Officer sentenced to probation, avoids DUI conviction after toll booth crash
Plea deal downgrades charge to reckless driving
An Orlando police officer accused of crashing into a toll booth on State Road 408 while driving drunk in 2017 was sentenced to probation but avoided a criminal conviction Tuesday after taking a plea deal.
The officer, Frederick Rolle, pleaded no contest to charges of leaving the scene of a crash with property damage and alcohol-related reckless driving. As part of the deal, the charge of driving under the influence with property damage was downgraded to the reckless driving charge.
Rolle was ordered to 12 months of supervised probation and 50 hours of community service. He also has to complete a DUI course and victim awareness program within five months and pay court and investigative costs amounting to roughly $1,700.
At Rolle’s sentencing Tuesday, Circuit Judge Andrew Cameron withheld adjudication, meaning that the former officer will avoid having a conviction on his record if he completes the terms of the deal.
Rolle’s attorney, Michael Snure, declined to comment following the hearing.
Rolle was fired from OPD in 2018 after an Internal Affairs investigation determined he vio
lated multiple agency policies during and after the Nov. 2017 crash. It was the second time he had been fired from the agency. He was also terminated after internal investigators found he and Officer Michael Favorit in 2015 covered up an unauthorized police chase. Both officers were later rehired during arbitration.
In an interview with internal investigators, Rolle admitted to drinking two and a half alcoholic drinks prior to the 2017 crash on S.R. 408, but said he didn’t feel impaired as he drove. He was on his way home from International Drive, where he had gone to meet up with his cousins after working two extra duty shifts at nightclubs in downtown Orlando.
He ended his last shift at GILT Nightclub around 3:45 a.m. and stopped by his aunt’s house to change clothes before meeting his cousins at a hotel on IDrive, he told investigator Lashon Goins.
Rolle said he spent about 45 minutes to an hour in the parking lot of the hotel, where he was drinking Cognac mixed drinks, before deciding to leave.
He said he was tired from working all day and as he left, took with him his half-full third drink, which he said he didn’t consume on his way home.
As Rolle was traveling on State Road 408, he said he fell asleep at the wheel.
“When I woke up I saw my truck on fire,” Rolle told Goins in the interview. “I was running away from the fire. And by the time I got to where I thought I was safe, I was somewhere on Semoran and I didn’t know where I was.”
Rolle called his wife from a Megabus station, then hailed a taxi home. He was met there by Orlando police officers, who said they were there to check on him after officers called to the scene of the crash discovered the truck belonged to him.
He told Goins he called his wife instead of 911 because he needed to get home so his wife could take him to the hospital.
Inside Rolle’s flaming truck was his police equipment, including his duty belt which carried his weapons and ammunition. Investigators determined Rolle’s truck caused more than $19,000 in damage to the toll booth’s barrier. His damaged equipment cost more than $8,000.
In Rolle’s termination letter Nov. 28, 2018, Deputy Chief Eric Smith wrote that police and firefighters responding to the scene “were in close proximity to the burning truck and were subjected to the hazardous materials of the ammunition inside your vehicle.”
Rolle “more concerned with [him]self [than] the safety of everyone at the crash scene,” Smith wrote.
A blood sample taken from Rolle at the hospital showed his blood-alcohol content was .131 at the time it was taken, the internal investigation shows.
In September, Rolle’s attorney filed a motion to suppress that blood test, arguing that OPD obtained the warrant “on the basis that there was serious bodily injury to the Defendant, which there was not.”
Snure withdrew the motion Tuesday as part of the plea deal.