KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Three officers are on suspension for lying about what led up to arrest charges getting dropped against Jonathan Elliott for inconsistency.
The Kissimmee Police Department's online mission statement says their officers value integrity, but after the arrest of Elliot, that integrity has been tarnished.
“To have officers sit there and disobey their own laws and their own rules, it’s just that’s not integrity at all,” Elliot said.
A surveillance video shows three officers opening the door and going into his room at the Tropicana Hotel in November. But on the affidavit one of the three officers, Tiffany Hall wrote, she was alone when she found the marijuana in Elliot’s room.
He read her report from jail later that night, but he quickly remembered a surveillance camera outside his hotel room door.
“As soon as I read that, I thought of that camera just pointed at my room and I was like, I’m going to try to get that and show them that I’m innocent. That what the officer said happened didn’t really happen,” Elliot said.
That was the key that got Elliott’s charge dismissed and the key that unlocked an internal investigation into all three officers. Officer Tiffany hall, Officer Felix Echiverria and Officer Taylor Mcfee, have all placed on suspension.
Now their division, the street crimes unit, has disappeared for the time being, while the state attorney orders all their open cases be investigated.
Internal investigation reports from the Kissimmee Police Department show a troubled past for Echiverria.
Echiverria has been fired from the Kissimmee Police Department twice before.
Echiverria was first arrested was in June 2010; according to the investigation report.
In the report, Echiverria has been abusing his lunch hour and inappropriately spending time at a home of a woman whose son he arrested. The chief of police changed his mind, and Echiverria returned back to duty one month later.
Six month after the first arrest, Echiverria was fired again for failing to write police reports. In one instance a woman says she was getting harrassing phone calls.
Echiverria fought the second firing and was given his job back by the city manager.
As for Elliot trusting the department? “I mean, I wish I could say I do,” he says.