On Aug. 24 a drug agent spotted Lt. Jason Bender of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office in a manager’s office, reaching into a safe where cocaine and other illegal drugs were locked up.
Later that day, when managers checked the safe, they discovered more than 500 pain pills missing.
Bender was a 23-year department veteran, a man who had worked his way up the ranks, starting at age 19 as a dispatcher. His personnel file is filled with stellar job reviews.
“I didn’t do this,” he told investigators.
But three hours later, while being questioned by then-Sheriff Don Eslinger, he broke down sobbing.
He had stolen some of the pills, he said, because of an addiction that began five years earlier when he had rotator cuff surgery.
“I love my job. … I am so ashamed. And I’m so embarrassed. … Sheriff, I’m so sorry. God, all I wanted was for you to be proud of me.”
Bender, 42, of Oviedo, is now charged with grand theft and has resigned.
An Explorer scout
Jason Martin Bender grew up in Sanford. He was an Explorer Scout and worked as a “youth deputy” at the Sheriff’s Office, handing out uniforms to inmates at the county jail, according to agency records.
“He always wanted to be an officer,” said former neighbor Kim O’Neal, who hired him to babysit her children. “As a kid, that’s all he talked about. Don Eslinger was his idol, for goodness sake.”
Bender graduated from Seminole High School in 1993 and a few months later applied to become a Sheriff’s Office dispatcher. He was hired in 1994.
Two years later, he was promoted to deputy.
He was a road deputy, provided security at the Seminole County Courthouse, worked as an investigator, managed child abuse investigators, managed public relations campaigns, and in 2003 served as a drug agent, an assignment that lasted for two years.
There were no records in his personnel file that indicate he was abusing drugs then.
‘Slowly it took over’
During his confession, Bender told managers that his addiction started because of problems at home. He was drinking heavily. His marriage was falling apart, and he was depressed, he said. Then he had shoulder surgery.
“The prescription made everything go away,” he said. “It made my heartache go away. It made … my life better. And then it slowly took over.”
Three years ago he realized it was out of control, he said.
“I would go for months at a time with having nothing,” he told investigators in August. “[I] thought that I was s-strong and could beat it. But I didn’t. I’m not strong,” he said.
Still he got glowing annual job evaluations. In 2015, his boss, Heather Smith, wrote, “Lt. Bender is a progressive thinker who truly embraces the chance to effect positive change. … He is very strong administratively: well-organized, thorough, comfortable presenting in front of groups of any size, and he interacts exceptionally well with members of the public.”
But by March 2016, when he got his next review, there were signs of trouble.
He seemed “disconnected,” wrote Smith, and he had begun to miss meetings.
In May, he took a week off for more surgery, records show. He did not give supervisors any details.
Whatever it was, it prompted his doctor to prescribe 30 Oxycodone pills, he said during his confession. When he asked for a refill, the doctor said no.
Then, on July 5, as part of a department-wide reorganization, he was transferred from the public affairs division, where he had been working, to the drug and vice squad.
“I am confident that you will excel in your new leadership role and inspire our next generation,” Eslinger wrote in Bender’s re-assignment notice.
That’s when Bender got access to the safe with drugs.
Most of his colleagues on the drug and vice squad noticed nothing amiss, but in hindsight, his new boss, Capt. Karen Mills, said she did.
Bender kept his door closed, she said, something she found to be odd, and sometimes he missed meetings, saying he had overslept.
One drug agent reported seeing him in the office about 7 a.m., far earlier than normal. Bender told him he’d been there since midnight. On another occasion, Bender told the same agent that he hadn’t slept for three days.
Missing: More than 500 pills and 39 grams of cocaine
Before they confronted Bender on Aug. 25, Sheriff’s Office managers did an inventory of the safe. They found more than 532 pain pills and 39 grams of cocaine missing. That’s enough cocaine for 150 or more hits.
Bender admitted taking some of the pills, records show, but not all of them. Four times he had helped himself, he told investigators.
But he adamantly denied taking the cocaine. He had spilled some accidentally, he said, when he dropped a bag that had been improperly sealed. He had vacuumed up the mess, he said, and told no one.
Managers had investigators check the carpeting and vacuum sweepers used to clean that area of the building for cocaine but found none.
The Sheriff’s Office recommended that Bender be charged with four counts of grand theft plus trafficking in cocaine. The State Attorney’s Office charged him in August with just one count of grand theft.
He is currently free on $2,000 bond.
Bender is expected to be admitted to Seminole County’s drug court, which involves a year of drug treatment — typically outpatient — and intense supervision that includes three drug tests a week initially.
If he successfully completes it, the criminal charge against him would be dropped.
He has not been stripped of his right to work as a law enforcement officer in Florida, but that may change because he resigned during an ongoing internal affairs investigation, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
He would not comment for this story.
During his confession he said, “I never understood why people were drug addicts until I was one. … It took over. I couldn’t help it.”
rstutzman@orlandosentinel.com, 407-650-6394
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Lieutenant Jason Martin Bender, of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, is charged with grand theft and has resigned from his position after stealing more than 500 pain pills from evidence.
Lieutenant Jason Martin Bender, of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, is charged with grand theft and has resigned from his position after stealing more than 500 pain pills from evidence.
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rstutzman@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6394
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