ORLANDO, Fla — A driver traveling on Old Kings Road in Palm Coast was concerned when they spotted a silver Nissan Titan “all over the road” in the middle of the night. They told the 911 dispatcher the driver had gone onto a curb and was now in a McDonalds parking lot.
The driver was a Daytona Beach police officer. He told deputies when they arrived to find his truck on a curb and crashed into a utility pole, that a woman had been driving the truck. That woman was nowhere to be found.
It’s cases like this that prompted 9 Investigates to start looking into law enforcement officers arrested for driving under the influence earlier this year. 9 Investigates has been digging into this for seven months and found case after case of officers getting jammed up and caught driving drunk. And the hundreds of cases we found where an officer lost their certification, or it was suspended, may not even be all of them.
WFTV found officers got pulled over for DUI but only faced department discipline and not an arrest. Another was allowed to call a friend to drive him home. And some officers pleaded down to a reckless driving ticket with no DUI arrest on their record.
In the middle of the night, a Rockledge police officer turned into oncoming lanes, trying to avoid a traffic stop. An Orlando police officer picking up his daughter from school stumbles through a field sobriety tests more than once in broad daylight.
9 Investigates obtained body camera video of a traffic stop prompted by erratic driving, and we watched as the driver flashes his Lake County Sheriff’s Office ID. “Are you a deputy,” the officer asked as he stood outside of the car after the stop. “Yes sir,” he responded. “Why are you driving so crazy man,” the officer questions.
9 Investigates filed dozens of public records requests, wondering just how often those sworn to protect the public are instead putting other drivers at risk. We uncovered 379 Florida law enforcement officers who have lost their certification or had it suspended, statewide, over the last five years because they were caught driving drunk. About 50 worked for law enforcement agencies in Central Florida.
“If you got a badge and you took an oath, then there’s no excuse,” Bill DeMott said. DeMott lost his daughter to a drunk driver 10 years ago on the Brevard-Orange County line. The drunk driver was not a law enforcement officer, but DeMott knows the feeling of losing a loved one to a driver who chooses to get behind the wheel drunk.
“The numbness doesn’t go away, the thoughts, the good and bad thoughts don’t go away. There’s always a trigger,” DeMott said.
Body camera videos of the traffic stops is one of those triggers. A Daytona Beach police officer had already crashed his truck into a pole when officers caught up to him just last month. When he was questioned about how his car ended up on the curb and crashed into a pole, he told the deputies, “I’m a cop too.”
But 9 Investigates found that cop wouldn’t even been included in the nearly 400 drunk driving cases we found that led to state discipline because his criminal case is still pending, along with the department’s internal case. So the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Training and Standards Commission likely won’t consider taking action against his certification until years from now.
Carlos Espinosa runs internal affairs for the Kissimmee Police Department, which doesn’t have an officer on the list we uncovered, but he walked us through how these and other discipline cases are handled. We asked why the officers aren’t automatically fired.
“Police officers are protected by a police officer’s bill of rights. And prior to firing a police officer, to give them any type of discipline you have to go through an investigation has to be a criminal investigation, followed by an administrative investigation. So they can be suspended without pay or with pay, relieved of duty, things like that,” Espinosa said.
“It is up to the individual agencies and their internal affairs section or the department heads to make sure those notifications are sent forth,” Espinosa stated.
And 9 Investigates found other ways officers could avoid being added to the list we gathered. We spent hours listening in on state hearings where the commission determines whether to take action against a law enforcement officer’s license, which can lead to them losing their badge.
“This deputy was arrested for driving under the influence and ultimately that was reduced to a charge of reckless driving,” a commission attorney stated about one case.
Even if the case is plead down to reckless driving, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement commission can still consider whether to take the officer’s badge, but only if the department notifies the commission that it was really a DUI.
One North Florida deputy apologized when speaking before the commission determining his next steps. “I know I messed up, but I don’t want to make no excuses,” he said.
He served two days in jail, 50 hours of community service, six months probation, mandatory counseling and got his job back at the Baker County Sheriff’s Office.
“I believe we have an obligation not just at this point, to correct behavior, but to develop the people under our command,” the sheriff stated.
But 9 Investigates found some officers caught driving drunk don’t even make it to a courtroom to face charges. A Lake County deputy suspected of driving drunk earlier this year was allowed to phone a friend for a ride home, and the Leesburg officer who pulled him over never forced him out of the car, even though the deputy refused a field sobriety test.
“Do you have anybody that can come pick you up,” the officer asked.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office found out about the stop because the deputy was in his unmarked patrol car when he was stopped. He was fired anyway, even though he wasn’t arrested. The department determined he had been drinking and terminated him for failure to maintain what it considers good morale character.
DeMott believes that’s the way it should be.
“You’re human. You have bad days. You make some bad decisions. But you don’t get to make those decisions as law enforcement,” DeMott stated.
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