Fla. deputy accused of using innocent person’s license plate info to fake drug report

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. – A Florida deputy was fired Tuesday following superiors accused him of striving to disguise his “incompetence” by generating a fake drug report making use of information and facts pulled from the license plate of a random car or truck parked at a Walmart retailer.

Tampa ABC affiliate WFTS cites a news launch from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Business accusing Deputy Joshua Sacino, 29, of discovering a automobile in a Walmart parking whole lot, running its plate and working with the facts to make a phony report connecting its owner to drug exercise.

The sheriff’s business office reported the proprietor “had not actually done something improper or illegal.”

Sacino was dealing with heat from supervisors over inactivity during a March 30 shift when he was meant to be focusing on targeted traffic enforcement. Instead, the sheriff’s office accused him of sitting in his cruiser and browsing the Internet for extra than 4 hrs, in accordance to a news launch.

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He reportedly lied about his activity, telling supervisors he gave a driver a verbal warning subsequent a targeted traffic end, but ignored their requests for documentation.

The sheriff’s office environment then accuses of Sacino of driving to Walmart, functioning the vehicle’s plate and leaving, coming into the fake report into the agency’s program, WFTS reports.

In the report, Sacino claimed that he identified the car or truck following anyone flagged him down about a suspicious automobile involved in drug activity, the information launch explained.

WFTS experiences that Sacino’s superiors questioned him about the report and admitted he produced the complete factor up, in accordance to the news launch.

“Deputy Sacino did this for self-serving factors, to conceal his absence of action and incompetence, with no regard of the effects this report could have experienced for the citizen concerned, or for any citizen functioning that car or truck in the foreseeable future,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a assertion sent to the station.

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The report has since been deleted from the procedure, WFTS stories.

Sacino was employed by the office in 2017 and his termination was productive Tuesday, the sheriff’s business office stated.

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