Sheriff Eric Flowers didn’t want you to know that Captain Milo Thornton last month filed a complaint against the agency’s upper tier, alleging workplace harassment connected to his decision to challenge the embattled incumbent in next year’s election.
The reason is obvious.
Thornton has established himself as the early frontrunner in the 2024 sheriff’s race, having raised campaign contributions at record levels and receiving support from a wide variety of donors throughout the county.
Flowers’ re-election bid, meanwhile, has struggled to get traction as he tries to overcome the damage done by a series of well-publicized personal and professional missteps, which include the repeated harassment of a political rival.
The last thing Flowers needs now are the allegations contained in this latest complaint, which again make him appear petty, conniving and unworthy of his lofty office – just as they did in Thornton’s alarming, three-page memorandum 13 months ago.
It should surprise no one, then, that Flowers chose to hide behind the much-too-vague time requirements of Florida’s public-records law and slow-walk Vero Beach 32963’s written request for complaints filed by Thornton.
We formally submitted our request shortly after noon on Oct. 11. As of midday Monday, we still hadn’t received the easily accessed information we sought.
Or to put it another way: Twelve days after asking for a complaint we knew existed, we were still waiting for a document the agency’s previous administration would’ve provided within hours, maybe minutes.
Clearly, Flowers didn’t want us to go public with it.
Fortunately, someone else did – someone who was disturbed by the contents of Thornton’s complaint and felt it necessary to share it with this newspaper last week.
Thornton’s two-page “Official Notice No. 2,” which he filed with Undersheriff Thomas Raulen on Sept. 13, told yet another troubling story of harassment by a member of Flowers’ command staff.
In his complaint, Thornton described in detail a Sept. 1 conversation with Deputy Chief Kyle King – the third-highest-ranking member of the Sheriff Office – who peppered him with questions meant to send a message.
According to the filing, the closed-door session took place after Thornton was summoned to King’s office and began with the deputy chief saying, “Have a seat. You are causing me some problems.”
King then went on to question Thornton about using his personal vehicle while on duty, and wearing campaign shirts and hats at local high school football games when off duty.
Thornton wrote that he was “initially taken aback” by King’s remarks, because King had previously praised him for his effective management of the agency’s School Resource Division.
Thornton, you might remember, was demoted from deputy chief and re-assigned to an office in school district’s administration building in 2022, after enduring a publicly embarrassing suspension while the Sheriff’s Office’s Internal Affairs Division conducted a bogus, 11-week investigation that found no evidence of wrongdoing.
The trumped-up allegations that Thornton created a hostile work environment at the County Jail, which he oversaw, proved to be nothing more than a pathetic attempt to divert attention from Flowers’ publicly exposed extramarital affair and, at the same time, discredit a future political challenger.
It didn’t work.
Flowers’ hypocrisy continues to dog him and Thornton’s popularity has continued to grow since he declared his candidacy in April.
The most recent financial reports posted by the county’s Supervisor of Elections Office show Thornton, who was the highest-ranked black law-enforcement officer in the county’s history before Flowers knee-capped him, had raised a whopping $263,000 in monetary contributions.
That sum puts him far ahead of both Flowers ($81,000) and Fellsmere Police Chief Keith Touchberry ($77,700), the Republican primary runner-up in 2020.
In fact, Thornton suggests in his complaint that the success of his campaign prompted his meeting with King, who throughout their conversation seemed to be unfamiliar with any of the issues he addressed.
Too often, King appeared to be relying on a list of talking points provided by someone else, making him look more like one of Flowers’ flunkies than a concerned supervisor.
For example: Thornton needed to explain to King that he drives his personal vehicle to work, parks in the school district lot, and then uses his agency vehicle while on duty – something King should’ve known.
It didn’t take long, the complaint states, for Thornton to realize the questions stemmed from Flowers’ earlier visit to the school district building, where he saw Thornton’s personal vehicle – adorned with campaign magnets – parked in the lot.
King eventually backed down, telling Thornton, “I have no issue with that.”
So King then moved on to Thornton wearing his campaign shirts and hats at high school football games, telling him that, as a captain, he is “never off duty” and should attend such events in uniform.
The complaint states that King told Thornton that wearing campaign attire on the sideline “was a problem,” though he didn’t say for whom.
He didn’t need to.
Thornton wrote that he suspects Flowers, who recently began attending the games, doesn’t want him to use the Friday night gatherings, which attract thousands of voters, to enhance his campaign.
Why else would King recommend that Thornton sit in the stands, where he would be less visible, rather than stand on the sideline?
Not that it mattered: Thornton told King he refused to comply with the request, saying he would not allow anyone from the Sheriff’s Office to control his personal life.
Besides, as Thornton pointed out in his complaint, it was just over a year ago that a different deputy chief told him he was not permitted to represent the Sheriff’s Office in uniform at public events without Flowers’ permission.
Thornton wrote that he asked King why his presence on the sideline, where for years he could be seen watching the games, “was suddenly an issue,” and that the King replied, “Well, I don’t know.”
King then told Thornton he remembered a time when the sheriff would fire deputies who “failed to comply” with a direct request.
“I immediately took this statement as a threat and responded by stating, ‘If you guys are threatening to fire me, then do it,’” Thornton wrote, adding that he told King he had not violated any agency policies or procedures.
In his complaint, Thornton stated that, after he left the meeting with King, he called Raulen and shared his concerns about being “targeted and harassed,” as well as his belief that Flowers had “directed” the deputy chief to conduct the inquiry.
He wrote that Raulen told him “there were no issues” with him attending high school football games on his personal time, and that he would address Thornton’s concerns over the Labor Day weekend.
As of Monday, however, Thornton said he had not received any response to his complaint and was unaware of any ongoing in-house investigation into the matter.
That wasn’t surprising, either.
Just over a year ago, Thornton filed a three-page memorandum with Raulen and alleged that he was being targeted and harassed by Flowers’ upper-echelon wingmen whom, he claimed, told him they didn’t trust him, made him feel unwelcome at command-staff meetings and relentlessly questioned him about whether he planned to run for sheriff.
They also wrongly blamed him for the critical columns this newspaper had published about their boss.
Raulen looked into the allegations and provided the agency’s lone response: He gave the accused command-staff members a stern talking-to and warned them to limit their communications with Thornton to the “business of the agency.”
There was no Internal Affairs investigation, however, nor was there any mention of disciplinary action taken against anyone. You don’t need to be Columbo to figure out why.
For the record: Neither Raulen nor Captain Joe Abollo – the Sheriff’s Office’s public information officer – responded to emails sent last week by this newspaper seeking comment on Thornton’s latest complaint.
Flowers, too, was copied on the email. As usual, he didn’t respond, again refusing to be held accountable for his conduct and that of his agency.
Contacted by phone last weekend, Thornton said his attorneys had advised him to not comment publicly on the complaint. But he did acknowledge it.
Flowers hadn’t.
The reason is obvious.