Handcuffed and helpless tonight,
a Pinellas County police
Sergeant facing charges accused
of attacking a man at the jail.
The sheriff calling it a set
back for law enforcement.
I want to welcome you tonight side
I am Ryan Bass Sergeant Patrick
Knight was booked into jail this
morning and bonded out hours later.
He is charged with battery
and official misconduct.
We must warn you some of the
evidence that you are about to
see can be hard to watch now.
It all stems from Friday,
November 19th when an inmate to roll
Johnson was brought in for booking.
Pinellas County Jail Sheriff Bob
Gualtieri says Johnson went through
the typical booking process but raised
concerns about an allergy to tomatoes,
got agitated and refused
to do a health screening.
He was then moved to a single cell,
but when Johnson wouldn't calm down,
the sheriff says Sergeant
Knight opened the door,
pushed Johnson to the ground,
grabbed his hair,
pinned him against the wall
and punched him in the face.
You
gotta man this handcuffed
behind his back, he's helpless.
It's it's almost almost makes
you speechless because you know
you don't know what to say.
This is so terrible it's so wrong
it's so everything that we don't
stand for and what we don't do.
Tampa Bay's Angelina Salcido has the
community's reaction as the circle as the
sheriff now tries to regain their trust.
Uncalled for and unwarranted.
That's how the Pinellas County Sheriff's
Office is describing this attack tonight.
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri says that Sergeant
Patrick Knight was arrested this
morning after this brutal attack on an
inmate that he says was unprovoked.
It sets us back frustration
after the actions of one of his own.
It causes the job to be harder.
It causes the relationship to be harder.
It causes the trust. Maybe not to be
there as much as we want it to be.
Sheriff Bob Walteri trying to
regain the trust of the community.
Once again, former Sergeant Patrick Knight,
who is charged with battery and official
misconduct for lying about his actions,
left inmate or L Johnson with a
bloody cut above his left eye and
injury to the back of his head
and a missing clump of his hair.
Back on November 19th.
So when people say.
You know you've got some law enforcement
officers out there that are.
Bad that aren't doing the
right thing that are doing the
wrong thing, they're right.
And all we can do is hold
him accountable. Sheriff
Coulteri says their policy changed last
year to encourage deputies to either
stop incidents with excessive force
or report them right away.
Certainly want to see is somebody stop
it to begin with and then come forward
much faster and not have to think
about what the right thing to do is.
I think that a complete overhaul needs to
take place within the Sheriff's Department.
Esther Matthews,
the president of the NAACP,
Saint Petersburg branch.
She believes the sheriff.
But wants to see more honestly,
Angelina. UM, the first thing that
stuck out to me is not only did
he lie on the incident report,
but the corporal that was with
him initially lied as well.
That in itself speaks to what's taking place.
This is not this is not new.
This is something honestly.
I feel like the sheriff should
go back and review all of the
incident reports that they've done
Sergeant Knight actually bonded
out of jail this morning on a
$2500 bond, but he actually.
Quit the force last week,
shared Baumgold Sherry tells me he
would have fired him had he not quit.
This actually isn't the first
time an officer is mistreated in
inmate at the Pinellas County Jail.
Let's take a deeper dive
and some of the videos,
as you saw in that picture earlier,
may be tough to watch.
A detention deputy was fired
in 2019 after an argument with
an inmate in a wheelchair.
It happened months earlier
in September of 2018.
The former deputy Aaron Hall hit
the inmate three times after we
talked back and spitted whole during
a lockdown hole was also written
up at 2015 after flipping over a
table as he approached an inmate.
And in January of 2019,
Deputy James Morgan kicked inmate
while he was doing push-ups as
punishment for feeding a bird
on top of a dumpster.
That deputy was later fired
and charged with one count,
one count of simple battery.
Now 10 Investigates recently
investigated cases of excessive force
in our community to see what they found,
just go ahead and open up
your camera app right now,
point your phone or tablet at
the QR code on your screen.
A notification will pop up that will
take you right to our investigation.
We take a deeper dive into how
these cases are looked into and what
happens to officers who are found
guilty of using excessive force.