ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Imagine getting in a crash only to find out you may have to wait hours for a Florida Highway Patrol trooper to arrive even though an Orange County deputy is on scene within minutes.
9 Investigates’ Jeff Deal examined a long-standing policy that blocks deputies from investigating crashes, so he asked whether that policy could help protect drunken drivers.
Smashed bricks, a car in his backyard and people screaming for help: These are the images Paul Daly recalls after a car filled with people plowed through his back wall at 2 a.m.
"When he got out of the car, he said, ‘I ran out of road,’" Daly told Deal as he explained the driver’s behavior following the wreck.
But what followed the crash bothered Daly even more than the damage to his property and the commotion.
"Oh yeah, I could smell the alcohol on his breath," Daly said.
He was unaware of a long-standing policy at the Orange County Sheriff's Office that keeps deputies from investigating traffic crashes even if it is in their jurisdiction and they are first on scene.
In Daly's case, a deputy was on scene within minutes, but he said the deputy simply sat and watched the scene.
"I thought this was crazy,” Daly said. “This was the craziest thing I'd ever heard."
It was two hours before an FHP state trooper could arrive and handle the investigation.
Daly was worried the driver would sober up.
FHP told 9 Investigates it has a shortage of troopers in the area. The agency is in the process of hiring more troopers, but people have been known to wait up to six hours for a trooper to arrive.
“To make people sit and wait for them to arrive, I think it's just outrageous,” said Chuck Drago, a law enforcement expert.
Drago, a former police chief, told 9 Investigates that law enforcement officers trained in Florida are given the exact same crash investigation training. And he's never understood sheriff's offices with policies like the one in Orange County.
City police departments typically take care of their own crashes.
“There's no reason he can't do it other than the department making that its own policy,” Drago said.
Orange County Sheriff's Office spokesman Jeff Williamson said sheriff's offices were never chartered to investigate crashes. In Florida, he said, that's what the FHP does.
“We have never really investigated any crashes here in Orange County for the past 40, 50 years or so,” Williamson said.
He said the sheriff has looked at changing the policy, but it would require hiring roughly 200 extra deputies and instituting more training at an astronomical cost.
In Daly's case, the driver was eventually cited for DUI after refusing a breath test, but he then pleaded no contest to alcohol-related reckless driving.
9 Investigates checked and found sheriff's offices in the other five counties in FHP's central Florida region -- Seminole, Osceola, Volusia, Brevard and Lake -- all investigate crashes. But they may hand the investigations off to FHP if there are injuries or death.