Susan Russe - THE FLIPSIDE: From Justice to Injustice; From Correctional Officer to Inmate

Chapter One

T his story began to unfold in March of 2010, when an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) came by my home while I was on vacation in Virginia. The agent left a card in my door asking me to call him upon my return.

While on vacation, I received a phone call from a friend telling me that deputies from the local sheriffs office had been by my home. The deputies would not tell my friend what they wanted, except to say they wanted to talk to me. Worried, I left Virginia to return to Florida. Once home, I placed a call to the FDLE agent and left a message. Returning my call, the agent said he wanted to talk to me about some missing records from my former place of employment. We arranged to meet at the local sheriffs office.

Upon my arrival at the specified location, as I walked through the doors, I was approached by an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE agent introduced himself as Dirk and shook my hand in a warm, friendly manner. Dirk was very soft-spoken, while portraying himself in a professional manner. Being very accommodating, he tried to make me feel comfortable in his presence and with the surroundings. Trying to gain my trust so that I would confide in him as a person I could trust.

Dirk started asking me questions about records that were missing from the Hendry County Sheriffs Office in LaBelle, Florida.

Dirk stated the new administration was looking for the records in order to conduct an audit. I told Dirk that during my tenure with the sheriffs office, I would put the monthly records in a box and place them outside my office door with a note attached to transfer them to the second or fourth floor for storage. That would be the last time that I saw the records unless a document was requested. I would then send one of my employees to retrieve the requested information, never handling any paperwork myself.

Dirk could not understand how the records could come up missing. I explained that every six months to a year, the Custodian of the Records would compile a list of outdated records to make room in the limited space available, mark the boxes with a red X for destruction, then send a letter to Tallahassee for approval to destroy or retain the Records. Once the letter of destruction was approved, a civilian maintenance technician (unsupervised by anyone from the Records Division), would take his inmate work crew to the storage area to remove the necessary records, place them in a U-Haul, and transfer them to an incinerator at the Sugar Mill in Clewiston, where they were burned and destroyed. That was the only other time I would see the records, as the inmates were throwing them in the back of the truck.

I could not determine if any boxes meant for retention were thrown out by mistake, as it was not my job to oversee this project. There were hundreds of boxes being transferred during these times by an inmate crew that could care less about anything except getting the job done, so anything was possible.

After a couple of hours discussing records, the interview took another turn. Dirks personality became serious, intent, and very aggressive in his interview techniques. He started asking about money from a jail account. When he saw that I was bewildered about this topic, he again became friendly, telling me he was here to help me and he would help keep me out of jail as long as I told him the truth. Dirk said, he would be by my side to ensure that I was treated fairly. Dirk then said that $120,000 had been used from a jail account, and he wanted to know where the money went.

I knew that I had used money from the sheriffs office to further political careers. I knew that I needed to talk to these people before I spoke about it, so I then told Dirk I did not want to say anything else until I talked to an attorney. Dirk became very unhappy, telling me if I did not want to talk to him about what he knew, he could not save me and would ensure that I received the maximum punishment.

After several hours, because I would not tell Dirk what he wanted to hear, he stated that as long as I was not cooperating with him, he could not save me. Dirk again became very aggressive, trying to brow beat me into confessing to the whole $120,000 to make it easier on me. At this point, realization set in, and I knew it was time to stop the conversation and retain an attorney.

Once I hired an attorney, Dirk was told that all communication would now come from my attorney, and he got pissed. His whole persona changed. He was no longer my friend that I could trust and talk to. Dirk became the man who then said, I will see that youre convicted of a crime and sentenced to a very long time in prison. So much for being friends and a person I could trust.

The hardest part of this ordeal was telling my husband. This was my second marriage. My first ended in divorce after fourteen years, when I found out he had been cheating with another woman from the sheriffs office in Lee County. I had been so devastated by my divorce I moved thirty miles away to LaBelle and isolated myself for eighteen months until I met my second husband.

It was love at first sight. I met him one night in August of 1995, and we have been together ever since.

What I did not realize at the time of my divorce from my first husband was the damage that it had caused. So for eighteen months, I isolated myself to avoid further pain or the embarrassment of failure. I could not understand what I had done to make my ex-husband run into the arms of another woman.

It is so hard to explain the need to shield my husband from the truth of these circumstances. I loved him immensely and could come up with a thousand reasons. I became totally consumed with preserving our relationship that I lost all reasoning on why I did things.

I then retired and moved five hundred miles away to get away from the stress and drama. I could not turn the clock back.

There were other circumstances in the political arena that caused me to utilize money from this account, which I will go into depth about later in this book.

All my weaknesses became the tools my superiors used to take advantage. To this day, even after I became incarcerated, I have not received any letters or communication from anyone that I helped further their political careers by using money from this jail account. They never had any remorse for the situation they helped create. I do not think they wasted another thought about the circumstances that brought me here.

These people are still free in society, in search of their next victim. Another poor soul to swindle, trick, and connive, to receive anything to their advantage.

Chapter Two

I never did talk to Dirk from FDLE again. He was mad because I would not talk to him without my attorney. Because I never talked with him, he took all the records from the bank account, made up what he thought was the story of what happened, and issued a warrant for my arrest for Grand Theft and Official Misconduct.

What I might have failed to mention was I had retired from law enforcement after thirty-four years of service in January of 2009. This story had taken place after I retired, and the incidents of taking money to use to further peoples political career only happened the last three years of my tenure.

Later on in this book, I will explain how my superior officers convinced me to use money from this jail account, always stating that no matter what happened, they would have my back. Needless to say, since this story has begun, I have not seen or heard from any of these friends who benefitted from this money.

My attorney explained to me that FDLE had investigated my bank accounts and my private life and did not find any discrepancies to determine that I had not used any of the money on myself.