{"id":8336,"date":"2011-07-11T16:17:22","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T20:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=8336"},"modified":"2011-07-11T16:17:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-11T20:17:22","slug":"former-judge-denies-being-racially-abusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=8336","title":{"rendered":"Former Judge Denies Being Racially Abusive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BY IRIS B. HOLTON<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Sentinel City Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>An employee of the security company that works at the Hillsborough County Courthouse has alleged that a former Hillsborough County judge made a racial statement after he was asked to remove his wallet while going through security. The former judge denies that he made the statement.<\/p>\n<p>In a report released by the Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office, the incident took place on July 1st. Two of the three people interviewed were G4S Security employees identified as <strong>Ms. Marie Leggon<\/strong> and <strong>Ms. Lurene Easterly<\/strong>. The third person was <strong>Ms. Maria Ramos<\/strong>, an employee of the Hillsborough County State Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p>All three women identified former Judge and now practicing <strong>Attorney Robert H. Bonanno<\/strong> as the person who was allegedly abusive.<strong>[private]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Leggon<\/strong> stated in the report that <strong>Ms. Easterly<\/strong> began to wand <strong>Attorney Bonanno<\/strong> and asked him to place his wallet in the x-ray machine. She stated he became verbally abusive and made comments like, \u201cstupid low-life \u2026 dumb Black lady.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Leggon<\/strong> stated that as <strong>Attorney Bonanno<\/strong> attempted to leave the building he was asked to wait for law enforcement and refused.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Easterly<\/strong> stated, \u201cHe started calling me names like, \u2018stupid dumb Black lady\u2019 and \u2018low life.\u2019 I asked him not to call me names. He kept calling me names. I told him I would call a deputy. He said, call them, he didn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Ramos <\/strong>stated, \u201cThe man screamed very loudly to <strong>Officer Lurene Easterly<\/strong> nasty words, \u2018stupid dumb Black lady\u2019 and \u2018low life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When contacted by the <em>Sentinel<\/em>, <strong>Attorney Bonanno<\/strong> acknowledged that there was a verbal exchange, but denied making any racial remarks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a big to do about nothing. When she asked about my wallet I did ask why I had to put it in the tray because I don\u2019t have to do that at the other Courthouse. She said, \u2018because I told you to,\u2019 and I admit it rubbed me wrong. But I never called her names, I never said that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said, \u2018your attitude is a pain in the a** and I probably shouldn\u2019t have said that. I could have worded it better. I went upstairs dropped off my paperwork and left. I wasn\u2019t in the building no more than 3 or 4 minutes,\u201d <strong>Attorney Bonanno<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n<p>He further stated that he never told anyone his name and that he wasn\u2019t aware that a report had been made until he was contacted by the St. Pete Times.<\/p>\n<p>He also said he thought about reporting the woman because of her attitude, but didn\u2019t because he doesn\u2019t like to cause people trouble.<strong>[\/private]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY IRIS B. HOLTON Sentinel City Editor An employee of the security company that works at the Hillsborough County Courthouse has alleged that a former Hillsborough County judge made a racial statement after he was asked to remove his wallet while going through security. The former judge denies that he made the statement. In a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}