VOLUSIA EXPOSED

"Police throughout the United States have been caught fabricating, planting, and manipulating evidence to obtain convictions where cases would otherwise be very weak. Some authorities regard police perjury as so rampant that it can be considered a "subcultural norm rather than an individual aberration" of police officers."

Alcohol And The VCSO

Okay - so what's going on in the Volusia County Sheriff Department?

Over the last few months, more like years, there have been several incidents of misconduct involving the alleged abuse of alcohol.

Many of these incidents have been highlighted within VolusiaExposed articles. VolusiaExposed's archives contain several articles documenting misconduct within the VCSO, whereas alcohol abuse played a role.

While alcohol abuse appears to be a common theme within the VCSO - another common theme seems to be a rather high tolerance for such misconduct.

Recently (August 2014), the Sheriff Department's internal affairs division completed it's third alcohol fueled misconduct investigation involving Sgt. Ken Vickery.

We also invite our readers to review the below linked regarding the most recent incident attached to Sgt. Vickery.

The News Journal article does an excellent job detailing the continuing concerns surrounding Sgt. Vickery. In the particular, the article appropriately re-visits Vickery's 2008 incident with the Ponce Inlet police department.

NOTICE OF INTENT TO TERMINATE

RESIGNATION LETTER

More Evidence Of Special Treatment For Law Enforcement Officers?

During the 2008 incident, allegations surfaced that Vickery avoided a DUI arrest due to his law enforcement status. Ponce Inlet PD took disciplinary action against their officer for not properly handling the Vickery incident.

The most recent incident involving Sgt. Vickery took place on April 23, 2014, and this time involved the Port Orange police department.

Port Orange police discovered an off duty Vickery on the side of the road attempting to locate his girlfriend's cellphone. Apparently his girlfriend became upset upon hearing news that her father had just committed suicide, and she threw the phone out the passenger's window of Vickery's truck.

The Port Orange officers quickly determined that Vickery appeared intoxicated - and therefore would not allow him to re-enter his truck from his side of the road cell phone search. This appears to have been where the good decision making went awry.

Instead, one of the Port Orange officers drove Vickery's truck back to Vickery's residence, while Vickery and his girlfriend rode back to his residence via a second officer's patrol car. Now, ask yourself...."What could possibly go wrong here?"

We (VolusiaExposed) found it strange that POPD would drive a suspected intoxicated person's vehicle home for them, so we reached out to Port Orange Police Chief G. Monahan requesting to know whether it is standard police practice to drive a suspected intoxicated person's vehicle home.

back to our email inquiry, assuring us that it was not standard police practice, and that the officers involved would be counseled. The chief also explained why his officers did not investigate or arrest Vickery for DUI.

We (VolusiaExposed) tend to agree with Chief Monahan's rationale, that an DUI arrest on Vickery was not attainable, since the officers did not observe Vickery in control of his truck.

Did The VCSO Have Probable Cause
To Arrest Vickery For DUI?

While we (VolusiaExposed) agree that Port Orange PD did not have enough probable cause to arrest Vickery for DUI, we do suspect that the Volusia County Sheriff Department DID have the probable cause needed to arrest Vickery for DUI, or at the very least, conduct a DUI investigation.

In support of our opinion that probable cause existed to conduct a DUI investigation / arrest of Vickery - we invite our readers to review the observations of Deputy Steven Wheeler and Investigator Carl Eckberg - as documented in the above linked internal affairs report, and the VCSO letter of intent to terminate Vickery's employment.

Both Wheeler and Eckberg observed Vickery arrive at the DeBary suicide scene, as the driver of his pickup.

Both Wheeler and Eckberg noted the smell of alcohol attached to Vickery. Investigator Eckberg noted his suspicion that Vickery appeared to be intoxicated.

In an attempt to understand why the VCSO did not conduct a DUI investigaton on Vickery at the DeBary location - we (VolusiaExposed) sent VCSO Public Information Officer, Gary Davidson . As of the posting of this article, we have not recieved a response to our inquiry.

