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The Los Angeles Police Department Board of Police Commissioners has adopted a new policy limiting officers’ ability to drink while carrying their service weapon when off-duty. While the department stopped short of saying exactly why off-duty cops are getting more scrutiny, VICE News has some guesses based on the last five years. And they all involve police officers being absolutely wasted.
The policy, which the board voted to approve during a virtual police commission meeting Tuesday afternoon, will subject officers to testing for impairment and punish them if their blood alcohol content is above 0.04 percent, half the state’s legal limit. LAPD did not immediately respond to questions about how officers found in violation of the policy will be penalized.
“Department personnel are conspicuous representatives of government, whose conduct is closely scrutinized,” stated an internal memo from Department Chief Michel Moore, who signaled his support of the policy’s implementation. “An employee's good judgment and physical skill in handling a firearm can oftentimes be greatly diminished by intoxication, which can jeopardize public safety as well as the safety of our employees and their loved ones.” Local NBC affiliate KNBC-4 obtained the memo and reported it on Monday.The LAPD told VICE News that a violation of the new policy would lead to an administrative investigation, which in turn could result in consequences as severe as termination. Here are some theories about why the LAPD is taking this no-tolerance approach to cops getting wasted while off duty.November to December 2022
Between Thanksgiving and December 17, seven LAPD officers were arrested for alcohol-related offenses including drunk driving (and crashing), Chief Moore said during Tuesday’s meeting. The department didn’t provide details of each situation to the public, KNBC-4 confirmed with police officials that at least three officers were caught with a blood-alcohol content that was more than twice the legal limit. The outlet also confirmed that more than one of the arrests followed vehicle crashes that caused injuries.
The issue was enough of a problem for an internal memo to be sent to officers warning them of the dangerous trend going into the holiday season, the department’s top brass said Tuesday. LAPD’s Commanding Officer of Detective Support and Vice Division Captain Kelly Muniz told local news outlets that internal behavioral science clinicians had begun creating additional training in the aftermath of the arrests, and conducted meetings with officers to prevent the issue from persisting.
“Although alcohol resources and training are available to LAPD personnel, this does not take the place of criminal and administrative accountability processes that have been initiated and will be carried out," Muniz said at the time.
May 2021While off duty on May 7, 2021, Los Angeles police officer Nicolas Emmanuel Quintanilla-Borja pulled up to his Inglewood home with a semiautomatic firearm and threatened to kill his 37-year-old cousin, who had locked himself in a room. Moments later, Quintanilla-Borja also threatened an elderly tenant who lived on the property, pointing the weapon at him. The 64-year-old managed to flee the enraged cop and called 911.
Chief Moore told the public at the time that Quintanilla-Borja was suspected of being under the influence when he was arrested, and that he had a record of acting out while drinking off duty since starting with the LAPD in January 2020. Quintanilla-Borja, was charged with one count of false imprisonment by violence, one count of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and two counts of criminal threats, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office told VICE News that Quntanilla-Borja’s case is ongoing.January 2019On January 24, 2019, several terrified motorists reported that a wrecked Dodge Charger had been swerving and driving erratically as it made its way southbound on the 405 Freeway. One motorist reported that the vehicle was missing a front wheel, while another reported sparks flying from the heavily damaged vehicle.
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department found that the Charger was actually a city-issued vehicle that belonged to then-LAPD Commander Jeff Nolte. The California Highway Patrol concluded that Nolte crashed the car into a guardrail somewhere on the 110 Freeway, but kept driving before exiting onto Avalon Blvd and abandoning the wreckage. While the events that 911 callers described seemed to suggest Nolte was not sober at the time of the accident, Chief Moore told the local ABC affiliate that Nolte was never subjected to a breathalyzer test because such tests require “evidence of objective symptoms of alcohol use.”
“It’s my understanding that, at the point in time in which this investigation was conducted, such symptoms did not exist,” Moore told the outlet. Nolte was placed on administrative leave after the LAPD began an investigation into the crash, but faced no criminal charges for the wreckage of city property. He retired in June 2019 with his pension still intact.February 2019Detective Michael Johnson spent the night and early morning hours of February 14, 2019 out drinking with his colleagues in Downtown Los Angeles. But the celebratory night out almost ended in tragedy after the drunken 20-year-veteran got into a near-deadly confrontation with a homeless Marine Corps veteran.
