Two Coral Springs police officers are under investigation after an audio recording of an October arrest they made sharply contradicts their sworn statements.
Most every crime novel has a variation of this back-and-forth: Cop collars a suspected criminal. Suspect says the bust is unjust — but faces the uphill challenge of convincing a judge or jury.
But in the recent real-life case of a stranded motorist-turned-alleged felon, there was one juicy twist: The whole altercation was caught on tape under the most outlandish of circumstances.
As a result: Charges were dropped against the driver and prosecutors are investigating whether Coral Springs police officers Nicole Stasnek and Derek Fernandes filed false documents relating to the extraordinary encounter.
None of this would have happened if the driver — Susan Mait, a 60-year-old widow from Coral Springs — hadn’t dropped her phone to the floor of her SUV while the cops yanked her from the vehicle. Unbeknownst to any of them, the phone was still connected to a GEICO customer service rep, who, following company policy, recorded everything that happened.
The audio tape, made public this week, depicts a starkly different exchange than what Stasnek and Fernandes described in their reports and during questioning under oath.
The recording catches Stasnek cursing out Mait (although the officer later denied it), giving no advance warning that Mait was about to be cuffed for resisting arrest (although the officer testified that she had done so three times), and later hashing out a plan with her fellow officer to make sure their stories jibed (they did).
The explosive recording prompted prosecutors to drop all outstanding charges against Mait — and focus their attention on the officers.
“When I finally got this tape, I was totally, completely disgusted with what the police did to this woman,” said Michael Catalano, Mait’s defense attorney. “And everyone who has listened to it since has agreed with me.”
Now, Catalano wants those cops off the street, and last week sent a letter to the Coral Spring Police Department, claiming both he and his client fear they will retaliate.
As of Tuesday afternoon, neither had been suspended, although Lt. Joe McHugh, a police spokesman, acknowledged that they were the subjects of an active investigation.
“As the facts are developed, we will take any and all appropriate administrative actions,” McHugh said.
The complicated, conflicting ordeal began late-afternoon on Oct. 4, when Fernandes, a four-year CSPD veteran with no previous internal affairs complaints on his record, noticed Mait’s Lexis SUV stopped in the left lane of Royal Palm Boulevard.
Fernandes, 35, pulled up behind her vehicle to see what was wrong. Mait approached his car and told him that two of her tires had blown out, and she needed a tow. What happened next is not entirely clear — and depends on who you believe.
According to police reports and the officers’ sworn depositions, Mait told Fernandes and later Stasnek, who arrived as backup, that she was on Xanax, and that she couldn’t move the car out of traffic — but that she did want to drive it the two miles to her home.
Before Stasnek pulled up, Fernandes told Mait to call for a tow, which she did from her passenger seat. But as she waited for a GEICO roadside assistance representative to dispatch a wrecker, things unraveled.
When Stasnek, a four-year member of the force with a clean prior record, approached Mait’s SUV, she repeatedly asked for a driver’s license, the tape shows. Mait refused. In her deposition, Stasnek said she warned the driver repeatedly she “would be disobeying my lawful command and would be arrested for resisting my lawful command.”
At some point, Mait put a hand in the officer’s face to dismiss the request, according to police accounts, which was apparently one insult too many.
The officers hauled her out of her car and tried to arrest her, which they claim she resisted by tensing her body and slamming into Stasnek.
Mait spent a night in jail, charged with felony obstruction and — because officers believed she was impaired by drugs — DUI. The latter charge was dropped when a toxicology test came back positive for only Wellbutrin, a widely used antidepressant, and prosecutors ultimately decided to reduce the resisting charge to a misdemeanor.
And then the tape emerged.
The 17-minute recording features a series of exchanges that Catalano says contradict the officers’ sworn testimony, including this back-and-forth between Mait and Stasnek after the female officer asked for ID:
Mait: “Did you not see me on the phone?”
Stasnek: “Did you not see this uniform I have on? Don’t give me any s--- right now. Give me your f---ing driver’s license.”
During her deposition, Stasnek was asked by Catalano — who did not tell the officers the encounter had been recorded — if she had used those words. She twice said no.
Catalano also pressed both officers under oath on whether Stasnek had given Mait notice that the driver was disobeying a lawful command. Both officers testified she had — at least twice. The recording catches no such exchange, although it is possible she did during a short stretch when GEICO had Mait on hold.
Late in the recording, while Mait can be heard sobbing in the distance, the officers say the following:
Fernandes: “I didn’t hear anything you said. I was in the back of the car.”
Stasnek: “I did drop the F-bomb.”
Fernandes, laughing: “I didn’t hear that. In my [internal affairs] statement, I’ll say I didn’t hear that. ... Don’t worry, I will put everything I heard beforehand.”