CRESCENT, Okla. – A police dispatcher from Crescent is looking for a new job after she says she was fired after being pulled over while driving home.
Ex-Crescent dispatcher Kayla Kinney admits she had a few beers earlier in the evening and was later heading home, when a police officer, who is her friend, pulled her over and jokingly asked her to take a sobriety test.
A test she says she passed.
“I got out and did it and he said you’re ‘good to go’,” Kinney said.
But that field sobriety test was caught on tape and by the next day, she says the video was making the rounds at police headquarters.
“They just said I know what you did, you’re being let go for drinking and driving.” Kinney said
Kinney insists she had passed the field sobriety test and the officer even allowed her to drive home.
“There’s no way that she was intoxicated,” ex-Crescent Police Officer Rich Anthony said.
Anthony says he saw the video and says although Kinney was not drunk, it may look like she’s intoxicated on the tape and there’s a reason why.
“I think we’ve all been to haunted houses where we’ve seen strobe lights and it’s messed with our equilibrium, our walking. Same thing with a police car, you know the red and blue lights flashing, there`s no way you could walk down a straight line.” Anthony said.
He says it’s standard training to turn off the flashing police lights during a field sobriety test.
“In this case those lights weren`t turned off,” Anthony said.
He believes once superiors saw the video they insisted the officer who made the traffic stop write an official report.
“He even admitted he was asked to write a police report over the traffic stop and he told me that he wrote the report in a way to keep his job.” Anthony said.
“He probably got in trouble for letting me go, and now he`s trying to cover it up so he doesn’t get fired.” Kinney said.
The City Manager’s office wouldn’t talk to us, so we went to the City Attorney, who would only say ‘we cannot discuss personnel issues.’
Officer Rich Anthony says he was so disgusted by the incident, he’s since resigned from the Crescent Police Department.
