Ex-Hollywood cop accused of doctoring report heads to trial

A former Hollywood police officer accused of doctoring an accident report to absolve a fellow cop of rear-ending another car faces trial on Monday.

Dewey Pressley's statement, "We'll do a little Walt Disney to protect the cop" was recorded on a dashboard camera. He was allegedly trying to protect Officer Joel Francisco in the February 2009 crash. The driver of the other car was arrested for drunken driving.

Pressley, 45, faces a maximum of 30 years in prison if convicted of all 10 counts â€" four counts of official misconduct, four counts of falsifying records, one count of conspiracy to commit official misconduct and one count of conspiracy to falsify records.

Francisco, 39, faces the same charges; his trial will be at a later date.

Each man has pleaded not guilty and has been free on $100,000 bail.

Pressley's attorney, Rhea Grossman, could not be reached for comment.

The trial, before Broward Circuit Judge Michael Robinson, is expected to last a week, according to prosecutor Adriana Alcalde-Padron. Jury selection starts Monday.

Pressley, Francisco and three other Hollywood Police Department employees were fired in January 2010 as a result of the incident. The other three â€" Sgt. Andrew Diaz, Community Service Officer Karim Thomas and crime-scene technician Andrea Tomassi â€" were not criminally charged.

Seemingly unaware that the dashboard camera was recording, the officers can be heard saying how they would alter the crash report to get Francisco "off the hook" with a concocted story about a stray cat leaping out of motorist Alexandra Torrens-Vilas' car window.

Torrens-Vilas, then 23, of Hollywood, was seated in the back seat of a patrol car while the officers discussed distorting the facts to shift the blame from Francisco to her. She ended up charged with four counts of drunken driving and was cited for improper lane change.

Francisco was on duty and talking to a friend on his cell phone when he rear ended Torrens-Vilas with his police cruiser on Sheridan Street. His personnel file listed eight other crashes in his 12 years with the agency.

"I will do the narrative for you," Pressley, a 22-year veteran of the force, can be heard saying. "I know how I am going to word this; the cat gets him off the hook."

Pressley's report detailing the midnight crash said: "a large gray stray cat" that had been sitting on Torrens-Vilas' lap jumped out of her car window and distracted her, causing her to veer into Francisco's lane, where she abruptly braked, and he hit her.

"I don't want to make things up ever, because it's wrong, but if I need to bend it a little to protect a cop, I'm gonna," Pressley said. "We'll do a little Walt Disney to protect the cop because it wouldn't have mattered because she is drunk anyway."

Pressley arrested Torrens-Vilas on four drunken driving charges, which carried a maximum penalty of nearly three years in jail. State prosecutors dropped the DUI charges in July 2009.

Torrens-Vilas' attorney, Larry Meltzer, labeled the incident at the time a disturbing "abuse of power."

"Actually seeing it transpire on video in front of you, it really kind of sickens you," Meltzer said. "It's really nauseating to sit there and watch your client's rights go out the window."

The scandal hit the police department as it was trying to rebound from a two-year FBI probe that sent four officers to federal prison for trafficking in heroin and prompted the November 2007 departure of Chief James Scarberry.

The FBI had told Scarberry about their investigation and the information filtered down to the targets of the investigation. The FBI cut its investigation short when the leak was discovered.

tealanez@tribune.com, 954-356-4542.