Sarasota Herald Tribune 

September 28, 1998
Section: LOCAL/STATE
Page: 1B

The state attorney's office has cleared Sarasota Police Officer Thomas Laughlin of any criminal wrongdoing in the beating of a handcuffed prisoner.

Laughlin was suspended for allegedly punching Gilbert Mendoza twice in the head after the 44-year-old man spit on him in the Sarasota County Jail in April. Chief Assistant State Attorney Henry Lee found that there was ``insufficient credible evidence to warrant criminal prosecution'' of Laughlin. The 29-year-old officer was suspended without pay for 10 days after an internal police investigation. The city's Civil Service Board reduced that suspension to five days Tuesday.

Lee re-interviewed all the witnesses in the case, including the three jail booking clerks who filed the original complaints against Laughlin. The clerks had said that Laughlin punched Mendoza after first subjecting him to a series of ethnic slurs.

In a memo Thursday to State Attorney Earl Moreland, Lee said that one supposed witness, Claire Arbagy, told him that she never saw the incident.

Lee found that a second witness, David Strahsburg, may have a bias against Laughlin because the officer is a close friend of a supervisor who had just demoted Strahsburg. He also said that Strahsburg could not have seen and heard the entire incident from where he was standing.

Lee said that a third witness, Hannalore Stanford, was in the best position to view the incident but that her testimony ``may not be credible'' because it conflicted with what Mendoza told investigators. Mendoza told investigators that Laughlin was not the officer who taunted him and he did not know who hit him.