A Year in Review: WINK Investigators reflect on 2023

From Hurricane Ian insurance challenges to controversial law enforcement actions, the WINK News Investigative team gets answers to your questions and solutions to your problems.

Looking ahead to 2024, WINK News Investigative Reporters Celine McArthur and Peter Flesher reflect on some of the biggest cases of 2023.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office was the focus of three major investigations launched throughout the year.

In August, an off-duty LCSO deputy was set to be arrested. Michael Soto’s car was being towed after he struggled with multiple field sobriety tests while refusing any form of blood alcohol testing.

However, Soto was never officially arrested, claiming that he was suffering from a medical incident. Instead of being taken to the hospital, Soto was eventually taken to his home. Sheriff Carmine Marceno, when asked to be interviewed, refused all of the requests, despite committing to transparency.

“We need to look into this more, but what I am delivering you is transparency,” said Marceno. “If it’s not right, I would stand here before you without hesitation. When I own something, I own it.”

Marceno publicly admitted that there were disagreements between his staff at the scene about whether Soto was drunk.

Marceno was recently documented in an in-house promotion video stating, “Jumpsuits are red, justice is sweet, commit a crime in Lee County and your a** will get beat.”

Many of our WINK News viewers expressed their concerns regarding the violent messaging in that video. Marceno claims his video doesn’t represent his views on the use of force, yet had refused to tell why he said those words in the first place.

In a Facebook post, he claimed the public affairs office quote “runs several if not dozens of scripts for videos.” So far, public leaders have neither shown support nor criticism of the video, with law enforcement experts expressing no surprise at the lack of feedback.

“That’s probably a death sentence to their political career,” said Dave Thomas, a professor of forensic science at Florida Gulf Coast University.

LCSO is also in the midst of an internal criminal investigation, which involves an arrest where a sergeant repeatedly punched a man he was trying to handcuff while two other deputies stood by.

Since then, the three deputies have been fired; however, LCSO offered few details on what happened.

Through investigative journalism, we had been able to fill in many of the blanks with this security camera video, an internal affairs summary, and exclusive interviews with two of the fired deputies.

LCSO and the state attorney’s office refused to talk further about the ongoing criminal investigation for now.

We also gave a series of exclusive, behind-the-scenes looks at the Fort Myers Police Department operations as the police union publicly campaigned for changes, like removing the head of internal affairs. We were told that the police department will operate differently in 2024.

Then-interim Chief Randal Pepitone refused to sign off on more than 30 counts of discipline from his own internal affairs department, citing that he disagreed with their recommendations.

Then, the FMPD union publicly campaigned for the head of its own internal affairs unit, Lesa Breneman, to be removed. They claimed she had abused her power and repeatedly violated department policy and Florida statutes.

Jason Fields was named police chief in August, committing to re-evaluating the I-A department.

“I have to review if there’s any active investigations that involve internal affairs,” said Fields. “If not, I’m doing an injustice and that wouldn’t be fair. I don’t want to do anything in haste.”

Many were left devastated by Hurricane Ian in 2022, and they needed help navigating the insurance claim process.

Elaine and Michael Damiano located in Cape Coral were hit hard, saying that they were ignored by their insurance company for months.

The head of the insurance company admitted to dropping the ball on the senior couple and sent them a six-figure check. The Damiano’s said it only covered half the cost to repair their home, and the company hasn’t paid another cent.

Now, the Damiano’s are gearing up for a legal battle with the insurance company, which will be covered in 2024.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have the resources to fight it out in court. Kathy Bricker had been stuck living between emergency housing and her van for more than a year following Ian.

Her home was destroyed during the storm, so she was assigned a hotel room until an emergency trailer became available. Unfortunately, due to her bad knee, Bricker could not enter her trailer safely.

Having requested to change trailers, Bricker waited months for a new unit. The kicker, a routine maintenance alert revealed she was never placed back into the queue to receive a new trailer that she could safely access.

After contacting WINK, Bricker was finally given a safe place to live in, giving her much-needed stability while she tried to land on her feet.

Things took a turn for the unexpected, as an organizer of a Hurricane Ian relief concert at the Hertz Arena had contacted WINK to place them into the news.

However, the event was riddled with red flags after it was discovered that the information presented was not accurate. The Disaster Relief Benefit had turned out not to be a registered charity or non-profit, with the organizer admitting on camera that all of the money raised had gone into his personal bank account.

“The sponsor money and the ticket sales go to my for-profit production company because we had to work with a for-profit company and did not have time to, you know, start a new one specifically for the event,” said Joe Knopp, the event organizer.

Following our investigation, the concert was canceled, reinforcing the old saying not to believe everything you read.