https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/m...uress-10729875

Cops getting into Bar fights is nothing new but the FOP and city giving a second chance to cops with a drug addiction is. How does that Cuban saying goes, “dime con quien tu andas y te diré quien tu Eres”.

Steriods, Cocaine, Marijuana, Alcohol and a Miami Badge! Just like the good old days!

In fact, according to the city's Civilian Investigative Panel, Verne has now repeatedly been accused of off-duty incidents "where allegations were made that he was under the influence of alcohol and had anger issues." In one January 2018 incident, an off-duty Verne allegedly rammed a Jeep into someone, chased down their car, whipped out a police badge and yelled, "You don't know who you are ****ing with. If you leave now I'll forget this happened."

unclear whether Verne was disciplined for that incident.

But Verne did get whacked by his bosses for the 2017 bar fight. According to CIP and Internal Affairs documents New Times obtained, Verne and two other cops were drinking at a Miller's Ale House in Kendall when a witness claimed she witnessed a fight go down. Verne was with two other off-duty MPD officers that night — Officers Brandon Carmona and Adrian Santos, who was later arrested in a separate incident after allegedly getting videotaped snorting cocaine inside the E11even nightclub while topless women danced nearby. Santos was fired in January.

Miami PD's IA department obtained a copy of Carmona's bar tab that night. It showed the group of cops was drinking a combination of Fireball, Tito's Handmade Vodka, and Sierra Mist. That concoction helped grease the wheels for what allegedly happened next: Internal Affairs investigators say Verne got into a heated argument with another drunk patron and wound up choking him hard enough to leave bruises.

A witness said Verne "attacked" the other man, although the three cops later claimed the drunk Ale House guest had made "obscene" comments toward Verne, including calling him a "pig."

An Ale House waitress later told authorities that she also witnessed the fight. According to surveillance footage from the Ale House, around 1 a.m. Verne walked directly up to the victim, Sebastian Sierra, grabbed him by the neck, and shoved him up against a "dividing wall" between two tables. Sierra's baseball cap then fell off. Investigators say that the footage then shows a crowd of people trying to pull the two men apart.

The victim called the cops, but Verne fled the bar before the cops arrived, leaving his two other fellow cop pals to deal with the damage and pay his bar tab. Verne told investigators that he called himself an Uber.

Miami-Dade County police showed up just after 1:16 a.m. to find the victim "severely under the influence of alcohol.” The man told MDPD that a plainclothes Miami cop choked him "for no reason." He later told IA investigators that Verne was bothering a woman at the bar and that the woman asked for help getting the cop to leave her alone.

Internal Affairs also whacked Sierra and Carmona, too. None of the three cops reported the incident to their own supervisors, which is a violation of departmental policy. And, even though the two other men were present at the bar when the MDPD arrived, neither off-duty cop spoke to those officers to report what happened.

Although Internal Affairs sustained the allegations against all three cops, the files New Times obtained do not indicate whether the cops actually received any punishment. Florida's Law Enforcement Bill of Rights says officers cannot be disciplined if an investigation is not completed within 180 days. This investigation took more than one year.The IA unit closed the bar-fight case on July 2.

Miami's Civilian Investigative Panel, an advisory board that can investigate police misconduct but has no power to discipline officers, is scheduled to discuss the case at its next meeting on September 18. In an initial investigation, CIP recommended disciplining the officers.

"Officer Verne committed a battery when he actually and intentionally touched Mr. Sierra against his will, was less than truthful when he provided IA with his sworn statement and failed to report the incident to his department," CIP documents state.