PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. -- A Pinellas County child protectives services employee is behind bars after she was accused of falsifying records.
Taylor Martin is the employee and part of her job is to go out and interview neighbors when they get an abuse or neglect claim.
According to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, she wrote down fake responses from neighbors and in some cases, never actually interviewed them.
Sheriff Gualtieri said during Friday's press conference that her false documents did not have any impact on the outcome of the cases and that no children were hurt.
The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office took notice after Martin's supervisor read one of the interviews and said it lacked any detail and seemed very generic.
When the supervisor reached out to the neighbor, she said she had never been interviewed. On top of that, they said Martin incorrectly assumed what the neighbor would say about the woman they were investigating because they were friends but deputies found out the neighbor did have concerns about random people showing up at the house at all hours and if drugs were involved.
"You can't fix stupid," Sheriff Gualtieri said.
Martin reportedly told deputies she was overwhelmed with the workload.
"If she was overwhelmed, she should have came forward with her supervisors... we would have given her resources to help her succeed."
The sheriff's office is going to look at all the cases that Martin handled since she joined the county in April 2016.
