ORLANDO, Fla. — Osceola County Sheriff Chris Blackmon said the agency will be conducting an internal audit following allegations made against suspended Sheriff Marcos Lopez. This comes as the agency is navigating multiple staff changes just one month since Lopez was arrested on racketeering charges.
Blackmon said it all comes down to transparency.
“I hate to use that word transparency, but it’s because I want to be transparent,” he said. “Most importantly, to the taxpayers of Osceola County so they can see that we’ve done a full audit.”
Blackmon said his focus is to protect the community, with a focus on vulnerable populations like youth and senior citizens, as the new sheriff. He said a huge part of this goal is to ensure the sheriff’s office is above reproach.
“We have an oath of office we’ve taken, and we have pledged to protect our office and serve the public and integrity and trust, and as long as I’m the sheriff of Osceola County, it’s going to be high integrity and we’re going to be trustworthy,” he said. “We’re not going to be misleading people, hiding things, ducking from the public. We’re going to be accountable for our actions and our answers.”
Blackmon said they’ve already told staff to come forward if they had concerns, and these conversations have led to new details.
“We’ve met with the staff here and I’ve said to the staff, ‘if there’s anything that concerns you or anything that’s of concern I should know about. I need you to come forward and let me know, because if we find it later, while we’re doing our digging through the agency and through stuff that’s going on, it’s not going to be pretty,’” he said. “We’ve had some stuff come our way, from those conversations ... but I can’t discuss those because both of them are criminal.”
Details relating to potential charges filed were extremely limited. Blackmon said this is not related to any of the RICO charges, but this has come up as a result of others coming forward.
He said the public can expect an update soon.
Blackmon said the point of the audit is to reveal any potential underlying details. Right now, the cost of the audit is still unknown. However, a spokesperson with the Osceola County Commission told Spectrum News 13 that they’ve agreed to fund this audit and partner with Blackmon.
“We call it a forensic audit of the sheriff’s office budget and make sure there’s nothing there,” he said. “Because you know with what the sheriff’s office just went through and experienced with the previous sheriff, we want to make sure that the plate’s clean and there’s nothing there that’s going to be alarming because going forward, everything’s under my charge.”
When asked how everything has been going within the agency since he took over, Blackmon responded “quite honestly, fantastic.”
He added, “We have fantastic employees, both civilian employees as well as sworn. We have a lot of good people that are doing the mission, the critical mission, which is a safer Florida.”
He said they are hiring new staff members to join the agency as they aim to uphold integrity with new leadership.