The Pasco Sheriff’s Office keeps a secret list of kids it thinks could “fall into a life of crime” based on factors like whether they’ve been abused or gotten a D or an F in school, according to the agency's internal intelligence manual. projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/…
420 kids are on the list. The Sheriff’s Office doesn’t tell the kids or their parents about the designation and claims the list is used to help deputies assigned to schools to offer “mentorship” and “resources” to students.
Internal documents, however, show that, far from mentoring, in fact deputies are encouraged to work their relationships with the students on the list to find “the seeds of criminal activity” and to collect information that can help with investigations.
The list of school children isn’t the agency’s only problematic effort to target and harass people who haven't committed any crimes. The Sheriff's Office's intelligence arm also uses people’s criminal histories and social networks, they say, to predict if they will break the law.
Former deputies say they were ordered to harass people on the target list by visiting their homes repeatedly and looking for reasons to write tickets and make arrests, even where there was no evidence of a new crime. projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/…
One in 10 of the people targeted were teenagers.
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