North Port Police Chief Kevin
Vespia, who was appointed in 2010, was not familiar with the case, but expects
to be briefed soon by the city's risk managers.
NORTH PORT - The City of North
Port has settled a false arrest lawsuit with a man police charged with drunk
driving in 2008 — even though he had no alcohol or drugs in his system.
Bryan Anderson, then 18, was
driving home around midnight on Oct. 4, 2008, in a white convertible with the
top down.
"That's probably why they
stopped me," he recalled Friday. "They said a wheel crossed the
double-yellow line."
Anderson told police he had
been at a Port Charlotte night club, but added that he did not drink or use
drugs.
North Port officers put him
through a series of field sobriety exercises anyway, which they said he failed.
Anderson disagrees.
"I took 10 steps instead
of nine, and touched the side of my nose instead of the tip," he said.
He was arrested for DUI and
taken to jail.
Prosecutors later abandoned the
case when his breath and urine tested negative for alcohol or drugs at the time
of his arrest.
Anderson filed suit for false
arrest, seeking up to $100,000 in damages for "mental suffering,
embarrassment, humiliation ... and injury to his feelings and reputation"
stemming from the arrest.
This week, the city settled the
lawsuit for $15,000.
Sarasota civil rights lawyer
Andrea Mogensen filed the litigation.
"I see it as a product of
these pro-arrest policies police use," she said. "Legally, the
threshold for arrest is reasonable suspicion based on facts, yet agencies,
because of policy, become pro arrest."
Mogensen said, at a minimum,
officers need an odor of alcohol before making a DUI arrest.
She credits the City of North
Port for resolving the lawsuit swiftly.
"This was not an
over-litigated case," she said. "They made him a reasonable
offer."
Anderson, now a 23-year-old
pharmacy tech, has plans for the money.
"I had to borrow money
from my grandparents for a criminal lawyer," he said. "Now I can pay
them back."
North Port Police Chief Kevin
Vespia, who was appointed in 2010, was not familiar with the case, but expects
to be briefed soon by the city's risk managers.
"If there are training
issues brought up, we'll address them," Vespia said.