Pussieldi Complainants: 2012 Florida Police Report Is Not Accurate

See the Police Report on the Alex Pussieldi Incident in Plantation, Florida, in 2012
March 5, 2014
Alex Pussieldi Abuse Story Exposes Lobbying Partners USA Swimming and Catholic Church As Cover-Up Partners, Too
March 6, 2014

by Irvin Muchnick and Tim Joyce

 

The Florida parents who say they saw Alex Pussieldi inappropriately touching the backs, stomachs, and inner thighs of boy swimmers at a November 2012 meet at the Plantation Aquatic Complex are challenging the number of potential victims the city police contacted during the investigation of the parents’ complaint.

On February 28, Concussion Inc. reported that J.P. Cote and his wife Carolyn observed Pussieldi’s conduct on the deck of a meet hosted by the Plantation Swim Team. Yesterday we uploaded the November 18, 2012 , police incident report at http://muchnick.net/pussieldipolicereport.pdf.

The Cotes contend that the following passage of a supplemental report by a Plantation detective, Sergeant Robert Mazer, is at best incomplete:

“On December 17 I was sent an e-mail by Usa swimming, providing me with the names and phone numbers of three male swimmers who are on the team in question (12 year olds). I made contact with two of the boys and their parents who wished to be anonymous for the purpose of this report, both of which indicated that they were never touched inappropriately by coach Pussieldi, and never at any time felt that he ever victimized them in any way. The third male never returned my calls.”

The report implies that the pool of possible interviewees was only three. But J.P. Cote told us that the real number was “in double figures,” and if Mazer sought to contact only three families, “he did not do his job thoroughly.”

“From the times of the events at the swim meet when we were observing these actions, we narrowed the possibilities to boys in the 9-10 and 11-12 age groups,” Cote said. “Jimmy Parmenter, the coach of the host club, worked with me on developing a database of all the meet entries from those parameters. In my eyewitness report, I also had a vivid recollection that one of the victims wore braces on his teeth. There is nothing about that in the detective’s report.”

Cote said he spoke to Liz Hoendervoogt of USA Swimming and got her assurance that she could supply Sergeant Mazer with contact information for anyone he asked her about. Cote then gave his large list, culled from the database by Coach Parmenter, to Mazer.

“There is no way the detective could have thought his job ended with reaching out to only three kids, after all the information we supplied him. If that’s what he did, he either was lazy or got bamboozled by USA Swimming,” Cote said.

USA Swimming does not respond to Concussion Inc.’s queries. We have received no response to a fax to Plantation’s police chief, W. Howard Harrison, requesting comment on the Cotes’ criticism of the incident report.

According to the Cotes, they also filed complaint incident paperwork with the city-owned  Plantation Aquatic Complex and with the host swim club. The City of Plantation is processing our request. Coach Parmenter emailed, “I am out of town until Monday, March 10, at the American Short Champs. I’ll try to get back to you.”

Complete links to Concussion Inc.’s Pussieldi investigation are at https://concussioninc.net/?p=8652.

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Concussion Inc. - Author Irvin Muchnick