Questions about deputy
By WILLIAM SNOWDEN Editor
A Wakulla County Sheriff’s deputy was the subject of an internal affairs investigation in 2022 for not being truthful in his reports that led to him receiving a written reprimand and placed on disciplinary probation for six months.
Personnel records obtained by The Sun through a public records request show that Deputy Colton Sheridan was found to not be truthful about obtaining probable cause for several traffic stops. He had been disciplined before about not being truthful to his shift supervisor in 2020 when seizing drug evidence from a car claiming it was in plain sight when it was not.
In July 2022, the then-chief prosecutor Brian Miller wrote a memo to the the WCSO’s internal affairs investigator, Danny Deal, declining to write a Giglio memo on Sheridan, noting there was insufficient evidence to show the deputy committed perjury. (A Giglio memo is written when a law enforcement officer has been untruthful in the past and is not a credible witness in court.)
In April 2023, a few months after Sheridan’s disciplinary probation ended, he was called as a witness for a drug case based on a traffic stop he made in which the presiding judge determined that the deputy’s testimony was not credible.
Sheridan wrote in his report that he was driving the patrol car when actually another deputy was driving; he said that he could see the driver of an SUV, recognized her and ran her license and it came back not valid. But it turned out there was no record of the license check and the passenger side windows of the vehicle were tinted.
Wakulla Circuit Judge granted the defense’ motion to supress in the case, calling Sheridan’s testimony “an absolute dumpster burn.” The drug charges were dropped against the defendant.
Shortly after, Sheridan resigned from the Wakulla sheriff’s office and is now working in Franklin County as a deputy.
Sheridan applied to the sheriff’s office in 2018 and was hired in 2019, according to personnel records.
Here are some of the questionable arrests and traffic stops cited in the internal affairs investigation:
• On March 14, 2020, Sheridan was dispatched to Walmart on a retail theft call. The suspect had fled the scene prior to his arrival. He and other deputies searched for the suspect but were unable to locate him. Sheridan went inside the store and, working with store asset management personnel, located the vehicle the theft suspect had arrived in. He located the vehicle with a passenger inside who was unable to drive and contacted his shift supervisor, Lt. Vicki Mitchell, and asked if he could tow the vehicle. Lt. Mitchell advised not to tow the vehicle and to have the registered owner of the car, a relative of the passenger, come get the vehicle.
A short time later, Sheridan called Mitchell to say he had now placed the passenger under arrest for retail theft. He said that viewing store video he determined the passenger had also stolen items from the store. He said he was able to recover items from the vehicle.
Mitchell asked him had he reached into the truck to recover the stolen items? Sheridan said the passenger did.
In her memo on the incident, Lt. Mitchell wrote that “Deputy Sheridan was advised he did not have probable cause for search and he still could not tow the vehicle.
“A short time after the second call, Deputy Sheridan called again, he advised he now had probable cause to search the vehicle. I asked him to explain. He stated: ‘It’s in plain view, on the center console.’”
Lt. Mitchell responded that if it’s in plan view then go ahead with the search. She also asked the deputy, “‘Did you ask permission to search?’ He stated he did not. I advised him to ask for permission to search. Deputy Sheridan hung up the phone only to call back seconds later advising (the passenger) gave him permission to search. Deputy Sheridan then stated, ‘But I don’t need it, cause I’ve already found it.”
Lt. Mitchell noted in her memo that the time between the phone calls was not long enough for Deputy Sheridan to have spoken to the passenger and then to have conducted a search of the vehicle.
Mitchell wrote that she was about to leave at the end of her shift when she heard Sheridan making a call for a wrecker to tow the vehicle. She went to Walmart and asked Sheridan about the search. “As he got to the point of ‘plain view’ Deputy Sheridan stated, ‘The scale was in plain view, kinda sorta!’” Lt. Mitchell asked what that meant. Sheridan replied that “Well, it was kinda sticking out just a little bit from under the seat.”
“I reminded Deputy Sheridan that he told me on the phone it was in plain view on the center console.” A sergeant on the scene advised Sheridan to go back to the office and write his report and get with Lt. Mitchell in the morning.
