WPTV investigates the sheriff candidate’s personnel file

I reviewed more than 100 pages of St. Lucie County sheriff candidate Steven Giordano’s personnel files, including a critical internal affairs report prepared nearly 10 years ago.

The Democratic candidate for county sheriff calls almost all of his findings false.

Steven Giordano worked as a deputy in the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office from 2005 until his resignation in 2015 following an internal investigation.

“There were a lot of false claims made,” Giordano said. “And I’m here to make sure this never happens to anyone again.”

Now he’s running to head the department he left.

Giordano agreed to sit down with me to discuss the allegations from an internal affairs report that cited him for “association with criminals.”

Specifically, because of its association with a man who, according to the report, was “involved in selling cocaine and prescription pills.”

I checked this man’s background and found that he had been convicted of ten drug crimes, the most recent of which was in 2016. I pressed Giordano about the relationship.

“We grew up in this community, there are a lot of people here who know a lot of people, who know a lot of people, I don’t know everyone’s background,” Giordano said.

I asked why he didn’t know the criminal background of the man he grew up with and was 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 lived in Giordano’s home for “several months.”

I looked at this person’s record and found that he had misdemeanor, drunk driving and traffic convictions between 1999 and 2007.

“I think he painted my house. “He was a friend of a friend,” Giordano said of the man who sheriff’s investigators said he had lived with for “a few months.”

“I think he spent maybe two nights because he was painting the house,” Giordano said.

The report also noted that Giordano “assisted a local bail bondsman in locating a fugitive while off duty.”

In the IA report, Giordano admits, “He received $100 for his help.”

“I never helped him catch anyone who skipped bail,” said Giordano, who denies he was even paid. “I was never on duty. I was never in uniform. That was also a false claim.”

Giordano submitted his resignation letter the day after the sheriff’s office released its internal affairs report.

I asked him why he stopped and didn’t argue with the results.

“I gave them 10 years of my livelihood from 23 to 33, the best years of my life, to this agency,” Giordano said. “I felt like I was mistreated and disrespected by the agency because of all these malicious allegations.”

Giordano’s personnel files also show that he received high marks in performance reviews.

And awards like this one in 2010 for his work on the prison’s crisis intervention team, which resulted in an “increase in officer safety and a reduction in mental health incidents in our prison.”

Giordano recently worked as a security guard at the FPL nuclear power plant in St. Lucie County and says he quit that job to run for sheriff.

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