally ill called us the dad called us he got up off the porch and charged the deputy the deputy tried the taser he knocked the deputy down and was stabbing the deputy in the chest when the deputy shot him in the head laying on him in his face stabbing him you know why the deputy's alive today because he was wearing a bulletproof vest sometimes bad things happen if they didn't they wouldn't need the cops they call us when they say look deputies police officers we want you to stand between us and bad people and we do and we will and we always will but they're not always going to have outcomes that we want we didn't want to shoot that guy this morning that drove that car directly at our deputy we didn't want to shoot him but he's not going to run over us and kill us either he's just not going to do that we weren't standing in front of his car they were all following their training they were standing to the side giving that that guy a way to drive around him they were out of the way he's the one that ran through the ditch and drove directly at the lieutenant that's what people fail to recognize when you ask these questions if these people were rational if they were like us they wouldn't be doing that craziness to begin with but most people won't tell you all that i will we don't choose to shoot people we don't choose to hurt people we go out every day and help people by the legions but when you get somebody out of control that refuses to let us help them that intentionally attacks us we're going to defend ourselves and we're not going to be apologetic about that we're just not if a mental health counselor had responded out there instead of the deputy what she would have been beat stabbed with that shovel you did say that you know um this aside would have what had what has happened has happened but you said that mental health patients and people with mental illnesses is your first priority especially when it comes in comparison to body cameras um do you feel like before way before the she even he even got there and she approached him with the shovel do you feel like the system could have filled her with releasing her from rehab i feel like the person that failed her was her she took the illegal drugs she's the one that had issues her mother tried to help her through the system but that was her choice to take drugs it was her choice to hide from the deputies that knew who she was and was trying to take her back in into custody and deliver her to the to the jail on a marchman order and the marchman order that time was taking her to the jail because of a drug or alcohol problem that she walked away from a week before how's that our problem how's that a system problem that she doesn't want help she tells one of the people one of the witnesses that sees her in the traffic they want to take me back to jail i'm not going i don't want to go she tells people that she's resisting all of this stuff that's the aggravation i get when i watch the evening news going oh my gosh the system the system well the system didn't hold her down and give her those drugs she was a drug she was in a what i when the tox comes back it'll show she was in a drug induced violent rage and it was not the first time she's got a long criminal history of it and on this particular day it caught up with her since um the calls the people that called they did say that she seemed agitated do you think that before the deputy even approached her would it have been better for him not to approach her and get back up first we don't have that luxury in 2000 square miles many times deputies and police officers have to operate by themselves we try to have backup there every time that we can but at the end of the day what if like why what if what if he'd have stood there and called for backup and stood there and watched her walk into traffic and get run over what would our conversation have been today why did you stand there and let her walk into that traffic and get run over why would you do that when we were waiting on backup well your job is to protect life and you stood there and watched her get run over see you can monday morning quarterback everything and we're always in every event we're looking at better ways to do things why do you think we have everybody crisis inter with crisis intervention training go look our industry over across the united states and find out how many agencies of any size especially this size everybody's crisis intervention trained go see how many how many people have a relationship a mental health relationship we're beta testing a program right now where we take the mentally ill that we baker act and on the follow-ups we did follow-ups by ourself no rule no law we followed up every baker act that we did on our own after they got out to say do you have your medicine do you have your appointments is there a problem why you can't get your medicine or get to your appointments we were doing all that when nobody else was or still is doing it you it is patently unfair to challenge an agency that's doing more than almost every agency in this nation because somebody goes off the rails and decides they want to attack a law enforcement officer when in fact what we're doing is we're saving a lot of people and we're working hand in glove there's more than one model we're working hand in glove with our folks here to make sure that we can change the model we know there's deficiencies in the mental health system but when did when did it become the cops problem because the mental health system and experts were not sufficient we end up with the baggage and the carnage from it and we're making the best out of it that we can and we're going to get better and we continue to get better and we always work and we have for years before it was cool and now we're working with pope vision but at the end of the day what's important to understand is look people have to take personal responsibility for themselves and their conduct so the mom would like to know why she was shot four times and not one time because that's mom doesn't understand and we don't expect her to that was four shots in a rapid session it's that quick and what we're trying to do is neutralize the threat it happens in tenths of seconds she asks and and we've communicated with mom mom is not happy we understand that and there's no problem but our detectives have communicated with her and she's exceptionally hostile toward the detectives as they were trying to explain things but that's something mom's got to deal with where are you going to go for the same reason just to make sure that we get everything take care be safe my friend so some of the stuff that you talked about like the 2013 case um is that in her juvenile record that i can't see i don't know i'll i'll have them check it out you can see felony charges on juveniles as of monday when i spoke to the mom she said the sheriff's office had not reached out to her that's not true that's just that's that's absolutely unequivocally not true do you know how many times your deputy asked her to stop and put down the shovel several times several times and can we get witness statements it's under it's still under investigation but when it's completed you can and and that'll that's going to take a while we don't expect i understand the family's upset and i'm sorry for the family that their daughter