Note Passed In Restaurant Gets SWAT Team Shut Down

[GunSlut]

Note Passed In Restaurant Gets SWAT Team Shut Down - WRDQ News Story - WFTV Orlando

Note Passed In Restaurant Gets SWAT Team Shut Down

POSTED: 6:06 pm EDT May 15, 2007
UPDATED: 7:48 pm EDT May 15, 2007

COCOA, Fla. -- The Cocoa SWAT team was de-activated and an internal investigation launched all because of a note passed in a local restaurant.

Channel 9 has uncovered a strange encounter between some Cocoa SWAT team members and a deputy city manager.

On-duty SWAT team members offered to buy dinner for the deputy city manager, but then backed out with a note and a very blunt message. That prompted the investigation and the temporary shut down of the SWAT team.

The police chief won't comment on the ongoing Internal Affairs investigation. It includes between eight and ten members who may have taken hard feelings about union contract negotiations too far.

For the time being, whenever there is a need for a high-powered tactical team for a takedown in Cocoa, the police department will turn to the Brevard County Sheriff's Office.

Several members of the Cocoa SWAT team, while still on the clock, have been stripped of their SWAT responsibilities after part of the team ran into the deputy city manager at El Charro Mexican Restaurant.

Wendy Widmann said, when she was done with her meal, an officer asked a waitress to allow them to pick up her tab. But then the waitress came back with the bill.

"It said, 'Love SWAT,' and it had some people's names on it that aren't even in SWAT and a couple of people that are," Deputy City Manager Widmann said.

And the waitress had an unusual message.

"She was told by the group to come here by the group and say they couldn't afford to pay," Widmann said.

Widmann believes it was a mean-spirited reaction to stalled police contract talks, which have left officers without a raise for three years. She said they shouldn't have brought a waitress in on it.

"I was embarrassed for the city, because the actions of one reflect on all of us. I may not be a police officer, but the reputation of Cocoa still goes down the tubes when somebody does something like this and it reflects poorly on all of us," she said.

When the police chief got wind, Widmann said, he initiated the internal investigation and took the steps to deactivate the SWAT team until the chief can decide if the conduct was unbecoming of an officer and if it deserves any other disciplinary action.

The police union had not been notified of the incident until Eyewitness News called, and had no comment. The deputy city manager said none of the SWAT team members apologized to her, but two other police officers did.

[NSP]

Obviously there is more to this and the note was the final straw.