The next day, Lt. Mitchell noted that Sheridan’s report said an inventory search of the vehicle due to the vehicle being towed revealed a Crown Royal bag – drugs and paraphernalia was found in the bag.
“This (was) different than what he told me on the phone and what he told me talking to him at Walmart,” Lt. Mitchell noted. She added that the report said that all the items were found together and does not say where the items were located.
In response, Lt. Mitchell sent out an email to her shift advising that in the future all searches will have at least one back-up officer. The email added that vehicle searches would now require a signed consent to search form.
• In March 2020, while answering a call at Walmart, Sheridan was inside the store while his patrol vehicle was unlocked, as discovered by an off-duty deputy.
The deputy opened the vehicle, found Sheridan’s ID, along with his patrol rifle, handgun, wallet and cell phone. The deputy phone dispatch and asked them to contact Sheridan and have him come outside to his vehicle.
Sheridan came out and the deputy advised Sheridan that his patrol vehicle was unlocked. Sheridan reportedly said that he couldn’t lock it because he only had one key. The off-duty deputy walked away and then saw Sheridan return to the store again leaving his patrol vehicle unsecured.
He was brought up on agency charges for violation of policies on firearms and fleet vehicles and the charges were sustained.
• In April 2020, he was placed on six month disciplinary probation and suspended for three days without pay.
• In May 2020, Sheridan was involved in a traffic stop at McDonalds. Sheridan made a radio call that “I got one running” and was reportedly following a driver trying to obtain probable cause for a search. Lt. Mitchell phoned Sheridan to ask for details. “He advised he did not have probable cause for the stop at this time.” About 10 minutes later, Sheridan called back and said he identified the driver after seeing him drive by and knew him from previous contact and that the driver did not have a valid driver license.
But two other deputies reported to Mitchell that Sheridan stopped the vehicle and made contact with the driver, requesting his identification but did not report it to dispatch.
“Due to conflicting statements and Deputy Sheridan having a history of being untruthful to me, I started a supervisor inquiry,” Mitchell wrote in a memo to Undersheriff Billy Jones.
In interviews with other deputies on duty that night, the deputy serving as “acting sergeant” on the shift said Sheridan had asked if he could attempt to get a radar clock on the driver he was following. He added that the car had a cracked windshield on the passenger side. The acting sergeant advised Sheridan it was a “bad stop” and to “back down as he had no probable cause for a stop.”
Another deputy noted that the driver of the car Sheridan was following had passed him at slow speed and the driver had a hat and shirt pulled high and could not be identified by sight.
In his formal interview, Sheridan’s story changed and he acknowledged that he stopped the car and had a brief conversation with the driver, including asking him for ID.
Lt. Mitchell pointed out these details were different from what he had reported earlier. Mitchell added that being truthful keeps the sheriff’s office from civil and criminal liability.
Sheridan said he understood, but told the lieutenant that sometimes he gets caught up in the moment.
• Later in May 2020, Sheridan was on Shawnee Trail on a call for a possible burglary in progress. As the investigation concluded and the call was determined to be unfounded, Sheridan wrecked into Lt. Mitchell’s patrol car causing minor damage to both vehicles.
In February 2020, Sheridan had crashed a patrol car on Crestwood Lane where he was dispatched on a call for a child not breathing. The deputy missed a curve and crashed into several trees about 20-30 feet from the roadway.
An investigation determined he was not traveling at a safe speed and did not have the vehicle under control. He was required to take a remedial driving course.
• In April 2022, Sheridan made a stop for driving while license suspended or revoked and a subsequent search found drugs and paraphernalia.
Sheridan’s report stated that he was on patrol when he saw a black Equinox pull into the Circle K convenience store on Coastal Highway and that he recognized the woman from past law enforcement encounters. He checked the woman’s driver license status and determined it was suspended.
When he saw the woman leave the store and get in the car, he followed and made a traffic stop. Determining she was driving with a suspended license, he arrested the woman and searched the vehicle and found meth and pipes.