According to the LAPD, Johnson, who was off duty at the time, encountered the man around 3:30 a.m. The veteran said Johnson initiated the fight, while Johnson reported that the other man tried to rob him with a weapon of his own. During the scuffle, the veteran used an object to strike Johnson in the head. The detective responded by drawing and firing his weapon twice. Johnson suffered a fractured eye socket and was knocked out, while the injured veteran fled to a nearby police station for treatment. As the off-duty officer lay unconscious in the street, his service weapon and several other items were stolen from him.
Johnson was placed in a medically induced coma, while the veteran was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Both were released from the hospital within a week, and investigators recovered the detective’s service weapon from someone unrelated to the fight. Police later found that Johnson’s blood-alcohol level was more than four times the legal limit, and concluded that his use of force and his drawing of a service weapon while off duty was against department policy. They also found no evidence that the vet was armed, as Johnson had claimed.
Chief Moore recommended Johnson’s termination, but despite the holes in his story and the investigation’s findings, he received a 55-day suspension without pay, a punishment he is in the process of challenging.
April 2018Off-duty police officer Michael Anthony Keith, 35, had been driving north on Route 14 while under the influence on April 26, 2018, according to local TV station KTLA. At around 1:30 a.m., Keith lost control of his Honda Accord and veered off the road, slamming into a parked SUV with two occupants, one male and one female, inside.
The two people were rushed to the local hospital with major injuries, according to the California Highway Patrol. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office found that Keith had been driving with a blood alcohol content above the legal limit of .08 percent at the time of the crash. He was charged with two counts of driving under the influence of an alcoholic beverage.
Keith pleaded no contest to one felony count of DUI causing injury. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office told VICE News that Keith was sentenced in February 2022 to three years of formal probation, five days in county jail, and 200 hours of community service.April 2018A day after Officer Keith injured two people while driving under the influence, two high-ranking officers, Sgt. James Kelly and Cmdr. Nicole Mehringer, were caught traveling in an unmarked police car while drunk.
The two officers were arrested in Glendale at 1:45 a.m. on April 27, after local police saw the vehicle hit another car at slow speed. Police found Kelly intoxicated in the driver’s seat and Mehringer passed out in the passenger seat. It took police 20 minutes to get the two off-duty cops out of the vehicle. Police later found that Kelly had a blood alcohol content of .20 percent, which is about double the legal limit in the state.
Mehringer was charged with a misdemeanor count of public intoxication while Kelly was charged with two counts of driving under the influence of alcohol. Both pleaded not guilty. They were relieved of duty without pay in July 2018 pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Mehringer was eventually fired, while Kelly was demoted a single rank to Lieutenant. Last year, an LA Superior Court judge ruled Mehringer could move forward with a lawsuit against the department, claiming her termination was excessive, particularly because many of her male colleagues had committed crimes and didn’t face the same harsh consequence.
September 2017In what is perhaps the most tragic instance of drunk off-duty police conduct, Officer Edgar Verduzco was driving 150 miles per hour southbound in the carpool lane of Freeway 605. The off-duty officer slammed his 2016 Chevy Camaro into the back of a Nissan, which quickly crashed and was engulfed in flames, killing all three Riverside residents inside: married couple Mario Davila, 60, and Maribel Davila, 52, and their son Oscar Davila, who was just 19. Verduzco then slammed into a second car, injuring the driver. Verduzco himself suffered a broken nose.
California Highway Patrol later found that Verduzco had a blood-alcohol content of 0.13 percent. Just hours before the tragedy, the cop had posted a video from a bar he’d been in with the hashtag “#DontDrinkAndDrive,” KTLA reported.
