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Cop acquitted of molestation is fired from the force

South Florida Sun Sentinel - 1/16/2020

An officer who was acquitted in one child molestation case and who had charges dropped in three other molestation cases has been fired from the Coconut Creek Police Department.

It wasn’t jail that ended Officer Daniel Rush’s career with the agency. Rather, the agency says he violated internal policies, including immoral conduct, improper conduct and improper use of department equipment.

With the officer no longer facing criminal charges, he still may work for another law enforcement agency, his lawyer said. He’ll likely seek a job as an officer elsewhere. “Sometime in the future he would like to be in law enforcement," said Johnny McCray Jr., his defense lawyer. "He’s very serious about his job.”

Rush was formally terminated in December, records show.

Prosecutors dropped Rush’s charges after three underage boys who accused him of molesting them declined to cooperate with authorities by showing up for hearings and depositions, according to records.

In May, days before the 2016 cases were finally set for trial, one of the witnesses called prosecutors, begging them to let him move on. Monique Pillinger, a prosecutor, tried convincing him not to give up, saying, “I wanted a jury to hear it as well so that we can try and prevent it from happening to anyone else,” she wrote in a memo.

The prosecutor “explained that unfortunately the system takes too long sometimes and that we were close to the end. He again told me to please leave him alone,” Pillinger wrote.

She wrote the only way to get the case to trial would be to physically force the victims into the courtroom but decided against “taking such drastic measures on victims of sexual abuse.”

“While the State has grave concerns about this defendant’s predatory nature, the State has equal concern of the chilling effect on future victims making an already difficult crime to report all the more difficult; fearing they could be taken into custody for lack of cooperation,” she wrote.

In a fourth accusation in 2018, a Broward jury found the officer not guilty of molesting an aspiring cop during a supposed training exercise. Rush’s attorney said it took a jury just 13 minutes to make the decision.

McCray said charges were “trumped up against him" and they “were anxious to go to trial on the remaining three charges.”

Rush, 30, was hired to the department in 2011. Rush received a letter of commendation in 2012 from the former police chief for being part of a group of officers who stunned a murder suspect at a mobile home park. The first stun gun round didn’t work, so a second one was fired, bringing the man to the ground.

“It is only through you and fellow officers’ heroic actions that this homicide suspect was quickly arrested without any additional loss of life,” the chief wrote.

But Rush didn’t just win praise. Superiors lambasted him for getting a visible tattoo that was a “blatant disregard” of agency policy.

In 2015, he was involved in the death of unarmed man at the gated Wynmoor Village about 1 a.m.Feb. 22. A resident said Calvon Reid asked him for a ride to the hospital. The resident called an ambulance instead. Paramedics said Reid was so agitated they called police.

Several officers, including Rush, fired their stun guns 10 times at him over the span of 10 minutes, with the first Taser being deployed by Rush and again a second time within a minute. Reid died two days later from complications of being shocked by the device, records show. The agency cleared the three officers of violating any department policies one month after a grand jury found no reason to charge them criminally.

The agency settled with the Reid family for $750,000.

McCray faulted the agency’s decision to fire him.

“They did what they believed was politically the safe thing to do. I think it was more of a political decision than a legal decision. It’s very unfortunate when they don’t have any evidence of any sexual wrongdoing on his part that they would take this action,” he said.

The department’s Internal Affairs investigation was done after Rush’s court proceedings, which is why he was not terminated until December, Coconut Creek Police spokesman Scotty Leamon said. “The officer was on administrative leave without pay for the entire time, with the exception of the time it took him to come in and speak with the officer who did the internal investigation,” Leamon said.

Among the reasons cited for his termination in the memo: improper use of department equipment including his car. The memo states that Rush, wearing his police uniform and badge, met one of his accusers at a park. The accuser told authorities that Rush told him not to turn on the lights and sirens in the marked cruiser because it would activate the in-car camera.

Another internal violation used to justify the termination is immoral conduct. Investigators said the accuser’s statements are backed up by security cameras at Tradewinds Park in Coconut Creek, where the meetings -- “a training session that turned into a battery” -- took place.

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