Blue Sink Monthly recently spoke with Detective Lisa Schoneman of the Pasco Sheriff’s Office’s Major Crime Unit in order to get a perspective on the county many of us don’t usually get, perhaps fortunately. Information Officer Kevin Doll, who coordinated the setup of the interview with Det. Schoneman, sat nearby to observe as Kristi Leach spoke with Det. Schoneman, and the detective conferred with him once or twice on statistics. The interview was conducted in Det. Schoneman’s cubicle in the Major Crimes office on Little Road, surrounded by the day-to-day activity of the other detectives making calls and otherwise conducting business. Det. Schoneman walked around forewarning her co-workers the interview would be recorded. “Otherwise you might hear a few choice words,” she explained. “And then they’ll be mad at me. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’” she mimicked. Her cubicle was considerably smaller than the one occupied by Leach at her day job as a technical writer. The shared space was loud and frenetic. Det. Schoneman herself appeared calm and centered. When asked what she does to relieve stress, she said she works out and boats with her husband of two years.

Kristi: You must know a lot about this county to be successful in your job.

Det. Schoneman: Well, I’ve been here my whole life.

Kristi: And how old are you?

Det. Schoneman: I’m 45.

K:How long have you worked in this area as a detective?

Det. S.: I’ve been with the Sheriff’s Office since 1989, and I’ve been in Major Crimes since 2000.

K: Have you ever worked in law enforcement in any other town?

Det. S.: No, I’ve always been here.

K: What kinds of things do you do to stay current with goings on in the area, or how did you get to be more familiar with the county?

Det. S.:Well, growing up here has a lot to do with it. I’ve seen the county go from nothing to what it is now. I mean, I remember when 19 was a two-lane highway. The county really has—especially in the last 15 years—just really taken off. When I was first hired in 1989, I was hired as a corrections officer at the Dade City jail. At that time I think that jail had 150 people and the New Port Richey jail held 200. Currently [confers with Doll] it’s about 1500 now [between Land O' Lakes and New Port Richey]. So that just tells you, since I started here in 1989, how much we’ve grown and changed.

K: But do you do anything, besides having worked here a lived here a long time, I mean, do you do anything to consciously seek out more information about the area, or become more familiar?

Det. S.:Well, you’re going become familiar with the county when you’re working in it, and, when I started out at the jail, I also worked in pre-trial services, which is the lesser offenders that get arrested get a chance to be released on ROR [released on own recognizance], but a lot of them are supervised. It’s almost like being on probation before your conviction. At that time, we were supervising about 400 apiece and you had to go out in the county and check up on them and everything. I went from that to road patrol to community policing to property crimes to here. I was also a hostage negotiator for 12 years, a forensic artist for the last 15 years, a voice stress analyzer for the last seven years. It’s what they call a CVSA.

K: CVSA?

Det. S.: It’s kind of like a polygraph, but instead of the old-fashioned polygraph with the wires and stuff, it’s done on a laptop computer, and it checks the level of your voice for truthfulness when you answer questions.

K: Is that admissible in court?

Det. S.: No. It’s just another investigative tool. So, as you can tell, I’ve been involved in a lot of different areas of the agency. You don’t have much choice. If you’re doing your job, you’re going learn about the community and the area and become involved. And I think probably my style of investigation has always been to treat people as I would want to be treated, and I’ve always gotten along with people and had a gift for gab, you know.

K: How does that help you be successful at your job?

Det. S.: Well, if you think about it, if I want to know if you’ve committed a crime or even the victim of a crime, if my approach to you is “I don’t care,” kind of blasé, maybe a little bit more authoritative, pushy, if I start yelling at you and trying to get information from you, as a person, what are you going to do? You’re going to shut down. You’re not going to want to talk to me. I know I wouldn’t want to talk to somebody who’s treating me that way. But if you explain to people what you’re doing—this is a job, I need to find out the truth, what happened here, and you just generally treat people like you would want to be treated, you’re going to be successful. It doesn’t work a hundred percent of the time, but human nature is if you treat someone decently they’re going to respond to that, whether it be the suspect, the victim, the community, whoever you’re working with. And, you know, we’re here for the victims, it’s about them. It may be another case to me, but it’s their child, it’s their son, it’s their daughter, you know, it’s their husband, it’s their wife, that’s their world. And when I forget that is when I need to get out of this.

