Activist blasts OPD as review of officer’s comments stays in limbo

A meeting of the Orlando police citizen’s review board that had been scheduled for Wednesday was canceled, one month after the panel asked the Police Department to revisit an investigation into social media comments by its officers.

City spokeswoman Cassandra Anne Lafser said the meeting’s cancellation was announced in advance and was because of a scheduling conflict with the board’s coordinator.

But the action prompted anger from a local activist who had planned to attend.

“It’s a stall tactic, it’s a way to frustrate people in the community,” said T.J. Legacy-Cole, who filed a citizen complaint against Orlando police Officer Robert Schellhorn for making inappropriate comments.

An internal investigation of Schellhorn’s Facebook comments after the deaths of two Kissimmee police officers — in which he referred to athletes who kneel during the national anthem as “overpaid thugs” — was tabled April 4 after board members questioned why Officer Shawn Dunlap was not also investigated.

Legacy-Cole was one of several residents who filed a complaint against Schellhorn, who was suspended without pay for 80 hours but opted to forfeit accrued time off instead. His complaint also named Dunlap, who made the original post to which Schellhorn was responding.

But when the investigation was presented to the board, Dunlap had been included as a witness — and not investigated separately.

Board members asked the department for an amendment of the Schellhorn investigation to show a probe also had been conducted into Dunlap’s behavior based on the citizen complaint.

But OPD’s internal affairs manager explained officers cannot be subjected to an investigation once they have served as witnesses in the same case, according to the state’s Law Enforcement’s Bill of Rights.

However, the panel said the fact that Dunlap was not investigated suggested the department was not consulting the review board on the outcome of all citizen complaints.

Legacy-Cole said the “entire investigation was shoddy

from the beginning” because Dunlap “got off scot-free.”

OPD spokeswoman Michelle Guido said the Schellhorn investigation has not been modified since the April meeting, because the board must make any requests or recommendations in writing. She said it hasn’t yet done so.

City spokeswoman Jessica Garcia said the next step for the board would be to draft a letter that can be finalized at the next meeting on June 6, but she said she was unaware of an existing draft letter. Efforts to reach members of the board Wednesday were unsuccessful.

But aside from the lack of an investigation into Dunlap, Legacy-Cole argued the punishment for Schellhorn’s expletive-laden post was insufficient. The officer described a woman killed while protesting a white nationalist rally in Virginia last year, as “an asshole killed by another asshole.”

Schellhorn “has dishonored his uniform,” Legacy-Cole said. “We no longer feel safe with him patrolling. We no longer feel safe with him representing [the] Orlando Police Department.”