Beleaguered Kissimmee police to get new chief

Yahoo

15-02-2025

The City of Kissimmee is in the middle of the process to select a new chief to helm its beleaguered police department, more than three months after its former chief resigned in scandal. But the city has yet to say who the candidates even are.
Mayor Jackie Espinosa declined to disclose the names of potential replacements when asked this week by an Orlando Sentinel reporter but hopes a list of finalists will be ready by the end of February. A public records request for the names submitted Wednesday has yet to be fulfilled while a city spokesperson has not responded to a message seeking comment. Florida law clearly makes public applications for a municipal job opening.
Last week marked 100 days since Interim Chief Robert Anzueto arrived from the Orange County Sheriff's Office, tasked with conducting formal investigations into officers the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office deemed problematic and what a grand jury called a 'culture of cover-up' at the Kissimmee Police Department.
Anzueto declined to grant a sitdown interview to the Sentinel about his efforts, with a spokesperson saying he is on his way out the door. Questions submitted to him via email Thursday have not been answered.
The KPD scandal exploded following the indictment of Officer Andrew Baseggio, who received a mere eight-hour suspension after an internal investigation found he kneed a 44-year-old man in the face and used his Taser on him seven times despite facing no resistance.
Prosecutors said they weren't notified of the case until WFTV aired a report about it, prompting a fresh look at the internal investigation that revealed agency-wide attempts to downplay the incident including from Chief Betty Holland, who was 17 months into leading the department following her predecessor Jeff O'Dell's retirement. Holland was forced to resign Oct. 28 after a letter from the State Attorney's Office questioned her credibility, saying her statements about the department's own internal investigation into Baseggio's actions were 'inconsistent with other sworn testimony received from witnesses.'
The grand jury that indicted Baseggio issued a stronger rebuke, implicating her and others of blocking attempts at a criminal investigation. Records show Baseggio — now facing charges of felony battery, witness tampering, official misconduct and soliciting perjury — was kept in the know about the internal investigation from its inception and sought to dissuade fellow officers who witnessed the incident from speaking truthfully.
'The investigation was compromised from the very beginning because Officer Baseggio was able to have access to knowing that the investigation was going on, and then began to tamper with witnesses along during that time,' then-State Attorney Andrew Bain told reporters on the steps of the Osceola County Courthouse following Baseggio's indictment. 'So we went back and reinterviewed a lot of those witnesses who were inside of that investigation and it turned out that many of the things they said were falsified.'
The letter that forced Holland's resignation also identified 11 current and former officers as having credibility concerns. That included Deputy Chief Camille Alicea, who the Sentinel reported stepped down after an internal review found she had made homophobic remarks about a lesbian officer facing a promotion. Further investigation revealed the existence of 15 excessive force cases dating back nearly 10 years that the department failed to report to the State Attorney's Office, which Bain's administration said ran afoul of Florida law.
Enter Anzueto, a major overseeing the Sheriff's Office patrol division tapped to lead the agency after the Orange County Sheriff agreed to conduct an internal and criminal investigation into the concerns raised by prosecutors. In his first comments to reporters, Anzueto said KPD officers 'deserve strong, principled leadership that not only supports them in their mission but also guides them in upholding the highest standards of our profession.'
'I support them 100% that are out there doing the right things,' he said. 'Do we have some who might not be doing the right things? We're going to learn that in the investigation from the Orange County Sheriff's Office.'
It's not clear what happened with that investigation following Anzueto's appointment, but prosecutors flagged Alicea in Baseggio's case as being on the their Brady list of untrustworthy law enforcement officials, according to court filings. The Kissimmee City Commission has not discussed Anzueto's imminent departure in public, nor its process to choose a new chief.