Former NFL player Warren Sapp sues Okeechobee sheriff’s office for wrongful arrest

(officer) got corrected and just had to lock someone up. Contempt of cop arrest. Again, how do you not know the most basic laws you are paid to enforce?

Also, killer tribal tattoos, man..

 

I've seen him hanging out with the 1st Amendment auditing crowd lately. I think he was with The Armed Fisherman, who is more so a 2A auditor.

 

Sapp wasn’t even right, obstruction can be verbal too… Any impeding of an officer’s work qualifies, and this wasn’t his stop.
Having said that, the cops handled it terribly. Give him a warning, explain to him why they think it’s obstructing, ask him politely to leave, heck, just ignore him, they did none of that. They just went straight to handcuffs for something really minor. No way he would have been convicted (and rightfully not) so dropping the charges was the only thing they could do.
And 20 million for this is ludicrous. But that’s a different discussion.

 

‘They?’
Because they’re all alike?

 

I mean yeah, for the most part. They operate like a criminal gang, even if you get into if for the right reasons, you gotta play ball with the culture or they wont protect you (or worse). If you recall Serpico wasnt well liked by the other cops.

 

Don't care about Sapp and don't mind it when he gets his. Story: At Raymond James back in the day, a kid and his dad approached Sapp in the concourse and the kid asked if he could get a picture and Sapp said "I don't flick bitch" and walked off.

 

I think Florida has a financial limit on law suits against SOs?

 

The officer that arrested him for ??? is a field training officer. This officer teaches other officers how to act like this.

The police report said that there was "an excessive amount of luxury cars." Whatever that is...

 

Of course there are bad cops. But if you're claiming all or most ... let's just say we disagree.

 

Is a cop who watches another falsely arrest someone or use excessive force on someone and not report it a bad cop?

 

Please don't allow these cops to defame our good name.

 

There are flash meetups of car guys in parking lots that the cops have to clear regularly when the businesses complain. Might have been one of those. Usually the cops just ask them to move on, but maybe they got stingy about it to try and make something stick against him.

 

Yeah, could have been one of those. I guess it depends on if the business requested their assistance. It was probably the group pulling over since one them was pulled over for speeding. They were on a charity ride that started off in Miami. If the business didn't request their help clearing the lot, it's a weird choice of words to put in a report.

 

Yeah could have been, like I said, probably realized they overreached and were just trying to paint a bad picture to get it to stick.
In the end it’s the same as all the other cases that get posted here…citizen does something they shouldn’t, cop overreacts and story goes viral. The fact that it’s a guy who trains other cops is funny though. We also don’t know what happened after the cuffs went on, at that point he was only detained, not arrested. So something else must have stirred them up.

 

This. With Sapp, you've got to wonder. He's such a jerk.

 

What did Sapp do that he shouldn't, dare to question a cop out loud?

Is the stop over? The driver had been handed his ticket. He's walking around with it and showing people. Would the driver be free to walk away after being handed his ticket? It seems to me that the stop has concluded. If the ticketing officer felt "obstructed," why didn't she say anything to Sapp about it. Not only did she not ask Sapp to stop, she engaged with him.

Officer Bad Tatoos asked him his name. To me, Sapp had broken no laws and had no requirement to ID himself. If he was detained for not identifying himself, then that's just circular because you don't have to ID unless you've been lawfully detained or arrested.

So what was the reasonable suspicion for Sapp to be detained in the first place?

 

Its not about the individuals, its about the culture. Any losing team has talented players, the losing culture makes them losers too.