Judge Hunter Carroll ruled that three search warrants obtained by the Sarasota Police Department to look through Ziegler’s phone were “severely overbroad.” He noted that officers went through hundreds of thousands of photos and videos and thousands of Ziegler’s text messages to his wife, Bridget Ziegler.

The judge ordered law enforcement to destroy copies of most of the data seized.

Last October, a woman told Sarasota police officers that Christian Ziegler, then the chairperson of the state GOP, had sexually assaulted her. The woman had known the Zieglers for years and had had at least one threesome encounter with the couple, the investigation found.

Police opted against charging Ziegler with sexual battery after saying a video appeared to show consensual sex, but the department forwarded a video voyeurism investigation to the state attorney. The state attorney in March declined to file charges after the woman said it “was possible” she could have consented to the video being taken.

Carroll ruled the police department’s search while investigating the claims was unreasonable. He compared the cellphone search to searching someone’s home. Carroll said that the Fourth Amendment should have protected Christian Ziegler from the search of his cellphone. The judge wrote that cellphones can contain a person’s “entire life story.”

Ex-Florida GOP chair Ziegler won’t be charged with video voyeurism, prosecutors say

Carroll wrote that Ziegler wants to retain control of his information and personal property. But that will be difficult, because the information given to the public by the police department through public records requests.

Ziegler and the Sarasota Police Department did not respond to emailed requests for comment on Monday morning on Carroll’s ruling.

Carroll noted that the Zieglers are high-profile figures. Bridget Ziegler is a Sarasota County School Board member and co-founded the conservative education advocacy group Moms for Liberty. But that does not mean they have given up their constitutional rights, Carroll wrote.

Florida GOP dumps chairman Ziegler amid sexual assault investigation

“This ruling is long. But the short answer is this: Mr. Ziegler has the constitutional right to recover exclusive control over his personal property seized involuntary through unconstitutional warrants,” Carroll wrote.

A memo written by a Sarasota police detective described “numerous” text messages between the Zieglers “where they are on the prowl” for women they would both be interested in. The memo describes Christian Ziegler secretly taking photos of women, and says Bridget Ziegler, a Sarasota County School Board member, told him to pretend to take pictures of his beer so he wouldn’t get caught.

“Don’t come home until your d–k is wet,” Bridget Ziegler said in one message, according to the memo.

Bridget Ziegler, who co-founded the conservative education advocacy group Moms for Liberty, did not respond to phone calls or emails Friday. Nor did Christian Ziegler. The couple is suing to try to block the release of more text messages and other records from public view. The Times is among the media organizations seeking disclosure of the records.

Bridget Ziegler has advocated for legislation and policies that some say are anti-LGBTQ+. As details have come to light about her involvement in sexual encounters with women, protesters have rallied at school board meetings to protest what they say is a hypocritical divide between her private behavior and public stances, and to call for her resignation.

Lobbyist arrested, accused of battery on Osceola School Board member

Earlier this month, Bridget Ziegler proposed a resolution to reject new federal Title IX protections against gender identity discrimination. (The school board later passed the resolution.) She’s previously backed the Parental Rights in Education Act, referred to by some as Don’t Say Gay, which prohibits classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation.

The police memo released this week was part of the now-dropped criminal investigation into Christian Ziegler after a woman claimed he sexually assaulted her. The woman had known the Zieglers for years and had had at least one threesome encounter with the couple, the investigation found.

The Sarasota Police Department opted against charging Ziegler with sexual battery after saying a video appeared to show consensual sex but sent a video voyeurism charge to the state attorney. The state attorney declined to file charges.

The newly released memo from detective Angela Cox noted that Christian Ziegler’s phone also had “numerous sexual videos” involving other women.

A Sarasota Police Department spokesperson declined to answer questions Friday about whether the agency contacted the women in the videos, saying that there is “active litigation related to this matter.”

Engineers put in place island-like mounds of rocks that shore up the tallest support columns and huge, disc-like structures called dolphins that act as bumpers blocking wayward ships. Engineers around the country followed suit to help strengthen bridge protections.

But when a ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday, video of the bridge’s catastrophic collapse seemed to show that the structures protecting the supports of the bridge were minimal compared to the Skyway. Engineering experts and maritime lawyers say not enough safeguards were in place.

“From what I have seen so far, there was basically no protection around the two main piers in the channel,” said Joseph McHugh, a forensic consultant with more than 40 years of highway, bridge and building construction experience. “With the kind of traffic that bridge gets and the large vessels that frequent that port, I just think someone dropped the ball here.”

McHugh said the Skyway’s safeguards seem strong. He isn’t sure why the bridge in Baltimore wasn’t better protected — Baltimore, like Tampa, has one of the busiest ports in America — but that engineers probably aren’t to blame. He said that more funds need to be given to bridge and infrastructure projects.

“We all pay a certain tax on every gallon of gasoline that we put into our vehicles, and all of that money is supposed to go to infrastructure,” McHugh said. “But of course, politicians often take money from that and use it elsewhere.”

Steve Yerrid, a lawyer who represented the harbor pilot who crashed the Summit Venture into the Skyway 44 years ago, told the Tampa Bay Times that the piers of the Francis Scott Key bridge were “naked.”

“There were no big concrete abutments surrounding it, no dry land like the Skyway has,” Yerrid said. “I feel for those people that lost loved ones, because there’s nothing worse than losing someone prematurely and, worst of all, unnecessarily. That bridge should have been protected.”

Some Maryland officials knew it decades ago. The day of the Skyway disaster, the director of the state’s toll and bridge agency told the Baltimore Sun that the Francis Scott Key Bridge had some concrete dolphins protecting piers on both sides, but that they would not protect the bridge from a strike from a ship that large.

Lessons from the Skyway bridge disaster were highlighted in guidelines published by the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials in 1991. The group explained requirements for new bridges, gave guidance for retrofitting old structures and recommended stronger protections.

Jose R. Cot, a maritime lawyer in New Orleans, said the kind of dolphin protection around the Sunshine Skyway isn’t mandated by law, but that increased safeguards are a standard in the bridge building industry and have been for decades.

“They are guidelines in the industry that certainly point to what should be done to protect bridge piers from situations like this,” Cot said.

Cot said adding layers of security protections can increase the cost of bridge projects, which may be why the guidelines weren’t made mandatory.

Since the fall of the Skyway, Yerrid has educated himself on bridge protections and advocates for safer practices. He wonders why updates weren’t put in place for the Baltimore bridge.

“I would love to hear the explanation as to why that wasn’t done for 44 years after we knew how to do it,” Yerrid said.

Maryland officials did not respond Wednesday to questions about protections in place at the Francis Scott Key Bridge. A spokesperson referred the Times to statements made by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, but did not clarify which of the many statements they were referring to.

During a White House news briefing on Wednesday, Buttigieg said the Key “was simply not made to withstand a direct impact on a critical support pier from a vessel that weighs about 200 million pounds.” Asked if the bridge should have had dolphins or other protective measures, Buttigieg demurred.

“I don’t want to get ahead of any investigation,” he said. “Part of what’s being debated is whether any design feature now known would have made a difference in this case. We’ll get more information on that as the investigation proceeds.”

At the time of the Skyway collapse, there was little federal oversight of measures designed to keep bridges safe from ships. The original Skyway had much smaller, fender-like barriers made of aging timber.

Adding dolphins around the base, while expensive, was among the first suggested improvements after the disaster. Plans for the new Skyway called for 36 dolphins at a cost of $36 million. They would contain up to 6,700 tons of crushed rock and be able to withstand nearly 30 million pounds of pressure — more than enough to have stopped the Summit Venture.

By the time the bridge opened in 1987, only four dolphins had been completed. But their impact was proven the day before the Skyway’s grand opening, when a 70-foot shrimp boat with a malfunctioning autopilot rammed into one about a third of a mile from the site of the 1980 crash.

Dolphins have been credited with stopping other ship disasters. In 2011, a runaway barge on the Mississippi River bounced off a dolphin below a rail bridge in La Crescent, Minnesota, causing only superficial damage to the bridge itself.

