Former Pasco child protection investigator arrested, accused of filing false reports

NEW PORT RICHEY — A former child protection investigator who resigned from the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office last year amid an investigation into her work was arrested Friday for knowingly falsifying two different reports while on the job, authorities said Monday.

At a news conference Monday morning, Sheriff Chris Nocco announced that former employee Jennifer Lewis, 29, turned herself in to the agency and now faces two felony charges of “falsifying, altering or destroying Florida Department of Children and Families records.”

She was booked into county jail Friday, but was released two hours later on $5,000 bond, records show.

Lewis, of Seminole, was hired by the Sheriff’s Office in January 2016, Nocco said, and worked as a child protection investigator for about five years before she was accused of fabricating records by a trainee shadowing her at work.

That complaint, filed in March 2021, prompted the Sheriff’s Office to launch a review of Lewis’ work. She resigned soon after the investigation began, Nocco said.

“Her role was to protect children, and that’s probably one of the toughest roles in our organization,” Nocco said Monday. “But Jennifer Lewis failed in those responsibilities on several occasions.”

According to her trainee, Lewis lied about two different home visits the duo made in early 2021 — writing that she had met and spoken with a family when, in fact, no one was home when they arrived.

No one picked up on the fabricated visits until her trainee reviewed the files about one month later and notified a supervisor, Nocco said.

Even though Lewis resigned “very quickly,” Nocco said the agency’s major crimes division still worked with Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bruce Bartlett to conduct a complete review of Lewis’ work. When she left the agency in March 2021, she had been assigned to 27 pending cases, Nocco said. The review found a handful of discrepancies still under review, but nothing that indicated anyone was harmed or endangered as a result.

The agency also is reviewing the 62 cases Lewis had closed during her time as a child protective investigator, but so far investigators have found no cause for concern or possible harm, he said. That process includes revisiting and interviewing every person with whom Lewis claimed she spoke in her reports.

When questioned about the two fake visits in her reports, Lewis offered no explanation, Nocco said.

Reports to the Florida abuse hotline are typically investigated by employees of the Florida Department of Children and Families. But in seven counties — including Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough — those cases instead fall to the county Sheriff’s Office, which hires and trains civilians to conduct the investigations.

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Investigators should have no more than 12 active cases, according to the Child Welfare League of America, a D.C. nonprofit that advocates for best practices in foster care.

Florida does not set a limit on caseloads. The Florida Department of Children and Families, however, does require that investigative agencies report how many investigators have caseloads that exceed 20.

At the time that Lewis is alleged to have falsified records, Nocco said she was dealing with 27 active cases. State records show that roughly 19 percent of investigators in the county — equivalent to 10 employees — were juggling more than 20 cases during that period: the first quarter of 2021. That was the highest in Florida at the time, and well above the state average of 2 percent. By contrast, neighboring Pinellas, which is in the same child welfare circuit, had no investigators with more than 20 active cases.

In 2019, a Tampa Bay Times investigation found that as many as 40 percent of Pasco investigators had caseloads higher than 20. Child welfare experts told the Times that highly stressed investigators are more likely to take shortcuts or make mistakes, putting children at increased risk.

Lewis is the second Pasco child protection investigator to be charged with falsifying reports in recent years. Investigator Kaylynn Scott was arrested in June 2019 after she lied about interviewing and drug-testing two parents, records show. In Pinellas County, investigators were arrested in 2018 and 2019 on similar charges. All said they were overwhelmed by caseloads.

“People can’t say they’re overworked,” Nocco said. “You have to handle every case one case at a time, and if you are overworked and you can’t handle it you have to go back to your supervisor and say, ‘Hey, I couldn’t get to these cases. I need some help,’ because God forbid a child gets hurt.”

Moving forward, Nocco said he plans to have all 49 child protective investigators wear body-worn cameras while on the job. The Pasco sheriff was one of the first in the Tampa Bay area to introduce cameras for his deputies, not only as a means of accountability but also as protection against false reports, he said.

“Unfortunately, we’re human beings and we make mistakes — none of us walk on water,” Nocco said. “We can make honest mistakes, but you can’t do things purposefully that could put people in harm’s way. That’s one thing the Pasco Sheriff’s Office will not stand for.”