Inside Tampa cops’ hard choice on night of Miami-Dade chief’s suicide attempt

Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, a past president of the sheriffs association who was at the hotel at the time for a conference, and Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister said Tampa police made the right call to let Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez go on the night when he would later try to take his own life. Experts who reviewed the case for the Tampa Bay Times agreed.

But it wasn’t an easy decision for officers to make, said Jillian Snider, an adjunct lecturer for John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who reviewed body camera footage from that night.

“I think that they were kind of stuck in a really hard position,” Snider said…

Snider, who is a former New York City Police Department officer, reviewed the case for the Times and said officers made the best decision they could have given the information they had. She said law enforcement officers are cognizant of the stress that comes with the job and high suicide rates in the profession.

“I don’t think a cop would have extended a professional courtesy that they thought could have led to an officer, or in this case, Director Ramirez, inflicting a gunshot wound upon himself,” Snider said. “That’s where you draw the line of professional courtesy, because you want to do what’s in the best interest of that person.”