Lyons: 2 troopers, not seen at their best


This is a tale of two troopers, not seen at their best.

One got what she deserved, I think, and no more. The other looks more like a scapegoat.

Highway Patrol veteran Trooper Kristi Menzies is the main character in her own non-action-packed recording at a non-fatal accident scene on Wauchula Road in Manatee County, one without serious injury.

The audio displays Menzies calling names and being needlessly rude to some unharmed passengers who were young men returning from a hog hunt. They had done no wrong whatsoever.

The trooper then made a coercive threat to their friend, the somewhat injured driver, when he politely invoked his right not to talk to the grouchy Menzies.

"If you don't make a comment, I'm going to tow your vehicle," Menzies replied, one of her few sentences that did not include an insult of the sort my editors won't print.

She charged him with the accident.

Right or not about that, Menzies had already shown every sign of jumping to conclusions, and her words have become evidence for defense claims that her investigation was biased from the start.

The FHP suspended Menzies, who has been a trooper longer than the 23-year-old hog hunting driver has been alive. The FHP ruled her behavior "conduct unbecoming an officer," as it certainly was.

That seems a measured response, appropriate to the offense. If the lesson is learned, her long career will remain intact. And she seemed to need some time off.

But things went another way for a trooper in North Florida, who got into the news after he stopped a state legislator driving to Tallahassee on Interstate 10.

Trooper Charles Swindle said a radar gun had the lawmaker doing 87 mph, which normally calls for a speeding ticket and $280 fine.

Swindle says he gave the legislator a break, as he says is often done for lawmakers. He wrote only a $10 ticket for failing to have proof of insurance. But instead of being grateful, and quiet, the lawmaker — Charles McBurney, a former prosecutor from Jacksonville — filed a complaint.

He said that A) he had his cruise control set at 75, and B) his proof of insurance was in his wallet, and he was never asked for it.

After an investigation, Trooper Swindle wasn't suspended. The six-year veteran was fired.

The FHP letter explaining why his behavior was deemed unbecoming, and says Swindle "displayed poor judgment and circumvented the legal process."

Swindle wants his job back. He is arguing he just followed unofficial FHP policy taught to him on the job, and during training, and says most FHP troopers do the same. They are advised, Swindle says, that since lawmakers control the FHP budget and trooper salaries, it is better to make them grateful than angry.

However pervasive that unfair practice may or may not be, count me as one who does not believe Swindle is making it up. It looks as if he has been made a scapegoat by agency administrators dodging a far bigger issue they prefer to pretend is an absurd fiction.

What we need is an honest investigation into whether Swindle is right, and how right, no matter how embarrassing that will be for the FHP, and for less-forthcoming lawmakers who had no complaint when they got similarly tiny tickets or none at all.

None were actually speeding, I'm sure.

Any tradition that lets lawmakers dodge the same fines they decree to be deserved by other speeders has got to go. As is, FHP leadership committed its own unbecoming behavior by pretending Swindle invented this practice.

Swindle's real sin was angering a lawmaker, no matter how accidentally. If the gripe came from some young hog hunter in a pickup truck, Swindle would still be employed.

On the other hand, when Trooper Menzies' directed colorful and uncalled-for insults at some innocent passengers, good thing none turned out to be state legislators sneakily dressed in red-neck hunter garb.

If so, Menzies' crash investigation days might be over. Who you insult is just as important as who gets a break.



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