In the end, you, our reader, will need to review the documents and form your own opinion of whether the VCSO extended special considerations to Sgt. Vickery.

Regressive, Not Progressive Disciplinary Action

VolusiaExposed found it interesting that Sheriff Johnson's initial proposed disciplinary action against Sgt. Vickery was to terminate his employment. However, on the last page of the VCSO internal affairs report, it indicates that Sheriff Johnson had decided to issue Vickery a letter of reprimand.

According to the intent to terminate letter - this was Vickery's third alcohol fueled incident of misconduct. In 2008 Vickery was suspended for 40 hours, and in 2013 he was suspended for 160 hours. Now in 2014 - he only received ? Does that appear to be progessive disciplinary action?

From our reading of both and - a written reprimand is considered to be a non-adverse disciplinary action.

We find it somewhat strange, that Sheriff Johnson would reduce the disciplinary action of a third time violator, from an adverse action (termination) to a non-adverse action (written reprimand).

No Moral Character Violation(s) Reported To State Officials

We, here at VolusiaExposed.Com, suspect that Vickery's sustained misconduct was a probable violation of Florida's law enforcement officer moral character standards, as defined in .

As we (VolusiaExposed) have noted in many past incidents of law enforcement officer misconduct, many law enforcement agencies will only sustain misconduct at an "agency's policy violation" level. Sustained misconduct at this level does NOT require a review by the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission (CJSTC). Only sustained violations of FAC11B-27.0011 would require a review by CJSTC staff.

In this most recent case, Vickery only had agency policy violations sustained against him ().

For further information regarding this practice of downgrading probable moral character violations to mere agency policy violations, we (VolusiaExposed.Com) invite our readers to review some of our previous articles on this subject.

Sgt. Vickery's CJSTC 61 Form
Was It Correctly Filed To State Officials?
According to the - the investigation was completed / approved on August 4-5, 2014.

Sheriff Johnson issues his on August 4, 2014.

However, is dated for August 1, 2014 - days prior to the official completion of the internal affairs investigation.

Finally, why was it necessary for Sgt. Vickery to waive his alleged right to a hearing in front of the County Personnel Board (see page 2 - letter of resignation), IF his resignation was not connected to the sustained misconduct allegations. (VolusiaExposed holds the opinion that a letter of reprimand is NOT an adverse personnel action - and therefore is NOT appealable to the personnel board)

VolusiaExposed holds the opinion that Vickery's sustained misconduct should have been reported to the CJSTC as a sustained moral character violation, and further reported that he resigned while being investigated. We invite you to review the attached documents and CJSTC mandates, and then, to form your own opinion.

We suspect that more training is needed at the VCSO on this subject....that is, unless this is being done by design....we leave it for you to decide !

Sgt. Ken Vickery's CJSTC 61 Form

VCSO's Past History With Alcohol

While Sgt. Vickery appears to have his own history with alcohol related acts of misconduct, the VCSO, itself, has a rather extensive history of sustained deputy misconduct involving the use of alcohol.

We invite our readers to read other articles within our VolusiaExposed.Com archives, which support this history.

We recommend starting with the 2013 arrest of Deputy LeClerc for driving her patrol car while allegedly under the influence. (see linked article) --->

We (VolusiaExposed) can imagine former Deputy LeClerc wondering why she was arrested by VCSO officials for DUI, and Sgt. Vickery didn't even have a DUI investigation conducted by the VCSO. Then again, LeClerc's alleged DUI was video taped by a citizen - while only police officers / deputies and Vickery's girlfriend observed his sustained misconduct.

Lastly, we invite you to review the attached media video, whereas Sheriff Ben Johnson discusses his alleged history of drinking and driving. -->

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THE DEPUTY LECLERC DUI ARREST
Click Below Image To Read

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DID SHERIFF JOHNSON ADMITS TO
DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE?
Play Below Linked YouTube Video

The Volusia County Sheriff Department Reminds Us Of The Bar In The Toby Keith Song -"I Love This Bar". And Like Toby, We Love This Bar !