Other bridges near major shipping ports also have protective measures. There are dolphins around the Dames Point Bridge in Jacksonville and barrier islands surrounding the pylons of the Sydney Lanier Bridge in Brunswick, Georgia. The Delaware Memorial Bridge, a gateway to Philadelphia’s port, is in the midst of a nearly $100 million collision mitigation project that includes eight 80-foot dolphins.

Florida Department of Transportation spokesperson Michael Williams said the state “maintains continuous coordination” with agencies that have a stake in shipping channels, including local law enforcement, port authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard, to make sure safety measures are “comprehensive.”

“The safety and integrity of our bridge infrastructure is a fundamental commitment that we rigorously uphold,” Williams said in an email.

©2024 Tampa Bay Times. Visit tampabay.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Sarasota Police Department opened an investigation into Ziegler after a woman accused him in October of sexually assaulting her. Police opted against charging him with sexual assault after they found a video they said appeared to show consensual sexual activity between Ziegler and his accuser.

But police forwarded a related investigation into Ziegler for video voyeurism to the State Attorney’s Office for the 12th Judicial Circuit. No charges have been filed.

Ziegler’s attorney, Matthew Sarelson, sent an email Jan. 30 to Sarasota City Attorney Robert Fournier saying Ziegler was falsely accused and is therefore a victim whose information should be protected under Marsy’s Law.

“Mr. Ziegler himself has become the victim of a crime, as his accuser has filed a false report to law enforcement authorities — a first-degree misdemeanor under Florida law,” Sarelson wrote.

But the Sarasota Police Department told the Tampa Bay Times in an email on Tuesday that no criminal charges are being pursued against Ziegler’s accuser and the department does not anticipate pursuing charges in the future.

Sarelson and Ziegler did not respond to phone calls and emails requesting comment.

Florida voters in 2018 adopted Marsy’s Law, which gives more rights to crime victims. Among those is the right for crime victims to prevent the disclosure of information that could be used to locate or harass a victim or the victim’s family, or that could disclose confidential details about the victim.

Bobby Block, executive director for the First Amendment Foundation, which advocates for government transparency, said that Ziegler doesn’t seem to have legal standing to use Marsy’s Law.

“A lot of the people represented under Marsy’s Law would likely feel hurt to learn this,” Block said.

Sarelson also wrote that the information on Ziegler’s phone is not public record because it involves his private life and has no relation to government business. He also argued that the information is protected from being released because it is part of an active criminal investigation.

Ziegler’s decision to film the sexual encounter with his accuser is at the heart of the video voyeurism investigation.

Video voyeurism is a third-degree felony defined in Florida law as taking video without the consent of someone “who is dressing, undressing, or privately exposing the body, at a place and time when that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy” for the purposes of “amusement, entertainment, sexual arousal, gratification, or profit, or for the purpose of degrading or abusing another person.”

The criminal investigation into Ziegler has attracted national attention in part because of his former leadership role in the Florida Republican Party and because his wife, a prominent conservative education activist, was involved in at least one sexual encounter with his accuser.

Police records from the investigation show that Bridget Ziegler, who co-founded the Moms for Liberty education group and who currently sits on the Sarasota County School Board, had participated in at least one consensual threesome with Ziegler’s accuser. The accuser told police Ziegler had sexually battered her for years and felt she couldn’t say no to him.

The Republican Party of Florida ousted Ziegler as chairperson last month amid the criminal investigation.

At least 26,000 gallons of wastewater spills, mostly raw sewage, were reported to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as of Friday.

In each instance, the flooding was so severe that officials said it’s not possible to tell exactly how much wastewater was released. Instead, estimates were provided.

In Tampa Bay and neighboring tributaries like the Manatee River and Boca Ciega Bay, winds and high seas toppled boats, sending their gasoline into the waters below. Hurricane Idalia’s floodwaters are also being blamed for a kerosene leak that sent flammable liquid into a St. Petersburg mobile home park.

The largest wastewater spill reported so far was in Punta Gorda, an area hit hard by Hurricane Ian last year. On Sept. 1, it was reported to the state that Idalia’s rainfall caused hydraulics at the city’s Pelican Harbor wastewater treatment plant to fail completely.

Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 gallons of wastewater spilled due to the malfunction, which then flowed into the area surrounding the plant and into a pipe that empties into the Peace River. The river flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

The report sent to the state said that the area around the plant, along with a section of the Peace River, will be tested for E. coli and other harmful bacteria. An update had not been provided at the time of publication.

Another estimated 6,000 gallons spilled in Punta Gorda when a sewer line ruptured while the area was under water due to flooding from Idalia, according to the report.

In Crystal River in Citrus County, the sewer station was overrun with flood waters. According to a report, staff watched as water from the gulf entered the facility and mixed with sewage until the storm surge receded. An estimated five to 10 thousand gallons of sewage escaped during the event.

In Leon County, where Tallahassee is located, an estimated 2,500 gallons of sewage spilled near Piney Z Lake after Idalia caused a power outage at a wastewater pumping station.

On the same day, a Clearwater wastewater station on Harbor Drive near the Gulf of Mexico was inundated with flood water and leaked sewage. A representative for the city said it was impossible to know exactly how much was released, but didn’t believe it was a large amount because so many people were already evacuated from the area and so less sewage was being created.

In Fort Meade, south of Lakeland, water from a reclaimed mining site leaked due to Idalia flooding. A representative of Mosaic, the company that owns the site, said that the spill was around 1,000 gallons.

In Charlotte County, 2,400 gallons of raw wastewater spilled, but the county says all of the water that was spilled was recovered because it was in a contained area.

In Pinellas County, early reports show sinking boats likely dumped diesel and oil into area waterways, including in Boca Ciega Bay and even inside Tampa Bay itself. In one instance, a boat owner alerted the U.S. Coast Guard on Aug. 30 that his boat was pushed against a seawall in Boca Ciega Bay during the storm, and that 15 gallons of diesel and motor oil were spilling into the water, causing a rainbow sheen to emerge around the vessel.

That same day, a caller alerted the Coast Guard that a derelict jet ski was floating in Tampa Bay, with a sheen of oil veiling the watercraft. The incident is being attributed to Hurricane Idalia, according to pollution reports filed to the federal National Response Center, a pollution reporting call center.

Idalia’s floodwaters caused up to 20 gallons of kerosene to leak from an underground tank at Crosswinds mobile home park in St. Petersburg, sending the hazardous fuel down the park’s street and around roughly 10 temporary homes, according to Jim Millican, division chief of the Lealman Fire District.

When Lealman fire crews arrived on the scene the morning of Aug. 30, they built a dam around the spill to prevent it from spreading, Millican said.

“We diked and dammed it so that it couldn’t travel any further and it couldn’t make it into the storm sewer system,” Millican said. The Lealman Fire District consulted with Pinellas County about a hazardous material response, and the remainder of the cleanup was left in the hands of the trailer park’s management group.

To the north, in Tarpon Springs, a caller to the National Response Center reported that when Idalia’s floodwaters receded, diesel oil covered the ground near a canal bordering St. Joseph Sound. The person who reported the pollution suspected it likely stemmed from a sunken barge, according to an initial pollution report.

Once the storm passed and the surge receded, more evidence of spills began to appear. On Aug. 31, a caller to the federal response center said a boat was caught underneath a dock in the Manatee River. The vessel had taken on water during the storm, and there was a sheen of oil around where it now rested, according to a pollution notice.

In Horseshoe Beach, near where Idalia made landfall, aerial drone imagery from Tampa Bay Times reporters showed displaced vehicles spewing gasoline into neighborhood canals. Smaller-scale spills like these are hard to identify in the wake of a storm, and will typically go unreported to state and federal environment regulators.

While it may take months for the full scope of Hurricane Idalia’s environmental toll to come to light, the early snapshot shows Florida waters may have fared better in this storm compared with Hurricane Ian in September of last year.

For instance, at least 17 million gallons of dirty wastewater were dumped into Manatee County waterways alone during Ian, pollution reports showed. Tampa area waters saw more than 300,000 gallons of wastewater spills during Ian.

©2023 Tampa Bay Times. Visit tampabay.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.