The Photoshop cop
Image by Ken Kokotek (aka Picasso)
Ken Kokotek mocked his superiors on the Internet. Now he’s paying for it.
Source: creative loafing.com
Written by Alex Picket
On May 5, around 6 p.m., St. Petersburg police officer Ken Kokotek walked into SPPD headquarters carrying a bundle of homemade invitation cards. The cards announced his retirement party, something he had been looking forward to after 25 years with the police force. He stayed only 20 minutes, just enough time to stuff about 65 invitations into the second-floor mailboxes of fellow police officers.
But these weren’t ordinary Hallmark party invitations. The card’s front showed the famously bumbling silent film characters the Keystone Cops, onto which Kokotek had superimposed the faces of Mayor Rick Baker, Police Chief Chuck Harmon, Assistant Chief Luke Williams, Major Melanie Bevan and other SPPD supervisors.
Inside, after the invite and map to his home, Kokotek revealed a secret he had hidden for six years: He was “Picasso,” the screen name he had used to post doctored images lampooning SPPD’s command staff on the police message board website, LEOaffairs.com.
For the top brass at the SPPD, the party was over for Picasso. After learning of the invitations, they immediately began an Internal Affairs investigation that concluded late last month. According to IA files, if Kokotek had not retired, he would have been fired for posting “denigrating” and “discriminatory” images of his co-workers. And now, the SPPD is seeking to take away his law enforcement certification, which would prevent him from ever being hired again as a Florida police officer.
The decision has worried some police officers on and off the Internet. Don’t officers have the right to criticize their superiors? Or did Kokotek’s attacks — which targeted both white and black administrators — aggravate racial tensions in a department where morale is already notoriously low?
“If what I was doing is directly affecting morale or that I cause the morale problem, I’d see that,” says Kokotek. “I didn’t tarnish the reputation St. Pete had. St. Pete did that itself.”