DUI Defender

The Saint Petersburg Times is reporting, Officer Daniel Brock was fired from his job and the State Attorney’s Office is investigating whether he should face criminal charges. Officer Brock, recognized for his stellar record of DUI arrests by MADD and his Department, has been fired for making false arrests. The record is clear he arrested 58 people for DUI when their blood alcohol concentrations were below the legal limit of .08. He stated that he thought a person could be impaired below .08 and that he thought the suspects were impaired. An investigation by Internal Affairs found that 43 of the arrests were of driver’s demonstrating no impairment while driving and in 41 instances the chemical test didn’t support the conclusions of Officer Brock. Further, video evidence proved that many claims of failed field tests were not documented by the camera, including one instance where a driver allegedly lost his balance while making a turn in the walk and turn test, that didn’t happen in the video evidence, then blew a .01 and was still arrested by Officer Brock. Apparently, this is just the tip of the iceberg, he made over 300 arrests between October 2005 and October 2006 and didn’t use his video camera approximately 40% of the time, he wrote his reports late, forgot relevant facts, and made numerous mistakes in his haste to process one arrest and get another. On several occasions he made one arrest while he had another suspect in his car, a violation of Department policy.

The simple fact is that when MADD provides incentives for Officer’s to make DUI arrests, the general public loses. The incentive and recognition heaped upon this officer by MADD and his colleagues led him to violate the public trust, make false and/or misleading statements in police reports and generally disrespect the people he was “to protect and serve.” Thank goodness for the fact that he did use the video camera in many of his arrests and the video eventually lead to hard evidence of his tactics. It is important, not just for citizen protection from renegade law enforcement personnel, but for everyone that law enforcement vehicles be equipped with video cameras.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed