Sheriffs’ Deputies Face Criminal Charges for Official Misconduct
Misconduct by law enforcement affects the outcome of many criminal cases. It is hard to know exactly how many people have been wrongfully convicted because police officers or people involved in the criminal investigation withheld exculpatory evidence or even flat out lied on the witness stand. You can get the court to reject pieces of evidence, or even drop the charges against you entirely, if you can prove that the state violated your rights to obtain the evidence. That might include a police officer asking to search your residence, and you being so intimidated by the sight of the police badge, and the gun in the officer’s belt, that you let him search without even thinking about asking to see a warrant. Even if it is nothing that egregious, you can still cast doubt on the prosecution’s case against you at your trial by citing Brady disclosures, which are records of previous misconduct on the job by one of the officers involved in your case. Not every case of misconduct by a law enforcement officer leads to the officer getting criminal charges; most of the time, the misconduct is enough to acquit the person that the untrustworthy cop arrested, but only in the worst cases do the officers themselves get criminal charges. Here, our Miami criminal defense lawyer explains recent criminal cases against deputies of Sheriffs’ Offices in South Florida.
School Resource Officers Behaving Badly
A sheriff’s deputy in South Florida received criminal charges for seven counts of official misconduct in March 2026. He began his law enforcement career in 1995, and everything was fine until he began working as a school resource officer. The sheriff’s office began to investigate his absences from work and found that his timesheets, most of which had been paid by the time the investigation began, included payment for days when he had not left his house. The officer, who is in his early 50s, retired from the sheriff’s office while the investigation was pending; he had already stopped working by the time of his arrest. If he pleads not guilty and his case goes to trial, he might cite ambiguities about when he was required to report to the school. The years following the COVID-19 pandemic have been plagued by uncertainty about when school employees are required to be present on school campuses and when they may work remotely.
This is not the only time this academic year that an employee who works at a school in South Florida has gotten criminal charges for breaking the law at work. During winter break, a custodian at another school in South Florida was arrested after a school surveillance camera showed a bag of powder falling from his pocket; the powder tested positive for drugs in a crime lab.
When DAVID Is Your Accomplice
The Driver And Vehicle Identification Database (DAVID) is a traffic cop’s best friend when officers want to see which car to pull over. Officers can look up any license plate number and find out about unresolved cases involving the vehicle or the car. Did it drive past a speed camera after a hit and run? Is it the car that another cop saw outside an alleged trap house connected to numerous pending cases? While law enforcement officers are supposed to use DAVID to help them enforce the law and solve criminal cases, and perhaps even to justify that a police chase was justified, they are not supposed to use it to help them chase tail.
In an “only in Florida” turn of events that Carl Hiiasen only wishes he could have written, a sheriff’s deputy in South Florida saw a woman he fancied get into a car in a parking lot after appearing as an extra on the set of a TV show based on one of Hiiasen’s books. When he saw her car on the road, he gave chase, almost causing an accident in the process. He did not make an arrest or record the traffic stop. He later told the officers who arrested him that, at the time, it seemed like harmless fun, but now he acknowledges the lack of wisdom involved in the entire process. The sheriff’s office fired him immediately, and he is now facing criminal charges for official misconduct.
Contact Our Criminal Defense Attorneys
A South Florida criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges arising from misconduct in your work in law enforcement. Contact Ratzan & Faccidomo in Miami, Florida for a confidential consultation about your case.
Sources:
local10.com/news/local/2026/03/11/keys-deputy-misused-official-databases-to-pursue-woman-he-met-on-set-of-bad-monkey-mcso/
local10.com/news/local/2026/03/26/longtime-keys-deputy-arrested-for-clocking-in-on-days-he-never-left-his-home-sheriff-says/
