3 Of 5 Cleared On Gas Theft Suspicions

Three out of the five county employees being investigated for suspected theft of county gasoline from county fuel depots have been cleared of any wrongdoing by Highlands County Sheriff's Office detectives.

Also, the investigation into the possible theft won't be finished until next week.

Also, one of the two documents that Highlands Today obtained for Tuesday's story on the gasoline-theft investigation contained one misleading statement.

In the five-page report on the video surveillance taping of the five people filling cans of gas at the county fuel depots on eight occasions, the suspects were identified not by name but by a four-digit number called the "employee identification number."

In fact, said Sheriff Susan Benton, not all of the five suspects are county employees. Some of them work for other governmental entities.

"Those so-called 'county employee ID' numbers were really their county gas ID number, but not all of them are county employees," Benton said.

Some workers employed by the Highlands County School Board, the town of Lake Placid, the city of Avon Park and other government agencies have Highlands County Gasoline ID numbers and cards and can draw gasoline or diesel from the county's fuel depots.

Benton said, "... our detectives are trying to wrap it (investigation) up. They actually only have one more person (suspect) to interview, and that person is on vacation, so that won't occur until next week."

At 2 p.m. Thursday, the Highlands County Clerk of Court's office released the entire video surveillance tape which was sent to the sheriff's office for the investigation of five county employees for possible theft of gasoline from two county fuel depots.

Benton said no charges would be filed in this case at any time on Thursday.

If charges are filed against any of the suspects, they will not be arrested. Instead, a misdemeanor complaint would be filed and the accused person would receive a notice to appear to answer to the misdemeanor charge.

At least one or more of the five gasoline gas theft suspects are innocent, because filling a gas can after filling their county vehicles at the fuel depots is a legitimate and possibly necessary part of their job, according to county Administrator Michael Wright.

Also, some county employees are not only authorized to fill gas cans at the county fuel depots after they fuel their county vehicle, but are also expected to fill a can so they can have extra gas on hand.

County Emergency Medical Service (EMS) routinely fill the gas tanks of their ambulances and other rescue vehicles and then fill up a two-gallon or larger gas can.

The gas can is always kept full and carried on board all EMS ambulances because the life-saving Jaws of Life tool, used to cut critically injured people out of mangled vehicles at crash scenes, runs on gasoline.

Most or all supervisors in the county Road and Bridge Department also routinely fill a 2-gallon can of gas after they fill their county vehicles at the county fuel depots. The supervisors regularly drive to various work sites, some in remote parts of the county, to inspect the work.

If, on one of those work-site inspections, they learn that a county worker's mower, chain saw or any other type of equipment is about to run out of gas, they fill it up with the extra can of gas they carry.

Doing that saves the county money because, if the power equipment ran out of gas, county workers could be getting paid for doing nothing while they waited for extra gas to be transported to their work site.

While the possible theft charges in this case would be misdemeanors, stealing from the county could lead to a county employee losing his or her job.

"Theft of county property by a county property is punishable up to and including termination," said John Minor, director of the county's human resources department.

Minor has been the HR director for 20 months. In that time, he said, there have been a number of employee disciplinary cases, but none of them involved theft of county property.

"We don't have a lot of employee thefts," Minor said. "In fact," he added, "I can't think of one, and I have never heard of one (before he came to work for the county)."

Jim Konkoly can be reached at 863-386-5855 or e-mail jkonkoly@highlandstoday.com