While he was initially arrested and released on bail after the crash pending charges, Verduzco was arrested once more in April 2018 on charges connected to the deadly accident, and was relieved of duty by the LAPD. He was charged with three counts of murder and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and two counts related to driving under the influence. Edgar pleaded not guilty to all of the charges related to the 2019 crash and is currently awaiting trial. He faces life in prison if convicted of all the charges against him.A long time comingAs early as June 2021, the Los Angeles Police Commission had considered introducing restrictions on off-duty officers’ alcohol consumption. At the time, the Board of Commissioners requested a report on off-duty officers reprimanded for being under the influence, citing an LA Times report on the department’s lack of a clear policy on the matter even as the issue persisted throughout the years. Just two years prior, the department received an astonishing 50 complaints against officers who were drunk or under the influence, according to Commander Steve Lurie.
In 2022, the LAPD received 35 complaints against their employees for alcohol or drug use-related offenses, Commander Lurie said during Tuesday’s meeting. The number was up five from 2021. Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.
The policy, which the board voted to approve during a virtual police commission meeting Tuesday afternoon, will subject officers to testing for impairment and punish them if their blood alcohol content is above 0.04 percent, half the state’s legal limit. LAPD did not immediately respond to questions about how officers found in violation of the policy will be penalized.
“Department personnel are conspicuous representatives of government, whose conduct is closely scrutinized,” stated an internal memo from Department Chief Michel Moore, who signaled his support of the policy’s implementation. “An employee's good judgment and physical skill in handling a firearm can oftentimes be greatly diminished by intoxication, which can jeopardize public safety as well as the safety of our employees and their loved ones.” Local NBC affiliate KNBC-4 obtained the memo and reported it on Monday.
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Between Thanksgiving and December 17, seven LAPD officers were arrested for alcohol-related offenses including drunk driving (and crashing), Chief Moore said during Tuesday’s meeting. The department didn’t provide details of each situation to the public, KNBC-4 confirmed with police officials that at least three officers were caught with a blood-alcohol content that was more than twice the legal limit. The outlet also confirmed that more than one of the arrests followed vehicle crashes that caused injuries.
The issue was enough of a problem for an internal memo to be sent to officers warning them of the dangerous trend going into the holiday season, the department’s top brass said Tuesday. LAPD’s Commanding Officer of Detective Support and Vice Division Captain Kelly Muniz told local news outlets that internal behavioral science clinicians had begun creating additional training in the aftermath of the arrests, and conducted meetings with officers to prevent the issue from persisting.
“Although alcohol resources and training are available to LAPD personnel, this does not take the place of criminal and administrative accountability processes that have been initiated and will be carried out," Muniz said at the time.
May 2021
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Chief Moore told the public at the time that Quintanilla-Borja was suspected of being under the influence when he was arrested, and that he had a record of acting out while drinking off duty since starting with the LAPD in January 2020. Quintanilla-Borja, was charged with one count of false imprisonment by violence, one count of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and two counts of criminal threats, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office told VICE News that Quntanilla-Borja’s case is ongoing.January 2019On January 24, 2019, several terrified motorists reported that a wrecked Dodge Charger had been swerving and driving erratically as it made its way southbound on the 405 Freeway. One motorist reported that the vehicle was missing a front wheel, while another reported sparks flying from the heavily damaged vehicle.
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department found that the Charger was actually a city-issued vehicle that belonged to then-LAPD Commander Jeff Nolte. The California Highway Patrol concluded that Nolte crashed the car into a guardrail somewhere on the 110 Freeway, but kept driving before exiting onto Avalon Blvd and abandoning the wreckage. While the events that 911 callers described seemed to suggest Nolte was not sober at the time of the accident, Chief Moore told the local ABC affiliate that Nolte was never subjected to a breathalyzer test because such tests require “evidence of objective symptoms of alcohol use.”
“It’s my understanding that, at the point in time in which this investigation was conducted, such symptoms did not exist,” Moore told the outlet. Nolte was placed on administrative leave after the LAPD began an investigation into the crash, but faced no criminal charges for the wreckage of city property. He retired in June 2019 with his pension still intact.
