Court filing says FDLE recommended that two Daytona Beach Shores officers be charged
A court filing reveals that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement recommended charges be filed against two Daytona Beach Shores police officers who jailed their child last October for a potty-training lesson.
Despite the recommendation, State Attorney R.J. Larizza did not charge Lt. Michael Schoenbrod and Sgt. Jessica Long with any crime.
The FDLE investigation − even though it has been completed − has been blocked from public view by court order, according to a new filing by the State Attorney's Office.
Schoenbrod said Long put the 3½-year-old child in a city holding cell for several minutes on Oct. 5, then he followed up the next day by handcuffing the boy and putting him in the jail for "13 minutes or something like that."
Schoenbrod made the admissions during an interview with a Department of Children and Families caseworker later that month, according to Volusia County Sheriff's Office bodycam footage released to The News-Journal and other parties.
Schoenbrod, who's on administrative leave and facing two active professional standards investigations, and Sgt. Jessica Long filed a petition in Volusia Circuit Court last March that was sealed and is inaccessible to the public. A subsequent filing in May showed them petitioning the court, but the filing itself was marked confidential.
A hearing to deal with questions about the confidentiality of records in the case is scheduled for Monday. Ahead of that, the State Attorney's Office filed a 4-page response on Friday.
In it, the state revealed that an attorney representing Schoenbrod and Long started the process to expunge records from the FDLE investigation. In doing so, the attorney certified that neither Schoenbrod nor Long had been arrested, "and a charge was recommended by FDLE."
Records that may be expunged, under state law, include "criminal history information" and "descriptions and notations of arrests, detentions, indictments ... or other formal criminal charges" and any disposition of such cases, the state attorney's response notes.
Neither Long nor Schoenbrod was arrested or charged, so the expungement process is null, the filing states.
On May 18, unbeknownst to the State Attorney's Office, the petitioners asked a judge to order the state to sign off on the application for expungement, according to the filing. The State Attorney's Office concludes that expungement is not "the most direct process for the relief sought by petitioners," and that the petition filed by Long and Schoenbrod be denied.
Separately, Tampa attorney Mark Caramanica, on behalf of the Florida Council for Government Accountability and The Daytona Beach News-Journal, filed an appearance, seeking to weigh in on the confidentiality of documents in the matter at the hearing Monday.
Also relating to the case is a letter from the Clerk of Circuit Court to Michael Lambert, the attorney representing Schoenbrod and Long. The letter, which appeared in the case file Thursday, stated that a filing Lambert identified as "confidential" isn't. The letter states that the clerk will render the filing public within 10 days unless a judge orders it confidential.
Lambert, reached by email Friday afternoon, did not comment on the latest filings, saying he had "not seen anything" as of 5 p.m.
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This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: FDLE investigated Shores officers who jailed son for potty training
