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“Shocked like everyone else” is how Governor Charlie Crist described his reaction to news DCF spokesman Al Zimmerman was arrested on child pornography charges. The arrest happened over the weekend, but Thrusday was the first chance for reporters to directly ask the governor how he came to give Zimmerman a reference for the DCF job.

One reporter asked, “How did you name end up on his resume as the first reference?”

“Probably because he asked me and I said yes. He was a journalist in
Tampa Bay and I knew him,” Crist said. He added that he didn’t know Zimmerman very well.

DCF failed to run a full background check on Zimmerman when he was hired, in part because he had no direct supervision over children. Had the check been run, it would have found a DUI and bad check charges, but no crimes against children. The agency is now in the process of manually checking more than 13,000 hires.