Drunk Secret Service Agent Found Passed Out in Brickell; Arrested After Obama Miami Trip

(The Miami Herald, October 14, 2012)

BY MICHAEL FINCH II

Miami police arrested a Secret Service officer after he was found passed out and apparently drunk on a busy Brickell intersection, hours after President Barack Obama passed through for a quick campaign stop at the University of Miami.

A Miami police arrest affidavit described agent Aaron Francis Engler as lying on the ground near Southwest Seventh Street and Brickell Avenue around 7 a.m.

An officer asked him to get up. Engler refused, according to the affidavit.

There was a “strong odor of [an] alcoholic beverage emitting from his breath,” police said.

He had bloodshot eyes and slurred speech. The officer had to help Engler stand to his feet before he started flailing his arms. While the officer began searching Engler to handcuff him, the agent struck the officer in the face and chin.

An additional police unit was called to help restrain the man as he continued to struggle before he was handcuffed, police said.

Engler was arrested on two misdemeanor counts of disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest. Miami police said Engler has been released to members of the Secret Service’s Miami field office.

The Secret Service in Washington said the case will be turned over to the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

A law enforcement official said Engler was assigned to the agency’s uniformed division and was in Miami in a support role while the president was visiting. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the officer’s job with the agency.

Obama was in Miami Thursday for a campaign rally at the University of Miami and an evening fundraiser.

This isn’t the first time misbehaving Secret Service agents have been in the news in the past few months. Several agents resigned earlier this year after they were caught in April in a prostitution scandal in Colombia when the president was attending the Summit of the Americas. A handful were implicated in the scandal and faced administrative action.

This report was supplemented by information from The Associated Press.

 

Woman Rescued After Jumping From Sunshine Skyway

(Tampa Bay Times, July 6, 2012)

BY MICHAEL FINCH II

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Charter boat fishing captain Kris Winkel and three passengers were near the Sunshine Skyway bridge, heading out for tarpon early Thursday, when they heard screams.

Winkel looked up at the Skyway and saw nothing.

Straight ahead he noticed what appeared to be a crab trap. Until it started waving.

“She just lifted her arm up,” Winkel said.

He steered close. Two passengers pulled the woman aboard and placed her on the deck.

Her eyes were dilated and wild, Winkel said, and she appeared to be in her mid 20s.

The impact of the fall from the Skyway tore off most of her clothes.

“She only had on shorts and a sock on her foot,” Winkel said. They wrapped her in T-shirts and called police.

“I don’t know if she was thinking straight,” Winkel said. She told the men about wanting to avoid the “insane asylum.”

A St. Petersburg Fire and Rescue boat soon came to take woman to shore. She was listed in critical condition Bayfront Medical Center, officials said.

The woman’s gold, late-model Saturn, left in a southbound lane of the bridge, was monitored by a traffic camera about 7:20 a.m. Thursday.

She sat on the edge of the bridge near the top deck and jumped into the water about 174 feet below, Fire and Rescue officials said.

The impact from that plunge into the water has killed more than 200 people, according to the website skywaybridge.com, and only 34 jumpers have survived.

For Winkel, the plan that morning was to reel in some tarpon.

For as much as $500, he gives guided fishing tours in Tampa Bay.

“Only one guy was kind of shaken up,” Winkel said.

So they went fishing.