The Lake County, Florida Sheriff’s Office last week announced that an internal investigation had found that a deputy who had claimed his “brakes locked up” when he plowed his patrol car into a woman’s vehicle on November 6th was actually distracted because he watching porn on his phone behind the wheel, leading the deputy to resign before he could be fired, WESH 2 reports.
It does not appear that any injuries were inflicted on the unidentified woman who was waiting behind a stopped school bus when registered Republican now-former Deputy Tristan Macomber smashed into her car and the sheriff’s department paid for the damages. Macomber’s story steadily unraveled over the next two months as when the brakes lie fell apart due to the body cam footage he then “admitted” to looking at a group text chat with other cops. Then when the internal affairs investigators said it was obvious from the footage Macomber was looking at images of some sort on the phone, he said they had been sent in that group chat. “The group’s text messages contained no memes or videos,” said the internal report – obtained by WESH – about that line crumbling too.
It’s obvious that at this point Macomber had to know he was fucked but wanted to maintain some shred of dignity and spare himself the embarrassment of being known as the guy who got fired because he was looking at porn when he smashed up some lady’s car – or at the very least claim that it had been sent in a group chat. It was during a later interview with investigators that Macomber admitted he was looking at “inappropriate pictures,” and then “clarified” it was porn.
WESH’s article does not specify what kind of porn this was, however the amount of effort applied to misdirecting investigators after his job was already doomed could indicate that it was not something vanilla but like gross, weird fetish stuff. On a cleaner, also funny note, there’s no post on Macomber quitting on the Lake County Sheriff’s Facebook page. Yet they still kind of seem to be subtly acknowledging it, as two of the eight most recent posts are PSAs about distracted driving.