That arrest was the subject of an internal affairs investigation, and interviews with other law enforcement involved indicated Sheridan told one deputy on scene that he made the stop because of a faulty brake light. Video from the convenience store indicates Sheridan was not where he said he was and so could not have seen the woman when she went in and came out of the store. Store video also showed the brake lights on the vehicle worked when Sheridan pulled it over.
The internal affairs report found that “photographic and video evidence indicates that Deputy Sheridan’s statement” about seeing the woman enter and leave the store, get in the car, and ID her in his “official arrest affidavit, that it may be a violation of (state law), making false affidavit perjury.”
Instead, investigators opined that Sheridan didn’t know the driver of the vehicle “but instead initiated a non-probable cause traffic stop on the vehicle because he recognized it and assumed the registered owner, whom he knew from previous law enforcement encounters was driving it.”
The criminal charges against the woman were dropped days after the arrest.
• Later in April 2022, Sheridan made a traffic stop on Shadeville Highway claiming the car’s brake lights were out.
But a sergeant on patrol saw the car pass by him and the brake lights were working. The car stopped at a convenience store and another deputy stopped at the store and was looking for a reason to pull the car but couldn’t come up with probable cause – he noted the lights were all working. That deputy had run the tag and determined the car was owned by a criminal habitual offender but, again, he had no reason to stop the car.
And internal affairs pulled video from the convenience store and determined the brake lights on the car were working.
The sergeant on duty that night filed a complaint on Sheridan for “conduct unbecoming” which prompted the internal affairs investigation.
The couple who were in the car that was pulled by Sheridan complained about his interaction with them: At the stop, the deputy reportedly demanded their ID, but not the car registration. He said he stopped the car because of a faulty brake light, but the male passenger said he had checked the lights before the trip and said there was nothing wrong. The male passenger wanted to get out of the car and look at the alleged broken light, but Sheridan ordered him to stay in the car. The deputy asked where they were going. When the woman who was driving said she was going to visit her children who live with her parents, the deputy reportedly asked why her kids didn’t live with her. He then asked to search the car – but the male passenger told the deputy no, that he could call a canine to sniff the car and if the dog hit on anything then he’d give consent.
Sheridan then reportedly released the car from the stop with a warning to get the brake light fixed.
The male passenger told internal affairs that he was upset by the stop – he acknowledged he had served time in prison, but said he had straightened out his life. He said the woman in the car that night, his girlfriend, was so upset about the traffic stop that she was crying.
Internal affairs investigators opined that the facts did not line up and that Deputy Sheridan had lied on his report.
A memo between internal affairs investigators noted that “Deputy Sheridan writes most of his sworn affidavits to meet his agenda and that they are not accurate or are downright lies.” That memo notes that the sheriff and state attorney have received complaints about Sheridan.
Then-chief prosecutor Brian Miller reviewed the internal affairs report but declined to write a Giglio memo on Sheridan, saying there wasn’t enough evidence of perjury. (Miller had written a Giglio memo on a Wakulla deputy, Robert Standeford, who lied on the stand in an administrative hearing in Tallahassee. Standeford resigned after the memo was filed. He has a pending lawsuit against the sheriff’s office claiming discrimination by the agency.)
But as a result of the internal affairs investigation, Sheridan was placed on six months of disciplinary probation.
Then in April 2023, came Sheridan’s arrest of the woman on drug charges after a traffic stop on Woodville Highway – and the court’s finding that Sheridan was not a credible witness.
According to a transcript of the hearing, Wakulla Circuit Judge Layne Smith found that “Deputy Sheridan’s testimony is about as all over the board as one could imagine, meaning, I find him to be an exceedingly weak witness for his own case. He’s the driver. He’s not the driver. He wrote he’s the driver... I find him to be an exceedingly weak witness. No, he admitted under oath that he had been put on probation at least one time for untruthfulness.” The judge noted the defense would likely challenge Sheridan with that if the case went to trial.
It didn’t go to trial, though, because Judge Smith ordered the evidence that was seized at the traffic stop to be suppressed and Assistant State Attorney Eli Bentley dropped the charges against the woman.
A short time later, Sheridan resigned from the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office.
It’s not clear if he was given the option of termination or resignation. The internal affairs report was supposed to be delivered to the agency that oversees law enforcement standards.
