By MIKE WELLS
The Tampa Tribune

TAMPA - Hillsborough County’s top deputy for making DUI arrests was fired last month after an internal investigation found he might have sent innocent people to jail, according to documents.

Much of Daniel Brock’s personnel file is thick with commendations from citizens. He’s earned awards for vigilance in removing impaired drivers from the roads. Supervisors praised Brock, 38, in annual performance reviews, calling him “highly motivated” and a leader in DUI arrests.

However, the most recent addition to file was a dismissal form citing the reasons Brock lost his job of 15 years on May 24. His written appeal to the sheriff was denied the next day.

Officials said Brock blatantly ignored the agency’s standard operating procedures by not turning in DUI reports at the end of his shift, writing days afterward from memory rather than using field notes, and by performing DUI arrests while having another suspect detained in his patrol car.

From October 2005 to October 2006, Brock arrested 313 motorists for allegedly driving while impaired. Forty percent of the time, he never used his in-car video recorder.

Even when he did record a video, his reports sometimes conflicted with the evidence seen on the tapes, officials said.

According to sheriff’s Chief Deputy Jose Docobo, an additional internal investigation is pending regarding the “failing” of Brock’s supervisor, Cpl Mark Clark, to notice the lack of video evidence with many of the arrests.

On Oct. 25, 2005, Brock noted that a defendant who blew a .01 percent blood-alcohol content had trouble walking, lost her balance and couldn’t perform field sobriety tests adequately. The video of the arrest shows differently, officials said. The woman was steady, did not lose her balance and didn’t show signs of impairment.

“I don’t prescribe to the theory that somehow you have to be 0.08 to be drunk or impaired,” Brock told investigators.

The case was dropped by prosecutors after lab tests found no evidence of drugs in the woman’s system.

Such actions seem to defy Brock’s mostly untarnished employment history with the sheriff’s office. He 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.

A handful of times over the years, he was reprimanded or suspended for damaging patrol cars in what were deemed avoidable accidents.

But the recent criminal investigation against Brock sparked when an assistant prosecutor with State Attorney Mark Ober’s office wrote a letter to the sheriff’s office in October saying they would no longer accept testimony from him as a witness. Brock gained a reputation among prosecutors for providing weak cases with little or conflicting evidence.

At least once, he wrote two versions of the same DUI arrest report, officials said. He sent prosecutors the second version, written entirely from memory and without gaining the approval of his supervisor. This constituted a misdemeanor for falsifying records. Prosecutors elected to forgo a criminal charge in lieu of the sheriff’s administrative action.

Initially, the sheriff’s office planned to suspend him for seven days over the matter. But his removal as a potential witness in criminal cases resulted in his being unable to perform the duties of a deputy and led to his firing, according to documents.
After receiving the letter, sheriff’s detectives audited a year’s worth of Brock’s DUI arrests – 313 cases – and the results alarmed them.

In 58 arrests, the defendant blew a blood-alcohol content below .08 percent, the level at which Florida law presumes a driver is impaired. In 41 of those cases, no urine sample was drawn, despite agency policy.

In 43 cases where Brock said driving cues indicated impairment, the cues were not the basis for his making the traffic stops. Records also showed Brock conducted DUI investigations 17 times at different locations in succession, with one arrestee in the back seat of his patrol car while he conducted a second investigation.

Brock told investigators he was like most deputies who often wrote affidavits while off duty or from memory rather than at the end of a shift. He said he saw nothing wrong with that and maintained the drivers were all impaired and that his arrests were legitimate.

“My goal is to go there, process the person and be gone, out to the next one,” he told investigators.

Reporter Mike Wells can be reached at (813) 657-4534 or mwells@tampatrib.com.

Get Weekly Deals | Write a letter to the editor | Subscribe and get two weeks free | Place an Ad