ORLANDO, Fla. — A series of mistakes made during a traffic stop of a man who would go on to shoot two Orlando police officers led to his escape, current and former police officers said.
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On June 30, a UCF patrol unit flagged Daton Viel’s red Ford Fusion for having a stolen tag, and pulled him over. A few minutes into the stop, officers were told he was wanted for cutting off his ankle monitor weeks earlier.
Viel then took off, tripping and losing the flip flops he was wearing. He managed to circle back and climb into his car to drive off, body camera video released by the department shows.
Watching that footage back, officers noticed the errors within seconds.
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“They allowed this individual get close enough to the car to shut the passenger side door and then actually shut the rear door,” former Orlando officer Bill Moore, who is running for Orange County Sheriff, said. “That’s all it takes for someone to retrieve a gun.”
Following that, multiple officers commented on the amount of space UCF police gave Viel during the stop, even as he fidgeted and glanced around – body language, they said, that tells officers a person is planning to run.
“You sit the person down,” Moore explained.
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He was also critical of the dispatcher’s decision to announce Viel had a warrant in plain English instead of using a code. The call was audible to the officers and the camera, as well as Viel, who then knew his actions were catching up to him.
Finally, Moore criticized the officers’ decision to leave Viel’s car unattended during their chase. Their suspect drew them far enough away from the car, looped back and hopped in with ease. Once he put the car in drive, Moore explained, there was nothing the officers could do.
“If nothing else, take the keys out of the car,” he said.
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In the footage, one officer appeared to acknowledge his failure to do that.
Moore had some sympathy for the officers. For the most part, they didn’t know about Viel’s past and couldn’t proceed with some uses of force on him, like deploying a K-9, he said, because his traffic stop was a minor offense.
He said the officers also couldn’t deploy their tasers once Viel was inside his vehicle, per best policing practices.
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Finally, he sympathized as he watched them attempt to chase a relatively athletic suspect while wearing 45 pounds of armor and gear.
Still, he said while UCF wasn’t the only agency to make a mistake in the months leading up to the shooting, it was the lack of control that started the domino chain.
“What you typically do is you have the person immobilized, either by sitting down or you put the handcuffs on them, and you tell them they’re being detained until they can figure out what’s going on with a stolen tag,” he said.
UCF police did not respond to questions about the stop Tuesday, including whether the footage was being reviewed by leaders for possible training purposes.
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