A Florida sheriff is embarrassed by his former deputy arrested after allegedly groping a woman on Halloween night while on-duty.
The fired deputy, Carlos Lopez, cased out the victim’s home with another cop days before stopping by decked out in full uniform with a holstered gun to force himself upon her, according to allegations detailed by the Tampa Bay Times.
“It’s horrific when you read what he did,” Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco said Thursday. “It’s embarrassing.”
The 41-year-old Brooklyn-native cornered the victim while following up on a domestic dispute reported the prior week at the Land O’Lakes home.
The married man allegedly kissed her by force in the garage and reached down her pants while trying to lead her to the bedroom, the Times reported.
Lopez bragged he wouldn’t get caught and followed the 44-year-old victim inside the home even as she repeatedly said no.
“If you didn’t have your family in the house, I would have taken your clothes off,” Lopez threatened in a series of phone calls recorded by the victim that later led to his Nov. 5 arrest.
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He is now out of a job, but out of jail as well. He posted a $50,000 bail hours after being booked into the Pasco County jail just like the criminals he’s used to arresting, jail records show.
The deputy’s Lifesaving Award earned in 2012 for performing CPR on a driver that suffered a medical problem and mistakenly hit his patrol car did not deter his arrest either.
The man later died, the Times also reported.
“Carlos Lopez is a criminal. There’s no doubt about it,” Nocco added. “We have to do tough things and sometimes these tough things are to put handcuffs on people that used to work for us.”
