By MIKE WELLS
The Tampa Tribune

TAMPA - When Meagan Blair swore an oath to serve as a reserve deputy for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office about 18 months ago, she achieved a lifelong dream.

Former Hillsborough deputy Daniel Brock destroyed it, she said in an interview Wednesday.

“It was a very exciting time for me when I got my badge,” Blair said. “And in a split second,” she said, Brock took “it all away from me.”

The sheriff’s office fired Brock on May 24 after an internal affairs investigation uncovered policy violations in several cases in which he charged drivers with driving under the influence.

One of the cases reviewed was Blair’s arrest. On May 4, Brock, 38, performed a traffic stop on Blair, 41, in Apollo Beach and charged her with driving under the influence.

The state attorney’s office dropped the charge after finding inconsistencies between Brock’s written arrest report, the video footage from his dashboard camera and his verbal statements to prosecutors when questioned, according to a memorandum in the case file written by Assistant State Attorney Jennifer Gabbard.

The memo said video from Brock’s patrol car camera showed Blair passed the field sobriety test “extremely well” despite what was noted in the arrest report.

Prosecutors are considering filing criminal charges against Brock, a state attorney spokeswoman said this week. They initially decided to forgo criminal charges in lieu of an administrative action by the sheriff’s office, according to a memorandum in the internal affairs documents.

Blair wants Brock arrested for falsifying records, not just fired, she said.

“If the state does not prosecute this guy, I don’t know what I’ll do,” she said. “I thought with the evidence that this would be an easy case for them to prosecute.”

Brock and his attorney, Jeffrey Blau, were unavailable for comment Wednesday. On Tuesday, Brock told local media he was targeted by an internal affairs investigator with a grudge and that the arrests were valid.

The sheriff’s disciplinary review board recommended the firing in part because prosecutors would no longer allow Brock to testify in DUI cases, according to a sheriff’s office memorandum included in the internal affairs investigation documents.

In one case, Brock filed two conflicting versions of the same DUI report, the internal investigation found.

Blair said she never met Brock until he arrested her. Because of her own law enforcement training, she said she knew he did not have cause to arrest her and felt confident the DUI charge would be dismissed.

In the arrest report, Brock wrote that he stopped Blair at Apollo Beach Boulevard and Dickman Road after her vehicle weaved back and forth on the road, crossed the fog lines and speeded about 10 mph over the posted limit of 35 mph.

Blair denied the allegations and said Brock should have immediately turned on his camera rather than wait until she parked.

“If you see someone driving impaired and you’re a DUI specialist like he is, it should be automatic that you click on a switch and you start recording,” Blair said.

In the arrest report, Brock wrote that she told him she’d had four or five drinks. In an interview Wednesday, Blair said the video shows she told him that she had three vodka tonics over three hours while eating earlier in the evening.

He also wrote that he found a cup in the car and that she told him it contained vodka.

On Wednesday, Blair said she told him it was ice water. Brock threw the contents out in front of other deputies rather than keep it for testing, she said.

Blair said she declined to take the Breathalyzer exam that night because she thinks they are sometimes not calibrated correctly.

Sheriff David Gee said the machines are regularly calibrated by the state.

“In that case, I’d have to say I was disappointed that one of our deputies wouldn’t take the test,” he said Wednesday. “If you’re not impaired, then why wouldn’t you take it?”

Brock was hired in 1992 as a detention deputy. He has been a patrol deputy since 1996 and joined the agency’s DUI enforcement unit four years ago, quickly becoming the highest producer of DUI arrests.

Between October 2005 and October 2006, Brock made 313 DUI arrests. Of those, 58 were drivers with blood-alcohol levels less than 0.08. In Florida, a driver is considered impaired with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 or higher.

In 31 cases where the blood-alcohol content was below 0.08, Brock didn’t record video footage of the arrests, a violation of policy, the report states. When footage was available, it differed from Brock’s written reports in 12 cases.

Sheriff’s officials said they are now reviewing the work of Brock’s supervisor.

Blair said she was not disciplined because of the DUI charge. However, the stigma of being arrested and the loss of her driver’s license for a year because she refused to submit to a Breathalyzer exam has since kept her from returning to serve the sheriff’s office, she said. She later obtained a restricted license for business use.

However, Blair said she was more fortunate than others.

“I only lost my driver’s license,” she said. “I can only imagine the poor people who couldn’t afford an attorney and lost their licenses and lost their jobs because of this jerk. Where’s the justice in that?”

Reporter Andriy Pazuniak contributed to this report. Reporter Mike Wells can be reached at (813) 657-4534 or mwells@tampatrib.com.

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