After a Florida Highway Patrol trooper ticketed a Miami police officer for driving 120 mph, FDLE records showed that about 90 people across the state — including two Jacksonville police officers — looked up the trooper's personal information using a police database limited to use in investigations. The trooper has now sued the city of Jacksonville and those two officers.
The speeding ticket and the accompanying video inspired much outrage, some against the Miami officer and others against Trooper Donna Jane Watts, and it prompted the Sun-Sentinel's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the danger of speeding police cars.
Trooper Watts said she received death threats and a bevy of idling cars outside her home, some clearly marked as police patrol vehicles. She has sued law enforcement across the state, and in June she filed suit against two Jacksonville officers, Pamela Abboud and Brijin Pemberton. Abboud has retired, but Pemberton is still on the force.
THE STOP
In October 2011, Watts pulled over Miami Police Officer Fausto Lopez for driving faster than 120 mph on Florida's Turnpike in Broward County.
She followed him with her lights and sirens on for seven minutes before he pulled over.
"I thought that police car was stolen," she told him.
He responded that he would never handcuff another police officer.
The traffic stop garnered national attention, and commenters criticized her on law-enforcement websites for pulling her gun and handcuffing Lopez.
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement search found that police officers across the state looked up her personal information. She believes those officers didn't have a police-related reason to look up the restricted records, and she has sued many of them. The database is limited for use only for legitimate law enforcement purposes.
Jacksonville officers Abboud and Pemberton looked up Watts' driver's license information in the Driver and Vehicle Information Database in November 2011, Florida Department of Law Enforcement records showed.
"We cannot think of any justification for them to access it," said Watts' attorney Mark Tietig. "There were a lot of officers that really took umbrage with her and acted in an unlawful and sort of terroristic way."
He said Watts received threats and prank phone calls. People ordered pizzas to her home address. Cars parked outside the home in her cul-de-sac neighborhood.
She was afraid, Tietig said, to start her car or check her mail, for fear an explosive was attached. She and her husband moved out of fear.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office declined to comment, as did the city's attorneys.
The city must respond to the lawsuit in court by Sept. 22.
Abboud, Pemberton, the Sheriff's Office and other police departments with officers who abuse the database must learn to obey the law, Tietig said. Lawsuits that cost money should teach the agencies, he said.
Andrew Pantazi: (904) 359-4310
