By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
In Florida, there are two ways a public official can get into serious trouble – guns and public records. Florida has powerful statutes regarding firearms and the public’s right to official records, and Okeechobee Police Chief Donald Hagan seems hellbent of violating all of them.
If a local official, or officials as in the case of Okeechobee, enact their own firearm rules, they violate the state preemption statute, which only allows the legislature to regulate arms. Penalties include removal from office and fines of up to $5,000, which the statute requires them to pay personally.
If an official violates that state’s Public Records Act, which is also known as the Sunshine Law, they can face fines of $500 if the violation is a relatively minor error, which the statute calls a noncriminal infraction. However, if an official knowingly violates the Sunshine Law, look out. Penalties can include immediate suspension, removal from office or impeachment, and even criminal charges – a misdemeanor of the first degree – punishable by a prison sentence not to exceed one year.
Chief Hagan, you may recall, infamously signed an illegal ordinance passed by the five-member city council, which banned guns and ammunition sales as well as the right to carry as Hurricane Helene was about to make landfall.
Florida Carry, Inc. is breathing down the city’s neck, as a result. The pro-gun group is about to file a complaint against Hagan and the council members, which could remove all six of them from office and lighten their personal checking accounts by around $5,000 each.
Hagan has yet to explain why he scrawled his name on the illegal ordinance, but his spokesman Detective Jarret Romanello, his Major Bettye Taylor and the city’s mayor, Dowling R. Watford, Jr., have all been attempting massive damage control by gaslighting the public with excuse after excuse, none of which can possibly justify the preemption violation.
The ordinance was stricken down after just hours, Taylor pointed out. She never mentioned that an angry call from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office may have precipitated the repeal, or that in his emergency order for Hurricane Milton, DeSantis specifically stated that local gun bans were prohibited – a direct result of the mess Okeechobee created.
It was just an “inadvertent mistake,” Taylor claimed, even though five council members approved the ordinance, which Chief Hagan then signed.
The ordinance was never enforced, Taylor and the city’s attorney have said, which doesn’t matter either. As the council learned in correspondence from Florida Carry, enforcement is not required for a preemption violation. Mere enactment is enough to bring on the legal pain.
On a local radio show, both Romanello and Mayor Watford blamed “keyboard warriors” – outside agitators of sorts for creating all the fuss. Chief Hagan, they claimed, was the real victim here, not the residents whose civil rights were violated.
Death threats?
Romanello claimed that most of the “noise” directed at his boss was coming from folks who live outside city limits. This noise, he said, even included death threats that were directed at the chief and his family.
Chief Hagan has not responded to calls, emails or messages left with his spokesman and members of his department seeking an explanation as to why he signed the illegal ordinance. The Second Amendment Foundation had to file a public records request just to get the chief’s cell phone number, which of course he never answered.
Romanello explained that the chief isn’t in hiding. Hagan’s inability to return a phone call or reply to an email is the direct result of the death threats.
“He needed some time off,” Romanello said last week.
Now, threatening the life of a chief of police and/or members of his family is a serious matter. There are state and federal criminal charges that could apply. Therefore, the Second Amendment Foundation made a second public records request through Romanello, seeking “copies of every police report made in response to threats received by Chief Donald Hagan and/or his family … and copies of any correspondence sent to FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement), the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, asking them to investigate the threats received by Chief Donald Hagan and/or his family.”
Romanello immediately balked at the public records request.
“Please go through our City Clerk, the custodian for all city records,” he said in an email.
Romanello was reminded that Florida’s Public Records Act allows a citizen to make a request to any member of a public agency – even janitorial or office staff. This portion of the law was enacted to prevent public officials from giving citizens the runaround when they want access to official documents.
“Thank you,” Romanello said of the reminder. “Once I get the documents I will forward to you,”
On Friday, seven working days after it was filed, Romanello refused to provide the status of SAF’s public records request, and he once again denied a request to interview his boss, Chief Hagan.
Unfortunately, Florida’s Public Records Act does not specify an exact time limit that public officials have to comply with a request. According to a public records overview, created by Patricia R. Gleason, Special Counsel for Open Government to Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, and known throughout the Sunshine State as the guru of public records requests, the standard is reasonableness.
“The Florida Supreme Court has stated that the only delay in producing records permitted under the statute is the reasonable time allowed the custodian to retrieve the record and redact those portions of the record the custodian asserts are exempt,” Gleason wrote.
Is seven working days a reasonable amount of time to find, redact and email a handful of police reports and associated correspondence, if they do in fact exist? It could someday be a question for the courts. However, in this case the question is moot.
Florida’s Public Records Act, like its preemption statute, are state laws. The Okeechobee Police Department is a law enforcement agency, tasked with enforcing state laws, and should be held to a higher standard.
Chief Hagan likely violated his oath when he banned gun sales and the right to keep and bear arms. His residents and the entire state of Florida have a right to know why. But rather than stepping up and admitting what happened, all we get is gaslighting, excuses and delays.
The public – especially the 5,432 souls living on the north side of Lake Okeechobee – has a right to know the truth.
The Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project wouldn’t be possible without you. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support pro-gun stories like this.
