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Retired Police Officer's Computer Caricatures Draw Ire

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 26, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - In one, Mayor Rick Baker is wearing a pink dress with a matching pink hat.

In another, police Chief Chuck Harmon's head has been put on an obscenely overweight body, and the chief is looking intently at a two-layer cheeseburger.

Maj. Melanie Bevan appears as both a dominatrix and as the Wicked Witch of the West.

These are among more than 180 computer-altered images internal affairs investigators collected as they looked into an allegation that a police officer had posted them online. They were made available Friday as the result of a public information request.

Officer Kenneth Kokotek retired before the investigation was brought to his supervisors Thursday.

Had he not retired, he would have been fired for violating, among other things, a policy that prohibits employees from posting caricatures that denigrate an individual or group based on their race, religion, sexual orientation and other categories.

Kokotek had come to the police department May 5 to distribute invitations to his retirement party, and he signed the invitations with the name "Picasso."

That is the same name used by someone who was posting the computer-altered caricatures on the Web site LEOAffairs.com and on Kokotek's personal Web site, SPPD Insider (sppdinsider.piczo .com), according to an internal affairs file on the matter released Friday.

The invitations contained computer-altered renderings. In one, the upper echelon of the police administration is portrayed as the Keystone Kops.

In another, former police chief and current deputy mayor Goliath Davis III is seen dancing, wearing a pimp hat.

Kokotek, who officially retired May 14, admitted the work was his, according to the internal affairs case file. He didn't think he was violating any order. He had produced them, he said, in the interest of parody and satire.

"I thought I had a First Amendment right to speak out on a site where I remain anonymous," Kokotek reportedly told internal affairs investigators.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.

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