Brickbat: Surfing U.S.A.
The Pinellas County, Florida, Sheriff's Office has fired Deputy Joshua Sacino for violating his duties and responsibilities and committing acts unbecoming of members of the agency. An investigation found Sacino spent four hours one day parked in his patrol vehicle surfing the Internet. When asked to document his activities, Sacino told a supervisor he had stopped one car and given the driver a warning. He later drove to a Walmart, picked a car at random and wrote a report saying the vehicle's driver was "involved in drug activity." After reviewing his bodycam video, supervisors confronted Sacino, who confessed his lies. "It's a serious matter," said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. "Deputy Sacino did this for self-serving reasons, to conceal his lack of activity and incompetence, with no regard of the consequences this report could have had for the citizen involved, or for any citizen operating that vehicle in the future."
