CLEWISTON, Fla — Fox 4’s Hendry County Community Correspondent Austin Schargorodski is the only reporter who got an interview with the Clewiston mayor to talk about Wednesday's raid inside City Hall.
Schargorodski works in this community every day, so the mayor knows him and agreed to speak exclusively about what this investigation means for the city.
Watch to hear what the Clewiston mayor said about Wednesdays raid of City Hall:
When Mayor James Pittman saw what happened Wednesday - deputies walking out of City Hall with boxes and bags of evidence - he says it caught him off guard.
“It was a surprise. I was actually out of town on Wednesday, so when I got back to town I came up here to sign some documents and that's when I learned City Hall had been taken over,” Pittman said.
The Hendry County Sheriff’s Office says its investigation started in August. That’s when detectives got a tip about what they describe as “concerning business practices” inside City Hall.
They worked with the State Attorney’s Office, issued subpoenas, and say what they found led to this week’s search warrant. But investigators haven’t said what they were looking for, and Mayor Pittman told Schargorodski he doesn’t know.
“The city has been very cooperative with this investigation and we will be. The city has nothing to hide. We’re transparent about everything we do—our records, our meetings,” Pittman said.
But there has been turmoil this year. Former operations director Jose Enrique Soto was arrested in late May, charged with sending sexually explicit texts to a 12-year-old girl.
Then in late August, longtime Police Chief Tom Lewis resigned, saying only that serving as chief was one of the greatest honors of his career. Fox 4 has filed several records requests to try to get more information about both former employees.
Pittman said he’s heard the concerns about all of it. “We’re still the City of Clewiston. We’re still America’s sweetest town. Even though things like this happen once in a while, the people are the same… we love our city, we love our citizens, and as of today it’s business as usual,” Pittman said.
The Sheriff’s Office confirms they took a substantial amount of evidence for criminal analysis, and it’s unclear how long that will take to process.
