An officer is stopped by another officer on the road, and then gets charged with DUI
A Pembroke Pines police officer was making his rounds along the U.S. 27 corridor Wednesday night when he saw a North Bay Village police car heading north in the southbound lanes with its overhead emergency lights flashing.
Suspicious, Pembroke Pines Officer Mark Manning followed the other police car around 10:50 p.m. as it made its way across Taft Street and 27 and into the Holly Lakes Community, according to a police report. The North Bay Village cruiser then left the community and resumed traveling east into an intersection and then on northbound onto U.S. 27.
“He never left his lane but was obviously swerving,” Manning wrote in the report.
That’s when he was able to pull the driver over along the median. The man inside was “unsteady” and had vomit on the chest of his shirt and lower leg, along with glassy eyes and slurred speech, according to Manning. The driver was not in a police uniform, according to Pembroke Pines police.
“He randomly stated that he was ‘f----- up,’” as he stood at the back of his cop car, the arrest report read. Manning said that he smelled alcohol “coming from his facial area as he was speaking.”
The man inside the car, according to Pembroke Pines police, was North Bay Village police Sgt. James Stephen McVay.
McVay, 55, was arrested and charged with DUI, a first offense. He was booked into Broward County Main Jail early Thursday morning at 4:30 a.m. and released later in the day on a $500 bond.
But McVay’s troubles didn’t end with his release. The North Bay Village Police Department suspended its officer amid an internal affairs investigation.
“The North Bay Village Police Department has zero tolerance for this offense nor any other criminal behavior. These actions are contrary to the values of the police department, and the entire Village,” the department said in a statement.
“This investigation will be handled expeditiously, and any further action deemed appropriate will be taken once the Internal Affairs case is closed,” the North Bay Village Police Department said in the statement.
Last year, McVay and five other members of a North Bay Village hurricane emergency unit admitted violating policy when they drank beer on the job during Hurricane Irma in 2017. The team received letters of reprimand.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 3:12 PM.
