Local

Jailhouse calls released after Orlando cop firing

ORLANDO, Fla. — Channel 9 Eyewitness news obtained the nearly two dozen phone calls made by former Orlando Police Officer Danny Sidders from the Orange County Jail. One of which led to his being fired Friday.

When Sidders bonded out of jail after being accused of beating up his girlfriend he smiled, laughed and refused to answers Channel 9's questions.

But jail phone calls from Sidders to a friend, and to his girlfriend, showed a different Sidders.

"They're moving me into the regular jail," Sidders said in a call recorded on Nov. 7.

"You have disgraced everyone, including yourself. I am very..." said his girlfriend.

"You've got to help me when you get back," said Sidders.

"I can't talk to you anymore," said the girlfriend.

Sidders spent three weeks in jail following his November arrest.

More charges were added later when he was caught in a recording telling fellow police officer Matt Deem to hide a handgun that Sidders wasn't supposed to have.

"In the pantry, in the wooden pantry, is that gun in that paper bag. Get it out of there," Sidders said in a Nov. 6 call.

"Oh [expletive], I missed that," said Deem.

It was just hours after that call that Sidders was charged with evidence tampering.

Later came another call between Deem and Sidders.

"Hey. What are you doing?" Sidders asks Deem in the Nov. 7 call.

"Throwing up," said Deem.

"Why?" asked Sidders.

"The line was recorded last night," said Deem.

Sidders was arrested twice in 2012 and has been accused of domestic violence by both his former wives.

Before he was fired from the Orlando Police Department, he had been investigated by the department seven times.

"I think you're gonna be just like all the people you've arrested in your career, career criminals," his girlfriend said in a phone call on Nov. 7.

Last month, prosecutors dropped both the domestic violence charge and the evidence tampering charge against Sidders, citing a lack of evidence.