Deputies Chased Women Through Police Databases One Called A Teen His Queen One Ran 381 Searches
Two Pinellas County deputies, booked the same day, the same crime: using law-enforcement databases to pursue women. One ran a teenager’s records until he could show up at her high school. The other ran 381 searches on a woman who had already told him no.
Deputy Travis Stanton, 33, met a 17-year-old fast-food employee during a routine visit to her restaurant. She told him she was 17. Minutes after he left, he ran her plate through a police database from his patrol car — and when the car came back registered to her mother, he pulled the household records to figure out where she lived.
Over the next six weeks: license checks on the girl and her twin sister, around eight visits to her restaurant — where a coworker said the girl hid in the back room — a trip to her high school parking lot to hunt for her car, and a falsified query reason typed into the system to cover it. He also photographed the scene of a fatal motorcycle crash with his agency phone, then offered to show her the photo. She was 17. He knew.
He talked about her to other deputies. Called her “his queen.” One asked why he kept showing up at the restaurant; Stanton laughed and said, “You know why.” When supervisors finally questioned him, his explanation was that “curiosity got the better of him.” He resigned, then was booked: two counts of unlawful access and official misconduct, ten thousand dollars bond.
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri put it plainly: running the plates of a 17-year-old girl you’re interested in is clearly inappropriate — and clearly unlawful.
Then there’s Karl Gwynne, 57, a 21-year veteran. He arrested a woman in 2010, reconnected with her on social media in 2024, and when she rejected his romantic advances, he kept her records close anyway: 381 searches across five databases in 18 months — plate readers, driver’s license, state and county systems — 207 of them while he was off duty. He let her and her mother stay in a condo he owns. He bought gifts. He searched.
The way it unraveled is its own story: a news outlet asked about an unusually high number of queries on a single plate, the audit found roughly 300 runs on one woman’s plate, and Gwynne — who first claimed official reasons — admitted he wanted a relationship and had been rejected. He resigned the same day he was questioned. Five charges, twenty-five thousand bond.
Two badges, one habit: the database as a dating app. And a question the sheriff’s office hasn’t answered yet — what happens to the other deputies who heard “queen” talk and said nothing.
