DUI SuperCops
Information courtesy of Lawrence Taylor - DUIblog
The promotions and accolades heaped on officers by groups like MADD for maintaining high DUI "body counts" has created a growing phenomenon: the over-zealous "SuperCop". As an example, consider the following news story about one of these SuperCops -- and one of his victims who is currently suing him in federal court:
To the Palm Beach County chapters of the Traffic Safety Council and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, North Palm Beach police officer Salvatore Mattino is a crackerjack cop. So much so that they've given him awards for the prolific number of drunken driving arrests he has made.
"I'm always arresting people, you know, I just can't be... you know, chilled," Mattino told a superior officer 11 months ago, according to an internal affairs report
That attitude troubles some of Mattino's fellow officers, not to mention the motorists a good number of them never prosecuted whom he has busted.
Indeed, during one of Mattino's DUI arrests 13 months ago, a fellow North Palm Beach police officer had a heated argument with him over what he said was a bogus DUI bust, and threatened to arrest Mattino if he went through with it. Mattino made the arrest anyway.
A few days later, according to the report, a sergeant in the department asked Mattino about the incident, explaining, "I'm tired of officers complaining about you and your DUI arrests."
Now Mattino's ardent pursuit of drunken drivers has put him and the village of North Palm Beach on the receiving end of a federal lawsuit filed in December, claiming that the village and the officer have systematically made bad DUI arrests and maliciously prosecuted them.