Punta Gorda Police Chief Tom Lewis has been fired by City Manager Howard Kunik. Lewis has been on paid leave since last February, when he was charged with culpable negligence in the shooting death of 73-year-old Mary Knowlton during a shoot/don’t shoot demonstration at police headquarters. He was acquitted of that charge.
Reading from a prepared statement during a news conference Wednesday, Kunik said he fired the chief because an Internal Affairs investigation he received last week said the department under Lewis had developed a casual approach to citizen safety during demonstrations.
“The Punta Gorda Police Department has an exceptional record of safety protocols when conducting officer training, but citizen demonstrations showed an inexplicable departure from those protocols,” said Kunik.
“Whenever the potential for injury is present, police departments have an obligation to aggressively pursue safety. I did not find that this is the case in our department when citizen demonstrations were concerned. What I found was a non-standardized approach that created unnecessary risk for everyone involved.”
Kunik said that on multiple occasions he gave Lewis the opportunity to resign rather than be fired. The former chief declined the offers. Kunik said the city will conduct a nationwide search for a new chief.
I asked Kunik what the city learned from the latest Internal Affairs report that they didn’t already know from two previous investigations into the shooting—one by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the other by a committee that included outside law enforcement experts plus one Punta Gorda police lieutenant.
There was a pattern in the citizens’ demonstration incident—we did five of them, five scenarios,” said Kunik. “As I said, there was a pattern of not imposing the same safety protocols that we have with our Simunitions training. It was a trend there.”
Simunitions training is done regularly for police officers. In the report, Lieutenant Chris Salsman, who was present the night Mary Knowlton was killed, agreed with the thought that a lack of adherence to safety protocols contributed to the incident. Salsman was suspended for two days without pay for his role.