Aftermath of Lake County Sheriff’s Office deputy crashing on Nov. 6, 2024 (Lake County Sheriff’s Office).
A sheriff’s deputy who crashed on body camera lied by omission by initially hiding the fact that he was looking at porn at the time, says the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
“Gosh darn it,” he said on footage after the crash. “Yeah, that f—ing really sucked.”
The internal affairs report from the Office of Professional Standards determined that he lied, was looking at porn on his phone while driving the patrol vehicle, and also failed to wear his seat belt.
Law&Crime is not naming him because he has not been charged with a crime. The deputy resigned during the investigation, Cpl. Chanel Martin of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office told Law&Crime in an email.
The crash
His bodycam from the afternoon of Nov. 6, 2024, shows him with his phone out, though it is unclear what it has on. But what is clear is that the yellow air bag bursts out.
He indicated to at least one passerby he was OK. He walked over to another vehicle that apparently got caught up in the crash. Law&Crime is omitting this encounter because it shows the woman, but in it, the deputy is checking on her.
“Hello, ma’am,” the deputy tells the other driver in the video. “Are you OK? I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK,” she said.
“My brakes locked up,” he said.
She said she was OK.
The internal affairs report
According to the internal affairs report, the deputy allegedly wrote that he ended a phone call when he saw a vehicle stopped in front of his because a school bus was stopped in the opposite lane with lights on.
On top of that, the light for his auto-brake system was on after he left speed calibrations at the IPS range, so his brakes locked up.
But a sergeant who reviewed video footage determined the deputy was looking at images on his phone when the crash happened.
The deputy allegedly described having finished a call with a colleague at the time of the crash.
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“He went on to say that he was scrolling through text messages on his phone from a group text with his sector three colleagues just prior to the crash,” the report stated. “He stated he was not sending text messages when the crash occurred.”
But video did not show him scrolling through texts, authorities said. Instead, he was allegedly “viewing a picture or a video at the time of the crash,” the report stated. A supervisor later described there being no videos or pictures in the group chat.
The investigator also determined that the deputy was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.
In an interview on Nov. 20, 2024, the deputy admitted he was, in the report’s words, “looking at inappropriate pictures.” Asked to clarify what he meant, he allegedly “stated pornographic material like boobs or whatnot.”
He reiterated that his bakes did lock up, but he did not have the time to stop when he realized the vehicle was stopped in front of him.
He ultimately admitted “he knew he was looking at inappropriate pictures, which was the leading cause of the crash, and he deliberately left that information out of his report. He stated that it is called lying by omission. He further said he knows that one all too well.”
