Last week, the Orlando Police Department released their final report from the “investigation” of unpermitted renovations and code violations at Pulse, which survivors say hindered escape during the shooting. The OPD closed the case, claiming the Pulse owners cannot be criminally charged with involuntary manslaughter.
This came days after Pulse survivors brought up this case during the City of Orlando's Pulse Memorial Committee Meeting that took place on August 22, 2024. The report also came days before the Orlando Sentinel released a special report that the OPD hid the truth about the death of Delmy Alvarez; raising "tough questions about how the Orlando Police Department protects its city, and how it takes responsibility for its mistakes – to the public, to those who oversee its activities, and most importantly to those it hurts."
The OPD’s investigation of the violations at Pulse was NOT a thorough examination of the laws broken at Pulse but rather a review of our own 4-year-old report, titled “They Knew.”
The OPD did not interview all of the complainants and the Pulse owners, nor did they conduct a building inspection. Nor did they gather additional critical evidence—like interviewing Commissioner Patty Sheehan, who publicly admitted concerns over the unpermitted renovations that she was told about from “some of the first responders” to have hindered rescue.
The OPD even ignored statements from their own officers, which are documented in their supplemental report from June 12, 2016, and the Internal Affairs Investigation completed in 2019. This report was never published on the City of Orlando's Pulse Tragedy Public Records website.
The OPD also dismissed statements made in our grassroots report and labeled easily-discoverable facts as “unknown,” despite clear video evidence and what is documented elsewhere in the City's records.
Since publishing “They Knew” on our original website in 2020, we have gathered a wealth of additional evidence through public records requests and direct discussions with survivors, former Pulse employees, and community members. We published these investigative findings on the Pulse Families and Survivors for Justice website, providing additional evidence that the OPD also ignored.
In their report, the OPD disputed that unpermitted renovations hindered rescue by providing a timeline created by the Police Foundation, a pro-police nonprofit hired by the Department of Justice to analyze the Pulse response, as evidence that their efforts were not impeded.
While the timeline shows that 90 people were rescued, it doesn’t discuss the roughly 30 minutes it took to locate wounded survivors trapped in the unpermitted upstairs office (accessible only by ladder) while a helicopter searched for rooftop access that did not exist. Nor does it portray the two hours it cost to locate survivors trapped in a dressing room. Police had to move a Coke cooler from what was supposed to be an open exit in order to pinpoint where they were. These efforts took place while Officer Timothy Stanley was outside trying to draw a proper layout of the club on a wet piece of paper (wet from his own sweat) as dictated to him by a traumatized Pulse employee.
The Police Foundation’s timeline also does not show that the SWAT team breached the building in the wrong spot after detonating an explosive. That caused the shooter to kill more victims who were already trapped in the women’s bathroom for three hours.
All of these facts are easily discoverable within the OPD's own records.
Together, these facts do not support the OPD’s claim that Detective Adam Gruler’s familiarity with the layout was enough for first responders to successfully navigate Pulse and efficiently rescue survivors.
Despite these missteps, the OPD did not exonerate the Pomas of legal violations. The OPD confirmed that there were code violations and unpermitted renovations that may have obstructed escape but stated it could not prove this “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Clearly, the OPD's inability to confirm that unpermitted renovations and code violations obstructed escape and rescue is because their investigation was flawed.
Still, for the first time in 8.5 years, the OPD confirmed that Pulse was operating illegally as a nightclub in violation of its conditional use permit. Court records show that the shooter found Pulse by Googling “downtown Orlando Nightclubs.” If Pulse operated legally as a martini bar and restaurant, it would have never appeared in the shooter’s “top” search results, possibly preventing the mass shooting at Pulse altogether.
The confirmation proves that the Office of the Mayor lied to the public and to the Orlando Sentinel about this violation for years, denying the evidence from their own public records.
We have tracked the City's blatant lies about this throughout the years and have shared this with the public, which you can read here.
It's also worth noting that Cassandra Lasfer no longer works for the City of Orlando and left her position as Public Information Officer months before the release of the OPD's report.
In their report, the OPD also stated that there is "no statute of limitations issue as a prosecution for a felony resulting in death may be commenced at any time as noted in Florida Statute 775.15(1)." Thus, we will continue our fight for justice.
We lead with these questions:
What is the basis for OPD’s determination that the code violations and unpermitted renovations were not done “with a reckless disregard for human life” and that a mass shooting could not have been “reasonably foreseen,” when (1) they never interviewed the Pomas to comprehend their reasoning for owning and operating an illegal, unpermitted gay nightclub; (2) gun violence is common and was even deemed a public health crisis by the AMA two days after the Pulse Nightclub shooting; (3) Florida businesses like Pulse that sell alcohol are required to be gun-free zones; (4) mass shootings have become part of daily American life since the mass shooting at Columbine, and (5) mass shootings are something that even school children prepare for?
Given that building and fire codes exist not only for life safety but also so the chain of liability is not broken, is the OPD’s legal basis that the shooting “supersedes any possible criminal liability the Pomas could have had for any of the deaths” even legitimate?
With so many conflicts of interest, including Mayor Buddy Dyer being on the Chairman’s Council of the Pulse owner’s now-dissolved nonprofit and the Pomas operating a restaurant inside City Hall, and much evidence held solely by the FBI, why wasn’t this case referred to the FBI or another independent party?
We will provide an analysis of the OPD's report soon.
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