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According to the LAPD, Johnson, who was off duty at the time, encountered the man around 3:30 a.m. The veteran said Johnson initiated the fight, while Johnson reported that the other man tried to rob him with a weapon of his own. During the scuffle, the veteran used an object to strike Johnson in the head. The detective responded by drawing and firing his weapon twice. Johnson suffered a fractured eye socket and was knocked out, while the injured veteran fled to a nearby police station for treatment. As the off-duty officer lay unconscious in the street, his service weapon and several other items were stolen from him.
Johnson was placed in a medically induced coma, while the veteran was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Both were released from the hospital within a week, and investigators recovered the detective’s service weapon from someone unrelated to the fight. Police later found that Johnson’s blood-alcohol level was more than four times the legal limit, and concluded that his use of force and his drawing of a service weapon while off duty was against department policy. They also found no evidence that the vet was armed, as Johnson had claimed.
Chief Moore recommended Johnson’s termination, but despite the holes in his story and the investigation’s findings, he received a 55-day suspension without pay, a punishment he is in the process of challenging.
April 2018
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The two people were rushed to the local hospital with major injuries, according to the California Highway Patrol. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office found that Keith had been driving with a blood alcohol content above the legal limit of .08 percent at the time of the crash. He was charged with two counts of driving under the influence of an alcoholic beverage.
Keith pleaded no contest to one felony count of DUI causing injury. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office told VICE News that Keith was sentenced in February 2022 to three years of formal probation, five days in county jail, and 200 hours of community service.April 2018A day after Officer Keith injured two people while driving under the influence, two high-ranking officers, Sgt. James Kelly and Cmdr. Nicole Mehringer, were caught traveling in an unmarked police car while drunk.
The two officers were arrested in Glendale at 1:45 a.m. on April 27, after local police saw the vehicle hit another car at slow speed. Police found Kelly intoxicated in the driver’s seat and Mehringer passed out in the passenger seat. It took police 20 minutes to get the two off-duty cops out of the vehicle. Police later found that Kelly had a blood alcohol content of .20 percent, which is about double the legal limit in the state.
Mehringer was charged with a misdemeanor count of public intoxication while Kelly was charged with two counts of driving under the influence of alcohol. Both pleaded not guilty. They were relieved of duty without pay in July 2018 pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Mehringer was eventually fired, while Kelly was demoted a single rank to Lieutenant. Last year, an LA Superior Court judge ruled Mehringer could move forward with a lawsuit against the department, claiming her termination was excessive, particularly because many of her male colleagues had committed crimes and didn’t face the same harsh consequence.
September 2017In what is perhaps the most tragic instance of drunk off-duty police conduct, Officer Edgar Verduzco was driving 150 miles per hour southbound in the carpool lane of Freeway 605. The off-duty officer slammed his 2016 Chevy Camaro into the back of a Nissan, which quickly crashed and was engulfed in flames, killing all three Riverside residents inside: married couple Mario Davila, 60, and Maribel Davila, 52, and their son Oscar Davila, who was just 19. Verduzco then slammed into a second car, injuring the driver. Verduzco himself suffered a broken nose.
California Highway Patrol later found that Verduzco had a blood-alcohol content of 0.13 percent. Just hours before the tragedy, the cop had posted a video from a bar he’d been in with the hashtag “#DontDrinkAndDrive,” KTLA reported.
While he was initially arrested and released on bail after the crash pending charges, Verduzco was arrested once more in April 2018 on charges connected to the deadly accident, and was relieved of duty by the LAPD. He was charged with three counts of murder and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and two counts related to driving under the influence. Edgar pleaded not guilty to all of the charges related to the 2019 crash and is currently awaiting trial. He faces life in prison if convicted of all the charges against him.A long time comingAs early as June 2021, the Los Angeles Police Commission had considered introducing restrictions on off-duty officers’ alcohol consumption. At the time, the Board of Commissioners requested a report on off-duty officers reprimanded for being under the influence, citing an LA Times report on the department’s lack of a clear policy on the matter even as the issue persisted throughout the years. Just two years prior, the department received an astonishing 50 complaints against officers who were drunk or under the influence, according to Commander Steve Lurie.
In 2022, the LAPD received 35 complaints against their employees for alcohol or drug use-related offenses, Commander Lurie said during Tuesday’s meeting. The number was up five from 2021. Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.