Fired New College official had history of indecent exposure charges
On a sunny afternoon in March, Fred Piccolo pulled his car over on a residential street in Manatee County, police say, blocking the path of a woman walking on the side of the road.
Piccolo, New College of Florida’s director of media and marketing, said that he’d just been caught by his girlfriend’s husband and needed help with directions, according to an arrest warrant filed in Manatee Circuit Court last week.
When she looked inside the car, the report said, the unnamed woman saw that Piccolo was completely naked and touching his genitals.
Piccolo was arrested last week and charged with indecent exposure in the wake of the incident. The school terminated his employment the next day, after receiving questions about the incident from the media, according to text messages reviewed by the Tampa Bay Times.
It wasn’t the first time Piccolo has faced such charges.
When New College of Florida hired him in December, he was facing three pending cases for “exposure of sexual organs.” Two years before that, he was sued for allegedly sending lewd messages to a state lawmaker. That suit was dropped but still covered in the press.
However, none of the cases showed up in a background check requested by the school, nor did Piccolo voluntarily disclose them, according to documents obtained by the Times.
In August, Piccolo entered a changing room at a Banana Republic inside Sarasota’s University Town Center Mall and removed his clothes before calling an employee over, according to a police report. The employee told the police that Piccolo was masturbating while looking at her. Two weeks later he twice retuned to a Dillard’s in the same shopping center and exposed himself to store employees, according to police.
State prosecutors filed three charges of indecent exposure in Sarasota County court in early October. Since the cases were misdemeanors, Piccolo was not arrested and instead received a criminal summons from the Sarasota Clerk of Courts.
Despite these charges, a January background check performed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at the request of New College indicated that “no relevant criminal records” existed for Piccolo.
Charges that don’t result in an arrest do not show up on a Florida Department of Law Enforcement background check, according to the agency’s website, which may explain why Piccolo’s prior cases went unrecorded. Cases in which an arresting agency doesn’t take fingerprints and submit them to the state won’t show up either, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesperson said via email.
Piccolo was released from Manatee County jail last week. He was placed under house arrest and is required to wear a GPS ankle monitor. As a result of the recent arrest, at a hearing Thursday in Sarasota, he was required to post a $75,000 bond for his three other pending cases.
Each of the three Sarasota cases carries a penalty of up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. The Manatee case, being a second offense, is a third-degree felony and carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
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