put them in this position put herself in this position and put us in this position that's on their daughter where are her children now her children were not in her custody at the time of the event it's my understanding that her children had already been removed from her because of her conduct so you did say that um of course we don't hear about all the successful times you guys have been able to disarm people um and then take them into custody i was wondering if steven himself has ever successfully disarmed someone alone absolutely so there was i think charges last year um where she pulled a knife on her boyfriend because he wouldn't marry her well it's called pre-marital counseling either mirror me or i'm going to catch you with this knife i don't i don't know maybe i should try that um the charges were no build that's not unusual it's really not unusual when it comes to family they don't want to prosecute they have family amnesia they have victim or suspect amnesia they don't want to cooperate there's a difference in doing something okay and being able to prove it in court beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt and and that confuses people that don't understand the system because well i wasn't convicted of it well no you weren't because the witnesses were scared or the witnesses were friends or family and they calmed down and got over it and the star witnesses dissipated state attorney can't prove that in front of a jury doesn't mean it didn't happen just means we can't prove it in a criminal court of law so it wasn't them being easy on somebody not necessarily see that's and we don't expect people to understand this complicated criminal justice system look when we go to the hospital for a test we don't understand how the machinery works at the hospital either we just trust the people are going to use the machinery the right way and the majority of times the outcome's good but not always well that's no exception with this system we put all these rules and practices and trainings that we've developed over decades an instruction to good use by people who are dealing with human conduct and it usually works but occasionally it doesn't and when somebody's on drugs and out of control and they don't want to go back to jail and we're there she probably thought we knew this deputy knew the sergeant knew there was a marchman out for her because she said i'm not scared of you and she told the witnesses i'm not going back but the deputy that's there doesn't know who she is he just knows somebody's wandering around in traffic he doesn't even have her name so then he could have run a check if he had the time to see who she was he doesn't know who she is he doesn't like that he's upset no nobody wakes up and comes to work in this industry and says oh gosh i'm going to get to shoot somebody today it's everybody's prayer that we never have to do that but when you've got almost what 725 000 people in this county plus all the tourists and what i continue to be amazed about while i'm on my soapbox today california for example decriminalizes marijuana cocaine methamphetamine heroin and wonders why drug addictions go up and wonders why crime goes up we can't have it both ways folks we hear the politicians say low-level non-violent crimes low-level non-violent drugs that's just b s all of it is b s capital b capital s drugs were the root of jessaram's issue so in the example that you gave um years ago he had used the taser not speakman in general but the deputy used the phaser and it did fail um in what instance would a taser work why do officers carry takers at all if they don't use them well they do use them every day but you you you use the taser to protect yourself you use the taser to chase people down you don't use the taser when someone's coming after you with a deadly weapon and you're by yourself that's foolish and against all training protocols so let's go back to the beginning and put the blame where the blame should be and that's with jessaram way she is responsible with her conduct with her outrageous violent conduct attacking a law enforcement officer she is responsible for her death and i think you had sent me a baker act and this was a couple of um i don't know two months ago one some one of you one of the three of you sent um where one of the deputies was sent to something i think in haines city and there was a woman standing in the road to having a moment and her kids were going to be taken away and your deputies successfully took her for help we take weapons from people all the time all the time this is not taking a weapon from someone is not unusual even when they're alone but it it depends on the circumstances of the individual event and the violence some people hold weapons but don't advance or charge you we disarm people all the time we operate alone all the time people watch too much television i don't think she was 90 pounds my experience my experiences their weight vacillates depending on how much drugs they're using usually if you're doing heavy drugs you could be pretty small so if i can find the date on this for 18 of 2019 she was five four and 150 pounds 2019. um so the situation is horrible it's horrible i don't deny that it's horrible who knows but we didn't drive down the road and say hey let's pull over and shoot somebody we didn't do that we didn't pick a fight with somebody we were called because somebody needed help the community needed help and she's already told the witnesses you're trying to take me back but i'm not going carrie do you all have um statistics and and i think i actually have it in a report where law enforcement responded to various agencies to baker act people um i i think i had that in we have we have data on baccarats do you know they're trying in some quadrants to villainize baker acts too or you don't use them oh you overuse them the the best and only tool we have to help people who don't want help and baker acts are being villainized and just to reiterate you know you guys know the difference between march or marshmallows so and and that's that's another issue that that i'm just amazed by that at a time when we use these baker acts to help people that don't want help we've got a segment you know there's a segment opposing everything now i mean i'm certainly find somebody that opposes breathing air someplace you know and all of a sudden if the media starts giving it some attention then it's supposed to have some validity with someone i suppose but that's what frustrates me about this we didn't want this jessaram to attack us we didn't want her to put us in that position we didn't want her to put herself in that position we didn't want her to put her family in that position but i but and and i try to be as sensitive to families as i can but when they roll out in the media publicly and start saying things it's like hey wait a minute there's a whole lot more to that story this family is known to the system i was just getting warmed up anything else i'm going to go to a christmas tree lighting tonight with the salvation army that's a lot more passive than this you can get just one picture i like lots of pictures what's your best angle you

Channel: 10 Tampa Bay

Views: 175,483

Keywords: grady judd, polk county

Id: hkXFZKhcZ_8

Length: 44min 24sec (2664 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021