Polk sheriff’s workers respond in print to lawyer
By Kelly Griffith
Sentinel Staff Writer
October 21, 2006 -- More than 450 friends and co-workers of a slain Polk County deputy sheriff have taken out an advertisement in a Lakeland newspaper in response to an attorney’s request for an inquiry into the SWAT team killing of the man authorities say ambushed the deputy and his police dog.
The ad is signed by numerous employees of the Polk Sheriff’s Office, as well as hundreds of others, and is written as an open letter to attorney Grady C. Irvin Jr., who had a news conference in Tampa a week after the Sept. 28 shooting of Deputy Vernon Matthew “Matt” Williams and his police dog, Diogi, after a traffic stop west of Lakeland.
Williams asked for the governor’s office to open an independent investigation into the subsequent law-enforcement killing of Angilo Freeland, the man who investigators say killed Williams and who later was riddled with 68 bullets from nine-member SWAT team after an all-night search.
The letter muses about what Irvin might tell Freeland’s family in explanation of the crime. Some of the family members were at the news conference, but they said little.