Did You Hear About the Major Police Sex Scandal in Polk County?

LAKELAND, Fla.—If you scroll through any of the stories on AVN.com about Polk County, Florida—unique in the nation for its unadulterated hostility to legal pornography and the people who make it—you will see that the dateline for each of the articles is Lakeland. Well, Lakeland is in the news again, and it ain’t because of the weather. No, this time it is the police department itself that is at the center of a sex scandal so widespread that the Miami New Times opened its coverage with the non-hyperbolic claim, “Earlier this week, the Department of Justice slammed City of Miami cops for a string of unjustified shootings. But Miami has new competition for the title of the state's worst police department.” The numbers alone are kind of startling for a police department in a county that likes to tell the rest of the country how it should have sex, and loves to arrest its own citizens for filming sex. According to the New Times, “The investigation centers around a civilian crime analyst, Sue Eberle, who was apparently having sex with nearly a dozen of her co-workers.” The Florida Department of Law Enforcement opened an investigation. The county state attorney said, "The investigation revealed an extraordinary amount of sexual conduct that was committed both on-duty and off-duty.” Yesterday, two police sergeants were fired. One had been employed since 1999, the other since 1992. “Both were fired for conduct unbecoming, failure to report misconduct and neglect of duty,” reported ABC News. A blue ribbon panel has been convened by Lakeland’s mayor, partly out of dissatisfaction with the investigation. “The mayor said that there was continuing frustration that the process involving the investigation into the department wasn't more open to the public,” said ABC. “But Fields said he has to follow state law, which gives police officers a ‘bill of rights’ that protects much of their privacy during investigations into their behavior.” It’s no wonder the officers are fighting for their privacy rights. Eberle is claiming “that she had consensual and sometimes coerced sex with the officers and a firefighter, and that she once was propositioned by a city worker in Lakeland. Eberle's accounts of the liaisons were largely corroborated by her sexual partners and others within the police department.” A 59-page report on the sex scandal prepared by the state attorney determined that “the department's problems investigating crimes might be caused by some high-ranking officers being more interested in having sex with Eberle than doing their jobs.” Coercing people into having sex is something sex traffickers do, but in Lakeland it was apparently the pastime for the police; according to the state attorney, some of the encounters took place so long ago that any physical evidence is long gone, preventing him from bringing any charges he might have wanted to file. Ironically, the person asked by legislators to help get Lakeland PD “on track” is none other than the Grim Porn Reaper himself, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who told the AP in an email, “My whole family is from Lakeland. I grew up here. I care about Lakeland, its reputation, and the quality of life we enjoy here. We cannot lose sight that there are many fine and hardworking officers at LPD who are outstanding public servants." One such legislator, Rep. Seth McKeel (R-Lakeland), thinks there was a problem with “a culture which, at best lacks professionalism and at worst encourages the reckless behavior of LDP officials, is apparently pervasive and is an embarrassment to our community. This culture has unfortunately eroded the public's confidence in the Lakeland Police Department." Judd is a part of the exact same culture, of course; born into it, raised in it, steeped in it; a son of Lakeland, a scion of the land. Even now his office in Winter Haven is only about ten miles from Lakeland as the crow flies. So now he’s going to jump in his cruiser, drive on over and help set things straight? A reasonable person might ask, how the hell is he going to do that if he’s been oblivious to the “culture” he’s lived in for his entire life? Polk County, it turns out, is just like everywhere else.