PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — I looked at more than 100 pages of St. Lucie County sheriff candidate Steven Giordano's personnel records, including a critical internal affairs report complied nearly 10 years ago.
The Democratic nominee for county sheriff calls almost all of its findings false.
Steven Giordano worked at the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office as a deputy in the jail from 2005 until he resigned in 2015 following an internal affairs investigation.
"A lot of false allegations were made," said Giordano. "And I'm here to make sure this does not happen to anyone else ever again."
Now, he's running to lead the department he left.
Giordano agreed to sit down with me to talk about those allegations from an internal affairs report that cited him for "association with criminals."
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Specifically, for associating with a man who the report says "…was involved in the sale of cocaine and prescription pills"
I checked that man's background and found he'd been convicted of 10 drug-related felonies, the last one in 2016. I pressed Giordano about the relationship.
"We grew up in this community, there's a lot of people here that know a lot of people who know a lot of people, I don't know everybody's background," said Giordano.
I asked why he didn't know the man's criminal background who he grew up with and associated with.
"I didn't say I grew up with him, we grew up in the community."
That IA report cites another man with "approximately 20 criminal charges" who was living at Giordano's home "for a few months."
I dug into that individual's record and found he was convicted of misdemeanors, DUI, and traffic charges from 1999-2007.
"I think he painted my house. He was a friend of a friend," said Giordano of the man sheriff's investigators said he lived with for "a few months."
"I think he maybe spent two nights because he was painting the house," Giordano said.
The report also found Giordano was "assisting a local bondsman in locating a fugitive while off duty."
The IA report finds Giordano admitting, "He was paid $100 for his help."
"I never helped him catch anybody who skipped bond," said Giordano, who denies he was even paid. "I was never on duty. I was never in uniform. That was also a false allegation."
Giordano submitted his letter of resignation the day after the sheriff's office released its internal affairs report.
I asked him why he quit, and didn't fight the findings.
"I gave them 10 years of my livelihood from 23 to 33, the best years of my life to this agency," said Giordano. "I was being mistreated, I felt, and disrespected through the agency through all these b.s. allegations."
Giordano's personnel records also show he received high marks on performance evaluations.
And commendations like this one in 2010, for his work on the jail's crisis intervention team that led to an "increase in officer safety and decreased incidents involving the mentally ill in our jail."
Giordano recently worked as a security officer at the FPL nuclear power plant in St. Lucie County, and says he quit that job to run for sheriff.
