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Deputy Charles Matthews served as the School Resource Deputy at Seminole High School from 2022 to 2024. His employment was terminated on Friday, August 2, 2024, following an investigation by the Administrative Investigation Division, Professional Standards Bureau, of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.
The investigation concluded that he consistently failed to perform his duties and responsibilities as a School Resource Deputy. “These responsibilities include but aren’t limited to acting as a resource for delinquency prevention, guiding students on ethical issues, providing individual counseling to students, and explaining law enforcement’s role in society. Additionally, his deliberate actions and inactions undermined school officials’ authority. He fostered an anti-academic environment that allowed students to skip classes and engage in unhealthy, unethical, and potentially unlawful activities.”
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The memorandum from PCSO detailed the following items:
- You developed an inappropriate relationship with several female high school students,
which led to your exchange of telephone numbers and regular communication with
them via phone calls and text messaging; this occurred while you were at work and
off duty, including during the summer break. You referred to this group of female
students as “your favorites.” - These female students would send you photographs, including selfies that were taken
at a variety of locations. One of these selfies was of three teenage girls in bikinis at
the beach. You kept these photographs on your agency cellphone and forwarded some
of them to your personally owned cellphone. - In conversations with the female students, you made disparaging comments about other female students. Specifically, you called one student a “slut” because she allegedly had multiple sexual partners. On a separate occasion, you called a different
student “disgusting” because her current boyfriend had recently been arrested and
charged for a sexually related offense.
• While assigned to work the beaches during the summer break, you sent these female
students text messages that contained your work hours and location in the hopes they
would come to meet you.
• You failed to take any action when, in your presence, these female students appeared
to be impaired or under the influence of an intoxicating substance or were in
possession of unlawful substances.
• Without any legitimate or authorized reason, you accessed law enforcement and
school board websites and databases, including ACISS, Who’s in Jail, FOCUS,
VIPAR, and the Active Calls app. You then shared protected information you obtained
from these resources with several female students.
• Using various law enforcement databases, you researched the criminal and arrest
histories of several of these female students’ parents and families and then shared this
information with them.
• You provided one of these female students with real-time information you obtained
from the “Active Calls” app about law enforcement’s response to a house party she
and others were attending.
• Without any legitimate law enforcement purpose, in your office you engaged in
conversations with or were present for conversations between these female students
about their personal, dating, and sex lives.
• You allowed these female students to enter and remain in your office while you were
elsewhere on campus. In turn, these students opened the door and allowed other
students inside.
• At times when you were away from your office, you would ask a school employee
working in an office adjacent to yours to unlock your office door to let these female
students inside while you were away. These requests created an undue burden on the
school employee, which affected their daily duties. In addition, the students’ behavior
while inside the office was often loud and disruptive.
• You showed one of these students how to access and use the school’s video
surveillance system located inside your office. On at least one occasion, after being
away from your office, you returned and found her accessing the video system. Instead
of stopping her and correcting her behavior, you chose to have her open a particular
camera view for you. Additionally, on other occasions when the female students were
present in your office, you would access and play surveillance videos that they
requested.
• You allowed these female students, either individually or as a group, to skip classes
and hang out in your office. Your office door was routinely locked and the blinds on
your window were routinely closed, preventing anyone standing outside your office
from determining who was inside.
• At various times, and often when these female students were inside your office, if
someone came to the door and knocked, you ignored them because you didn’t want to
be bothered, or because the female students told you to not answer the door.
• On more than one occasion, you allowed female students to sleep in a recliner that was
inside your office.
• In advance of unannounced administrative searches and school drills, you would warn
the female students and advise them to not bring any contraband to school.
• To facilitate their skipping classes, you would send text messages to these female
students alerting them when school officials were in the parking lot.
• You would allow these female students to enter the school from the parking lot through
normally locked gates rather than through the front office. You did this so the students
would not be marked tardy when they arrived at school late.
• You allowed these female students to leave the school campus and not report them.
On one occasion, you permitted a female student to leave the campus to get ice cream
and when she returned, you opened a locked gate to allow her back into the school.
• You sent emails and passes to teachers excusing the female students’ absences or
tardiness. In response, teachers would send you emails asking about their students’
whereabouts and telling you that their absence from class was creating profound
academic hardships for them.
• You used your assigned teacher’s assistants to escort female students from their classes
so they could hang out in your office.
• In conversations and emails, you lied to teachers and administrators about the female
students’ whereabouts so they wouldn’t get in trouble for skipping.
• Intext messages and in person, you engaged in a series of mean-spirited gossip with
the female students, during which you talked about other students, the school safety
monitors, and the school administration. The comments you made about the school
safety monitors and the school administration were unprofessional, undermining their
authority to manage and secure the school.
• You made allegations of inappropriate behavior by the school safety monitors. These
allegations were investigated by the school administration and determined to be false.
• After being given an order to not allow students into your office, you sent text
messages to the female students to coordinate meeting them in the hallway, rather than
inside your office. - You maintained a large assortment of snacks and drinks inside your office for the
exclusive use of select students. Your monthly personal expense to maintain these
items was approximately $1000. - You allowed these female students to wear your agency windbreaker.
- Following your reassignment back to Patrol, you texted these female students
notifying them of your transfer and your resentment about it. - In a text message you sent to one of the female students after being reassigned, you
stated “…thank your friend for me for ruining my life and career.” This message was
read and interpreted as threatening by the friend and their parents mentioned in the
message. - After you were placed on notice as the Subject of this administrative investigation,
you were given a direct order to not discuss the case with anyone other than your
representative without permission. However, you later told several people about the
facts and circumstances of the allegation and this investigation, disregarding the order
you were given.
During his Administrative Interview, he acknowledged that his relationship with the
female students were inappropriate.
During the Administrative Review Board, he stated that you allowed your friendship with
the female students to affect your decision-making, adding that you “would allow them to
walk all over” you.
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