Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary apologized to a Winter Park woman who described him as being too fat for basic police work in a letter to the editor, according to Local 6 News.

Beary had his aides use the records to get the address of Alice Gawronski so he could send her a scathing letter, which some say violated federal privacy law.

Gawronski said, "I thought I was exercising my First Amendment right of free speech -- expressing an opinion in an open forum about a paid public official." She considered Beary's letter a form of intimidation.

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Beary sent Gawronski a letter of apology but said he acted within the law when he used a restricted database to obtain her home address to write her last month.

The letter said, "I sincerely regret the fact that my letter upset you," Local 6 News reported. "I simply saw this as an opportunity to reach out to a constituent and set the record straight."

The issue arose when Gawronski's letter appeared in the Sentinel on March 10. She said her concerns about Taser guns peaked when an Orlando police officer zapped a suspect handcuffed to a hospital bed to obtain a urine specimen.

In her letter, she referred to a televised news conference last June when Beary allowed himself to be zapped with a Taser gun to demonstrate their safety. Seeing Beary incapacitated by 50,000 volts and "in an obvious state of duress" convinced her the stun guns should not be used, she wrote.

Gawronski also wrote that Beary appeared so overweight and out of shape that she doubted he could arrest anyone without a stun gun. She suggested that if deputies were more fit, they might not need to resort to zapping suspects.

Beary said he was a victim of slander.

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.