The former operator of boarding home who faced 18 felony counts of adult abuse will not go to jail. Daphne Jones, under a plea agreement with prosecutors, pleaded guilty this morning to one reduced count of culpable negligence, a second-degree misdemeanor. Prosecutors dropped the remaining 17 charges. ...more

January 8, 2009

A Polk County sheriff's deputy was arrested today, accused of using her agency-issued computer to access law enforcement databases and giving out information to a person not authorized to have it. ...more

January 7, 2009

Reginene Hall Legette pleaded not guilty today to scuffling with deputies and a parent at Westchase Elementary School in September. ...more

December 18, 2008

Former Middleton High School special education teacher Christina Lin Butler was placed on probation for five years for having a felonious three-week sexual relationship with a 16-year-old ninth-grader. ...more

December 10, 2008

Hours before his arrest on rape charges Thursday, Thomas Kelly Bolduc told his mother over the phone that police were on the psychiatric ward of St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was being treated. "Somebody got raped," his mother, Carol Wood, recalled him saying. ...more

December 6, 2008

Largo police shot and wounded a 36-year-old man this morning after he pointed a knife and then a replica of a handgun at them, officials said. ...more

December 6, 2008

The state Agency for Health Care Administration is investigating an incident at St. Joseph's Hospital this week in which police accused a 39-year-old homeless man being treated in the psychiatric ward of raping a female psychiatric patient. ...more

December 6, 2008

Police have arrested a 39-year-old homeless man they say raped a woman in a bathroom in the psychiatric ward of St. Joseph's Hospital on Thursday afternoon. ...more

December 5, 2008

Two Tampa residents treated dogs so poorly that the animals looked skeletal, investigators say. ...more

December 1, 2008

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday she would consider serving in the Senate if God gave her the opportunity and Alaskans wanted her to take the job. The state's senior senator, Republican Ted Stevens, held a dwindling lead as the count resumed in his re-election bid. ...more

November 13, 2008