The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office has admitted in a settlement agreement made public on Wednesday that its policy of keeping a list of people considered likely to commit future crimes and sending deputies to their homes violated the U.S. Constitution.

As part of the settlement, the office will pay $105,000 to four Pasco County residents who were targeted by the law enforcement agency and is barred from implementing any similar program in the future.

The program, dubbed “Intelligent Led Policing” by the Sheriff’s Office and “predictive policing” by its critics, first came to light in a series of reports by the Tampa Bay Times in 2020. The paper reported that after Sheriff Chris Nocco took office in 2011, he created a “cutting-edge intelligence program” designed to stop crime before it happened, which led to the harassment of children and their families.

The Times found that Pasco County residents who got caught in the agency’s sights were placed on a list as potential criminals and subjected to harassment, often having deputies show up at odd hours. More than 12,500 times, the reporters found, deputies checked on the people identified by a departmental algorithm as targets.

Those targeted were cited for violations such as missing mailbox numbers or overgrown grass. The paper reported that one of the goals of the program was to encourage those who made it onto the agency’s list to move away.

The Institute for Justice (IJ) filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of four Pasco residents in 2021. But just as the trial was set to begin, the Sheriff’s Office and the plaintiffs reached the settlement. The agency agreed that the program had interfered with the plaintiffs First, Fourth, and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

“For years, the Pasco Sheriff ran an unconstitutional program, harassing kids and their parents because a glorified Excel spreadsheet predicted they would commit future crimes,” said IJ Senior Attorney Rob Johnson in a statement. “Today the Sheriff acknowledged that dystopian program violated the Constitution and agreed never to bring it back.”

“For years, the Pasco Sheriff’s Office treated me like it could do anything it wanted,” said Darlene Deegan, one of the four Pasco residents who filed the lawsuit. “But today proves that when ordinary people stand up for themselves, the Constitution still means what it says.”

Dalanea Taylor, Tammy Heilman, and Robert A. Jones III are the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

In 2023, the Sheriff’s Office denied in a statement given to Spectrum News that they had ever engaged in predictive policing.

“We appreciate that the Dept. of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance requested an independent third party review of the Focused Deterrence program which concluded, to directly quote the final assessment by the BJA third party review, that there was ‘no identified disproportionate impact on people of color’ and that the program showed ‘a promising body of evidence suggesting that the strategy may be effective.'”

The statement went on to say that “[w]e welcome a review of any of our programs and are confident the results would be the same as the review of the Focused Deterrence program, specifically that media accounts of our operations are wildly different than our actual operations.”

According to the Tampa Bay Times, which received a Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting in 2021 for a series of articles exposing the initiative, about 1,000 people were monitored under the program, including children.

“Pasco County’s prolific offender program turned the criminal-justice system on its head,” said IJ Senior Attorney Ari Bargil. “In America, we deal with crime by convicting criminals in court, not by punishing people we think might be criminals in the future. It took three years to teach the Pasco Sheriff’s Office that lesson, but we expect today’s settlement will help other jurisdictions learn a little quicker.”

The Pasco Sheriff’s Office sent the Phoenix a statement this afternoon:

“The Pasco Sheriff’s Office will never apologize for keeping our community safe and holding those who victimize our community accountable for their actions.

“It is important to note that this is the final case tied to the false reporting alleged by former members of the Sheriff’s Office who were held accountable and disciplined for their actions. In all previous cases, courts ruled in favor of the Sheriff’s Office and, in this case, a court also found that the Sheriff’s Office written policies were constitutional.

“To be clear, this activist group from outside our community represented four individuals and this is related to these four individuals only.

“As a steward of taxpayer dollars, the Sheriff must adhere to that responsibility and, when presented with a financially minimal settlement agreement of $105,000, which is significantly lower than anticipated attorney costs for trial which could have reached millions of dollars, accepting the settlement was the best decision for the taxpayers of Pasco County. This was strictly a financial decision that was best for the taxpayers who fund our operations and will be paid for by the Florida Sheriff’s Association Risk Management Fund.

“We continue to protect and serve our community and will continue to be tough on crime and make sure those who victimize our community will be held accountable. We will, again, never apologize for keeping our community safe.”

Full story at Florida Phoenix