Former City Auditor files complaint with GPD
BY JENNIFER CABRERA / JULY 11, 2019
We have obtained a copy of the complaint that Carlos Holt, Former Gainesville City Auditor, filed against various members of Gainesville city government on June 20. Our previous story details the events that led the Gainesville City Commission to fire Holt without cause on June 6.
The complaint alleges that according to Gainesville Human Resources Director Lisa Jefferson, the investigative reports on Holt and his family were “tightly controlled and held or disseminated to only a very small number of persons, known to include: Chief Tony Jones, Assistant Chief Terrance Pierce, Detective NS Jackson, City Manager Lyons, Interim City Manager Bowie, HR Director Lisa Jefferson, Mayor Poe, City Commissioners Arreola, Hayes-Santos, Johnson, Simmons, Ward, and Warren.”
The complaint goes on to say that envelopes containing information in the reports were mailed out anonymously to various people, including Gainesville Sun reporter Andrew Caplan, various Alachua County offices, Nathan Skop, Gabe Kaimowitz, various Gainesville city employees, “and others.”
The reports contained health and mental health treatment information about Holt’s wife and children, including medications they took. They also contained information obtained from DCF, identifying information about Holt’s children, and “speculative information by the report writers about our health matters and habits.”
As the complaint states, the fact that these reports were mailed out is not in dispute—Gabe Kaimowitz brought it up during citizen comment at a city commission meeting, and the city commission discussed the matter during the May 16 commission meeting. However, in spite of this acknowledgment that personal information about Holt’s family was improperly leaked, there has been no public discussion of conducting an investigation to determine who leaked the reports and/or mailed them out.
Because the reports originated at the Gainesville Police Department, Holt’s complaint requested a third-party investigation. Our previous attempts to obtain a copy of Holt’s complaint resulted in an email from the city manager’s office, stating that GPD could not release the complaint because it was part of an open investigation by GPD’s Internal Affairs.