K: What seems to be unique or unusual about West Pasco?

Det. S.: I think we’ve grown really fast. I’ve been here my whole life, and I think that at one time we were one of the fastest growing counties. I think us and Hernando was charted way up there with population, and we just went through the roof in no time. I know it’s been real hard to keep up with the growth. We’re certainly nowhere near what we need to be able to handle everything that comes up because there’s a lot going on for the limited amount of us to handle.

K: So resources are an issue?

Det. S.:Yeah, resources are always an issue. We’re just growing too fast to keep up. There’s just so many of us to do so much, and, with the economy, I feel there’s just been a really bad increase all over the country, not just Pasco County—everywhere—with the abuse of proscription drugs. That has really just pushed through everything. I would say a high majority of the homicide cases and robberies and stuff that I work are drug-related and a lot of that time it’s prescription drugs.

K: When I found out from Kevin Doll that I would be interviewing you, I looked you up on the St. Petersburg Times site, and I saw that you recently had a big break in the 2006 double murder of Derek Pieper and . . .

Det. S.:That was Derek Pieper [corrected Leach’s mispronunciation of Pieper’s name] and Raymond Veluz. As a matter of fact, they just put [Luc Pierre-Charles, Jr.] in the top 15 [most wanted] in the country.

K: Do you think your knowledge of the area and your approach had anything to do with being able to get that break?

Det. S.: I think any detective, when they get to know people, and they’ve been there a long time, they have people that trust them and that you can talk to, is a definite benefit. I mean, you’ve got to be able to talk to people and you’ve got to be able to get them to talk to you. And when you have people killing people, there’s a real, well-founded fear for their lives. And it takes a lot for them to put their trust into the detective that they’re talking to get that information. Because they’re putting their lives in danger by talking to us a lot of times and they know that. But most people want to do the right thing and if we don’t and if they don’t have somebody they can trust, then it’s just going to keep on going, it’s just going to keep returning.

K: Is there anything else about the county that you think people ought to know that maybe they don’t or that maybe they just aren’t as aware of as they should be?

Det. S.: If you know something, be willing to speak to law enforcement. Be willing to help us out. We’re there, we want to be able to do all we can, but we can’t be everywhere. A lot of times, people have information, they know about crimes, and they don’t want to be involved. Either for fear or what or they just don’t want to be bothered. Until our area steps up, and, every area, until we step up and take responsibility for what’s going on in our own communities, we take it one case at a time. I have people who get upset with me and say, “Why aren’t you doing something about this and doing something about that,” and it’s like, “I’m one person. I’m doing every thing that I can with every case that I get.” But not every case is solvable. You know, we’ve had such a rise in new people in this area. Florida’s a melting pot. We’re a unique state. We get people from everywhere. I’m a rarity, to talk to somebody like me who’s been here my whole life. I think almost everybody in this room, except one detective I’m aware of, is from somewhere else. Everybody is from somewhere else. Nobody’s from here. There’s just a handful of us.

K: How do you think that affects attitudes towards crime and law enforcement?

Det. S.: Well, I think when you have a melting pot of a community, you know, I don’t really understand what a tight community environment is because I grew up in a melting pot community. But I have visited other communities—my husband’s, where he’s from, and it’s a different world. When you have everybody that grew up together, everybody knows everybody, and everybody’s kids are involved with everybody else’s kids, and it’s a family community, and there’s years and years and years of that, it’s totally different than when you come to a new county like ours, and everybody’s new. Everybody’s new.

K: If there’s anything else you’d like to throw in . . .

Det. S.:This was a very small town when I grew up here. A very small town. When I first moved here, the deputies were driving their own cars. And they’d paint the stars on them, okay, and I’m 45, so that wasn’t too many years ago. And, I mean—just what has changed. Our CJIS numbers—the number that you’re assigned to become a law enforcement officer in Pasco County—mine’s 828. Okay and that means prior to me there were 827 sworn officers for Pasco County, and I started here 20 years ago. Now we’re up to the 4000s. And that’s in the time span of 20 years.

Resources from the Pasco Sheriff’s Office:

• County Crime Statistics, 2000-2007
• Online form to submit anonymous tips
• History of the Sheriff’s Office