TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- The head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement maintained communications with Bay County's sheriff during the state's investigation into the death of a teenager who was punched and kicked at the sheriff's boot camp, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

In several e-mails to Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen and others, FDLE Commissioner Guy Tunnell criticized those who questioned the effectiveness of the boot camp concept, according to documents obtained by The Miami Herald. Tunnell started the Panama City boot camp when he was Bay County's sheriff.

Tunnell also forwarded McKeithen an e-mail detailing the agency's effort to withhold a video showing the guards' hitting 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, the paper reported. Anderson died Jan. 6, hours after he was manhandled by several guards at the boot camp.

 

An e-mail from FDLE spokesman Tom Berlinger that the agency would fight attempts to release the video was forwarded by Tunnell as an "FYI!" to McKeithen, a longtime friend, Tunnell, as sheriff in Bay County.

After two lawmakers saw the video before it was released publicly, two others, Sens. Rod Smith, D-Alachua, and Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, also asked to see it. Wise and Smith, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, are the chair and vice-chair respectively on the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

"Ain't gonna happen," Tunnell wrote in an e-mail to FDLE staffers about the request.

Berlinger said Tuesday the agency's formal response to Tunnell's role in the investigation was contained in the Herald's story.

"Commissioner Tunnell and the rest of our command staff are, by virtue of our jobs, friends with all 67 sheriffs in the state of Florida," he told the paper. "That doesn't stop us from being fair and impartial in any of the investigations we conduct."

But one of the lawmakers who first saw the video wasn't convinced.

"From the beginning, we had concerns about a possible conflict of interest with FDLE doing the investigation," state Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, told the paper. "After reading these, it does not ease our concerns."

On another occasion, a Tunnell missive blamed bureaucratic red tape and lawmakers' failure to provide enough money to answer issues in the boot camps across the state. The Panama City boot camp has since been closed.

Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.