LAKELAND | State Attorney Jerry Hill sent a letter to the Lakeland Police Department this week criticizing the actions of an officer who, in an unjustified hunt for drugs, instructed a woman to shake out her bra and searched her car as she pleaded with him to stop.

Officer statements and documents show the bra-shaking search has been used in other cases, Hill wrote to Lakeland Police Chief Lisa Womack.

"This highly questionable search method is not only demeaning," Hill wrote, "but is ineffective and possibly dangerous."

He went on to say that if a suspect had a weapon hidden under her shirt, such a method could allow her to grab it.

Officer Dustin Fetz asked the woman to lift her shirt above her stomach, pull her bra away from her chest and shake it, all without a reason to suspect she carried drugs during a May 21 traffic stop, according to Hill's letter and a State Attorney's Office investigation report.

Unsatisfied with her first attempt, Fetz made her lift and shake her bra a second time.

Again, no drugs tumbled out. None were found in a search of her, her boyfriend or the car they were in.

In his letter, Hill cited a DUI arrest in which another woman threatened to have an officer fired for sexual harassment after the same type of search.

"Even a suspect who provided breath samples of 0.198 and 0.188 was able to grasp the impropriety and the demeaning nature of this type of search," Hill wrote.

"I hope training and supervision deficiencies can soon be corrected," he wrote at the end of his letter.

"Continued use of these practices will have an adverse impact on the case involved."

Hill told The Ledger on Wednesday that sending such a letter is an unusual step. But because the search has apparently been used by other LPD officers, he wanted to address it in writing.

"It was done in this instance because it's a possibility that it's a widespread issue in a very large agency and appears to be a major training deficiency," Hill said.

"I think they needed more than a phone call, which would have indicated that it was limited to a single instance."

Womack said she was at a Florida Police Chiefs Association Conference this week and had only been able to review Hill's letter and report Wednesday.

The department intends to investigate the matter and, if needed, change its procedures.

"I take the information contained in the report very seriously," she said. "And we will look into all matters completely."

LETTER TO EDITOR SPURRED INVESTIGATION

The State Attorney's Office began an investigation into the case after The Ledger printed a letter to the editor about it June 2 from Richard Wiley, a retired Lakeland lawyer who knows the woman involved personally. Wiley praised Hill's willingness to investigate the incident.

"What happened is an abomination," he said. "I wanted to bring it to the public's attention because I thought this had to stop."

Womack ordered an internal investigation the day after the letter ran, prior to receiving a formal complaint.

The department placed Fetz, a full-time LPD officer since 2008 with a $48,331-per-year salary, on paid leave for four days in the wake of the state attorney investigation. He returned to work Tuesday.

According to the State Attorney's Office, Fetz had a reason to stop the driver, Zoe Brugger, who could not be reached Wednesday. She was driving with a broken headlight. And she could have been arrested because she didn't have a valid driver license.

But Fetz's actions during the stop violated her constitutional rights, according to the report written by State Attorney Investigator Mike Brown. His conduct did not constitute a criminal offense, however.

Brown's investigative report details what Brugger and Larry Fields, her boyfriend, said occurred during the traffic stop:

Fetz stopped Brugger on West Beacon Road as she drove home after picking up Fields from work. He asked the couple for consent to search the vehicle, which Brugger had borrowed from a friend. They adamantly told Fetz he did not have permission to search.

Fetz escorted Brugger behind the vehicle, where he asked her to lift her shirt to and shake out her bra. Brugger didn't want to perform the act, Brown wrote, but she felt threatened and wanted to go home to her newborn child. She didn't sense his request was sexual, but Brown wrote that she "believed he was on a power trip and had it in his mind that they had drugs."

Fetz persisted in asking for consent to search the vehicle.

Brugger then relented, wanting to go home. Then she changed her mind before Fetz could start the search. But he proceeded anyway, searching the vehicle for 10 minutes, even as she shouted for him to stop. Video of the traffic stop shows Fetz popping open the driver door as Brugger and Fields, who followed the officer's orders, sit on the curb.

'A KNOWN TECHNIQUE'

During the investigation, Fetz told the investigator that the bra-shaking search "is a known technique that is used by some LPD officers but cannot recall ever formally being trained to do this," according to the report.

When the search turned up no drugs, Fetz gave Brugger a ticket and notice to appear in court. She said Fetz told her, "I'm done scaring you, and now you can go home."

"Looking back on the incident, he (Fetz) recognizes that he was overzealous in his attempt to locate illegal drugs or contraband in the car," Brown wrote.

Officer Jeremy Williams, who arrived at the scene as backup, told the investigator he and Fetz heard Brugger withdraw her consent before Fetz searched the car. Williams told Brown he considered the search improper.

The investigator also wrote that Fetz had said he was completing a "vehicle inventory" to tow and impound the vehicle. But Brown noted Fetz did not have an inventory sheet needed for the search and failed to follow department policy to call for a supervisor's approval to tow the vehicle.

The investigation raised another issue because police dash-cam footage of the stop had no audio. Fetz said he left the audio equipment hanging inside his patrol car, violating LPD policy.

Fetz and another officer at the scene told the investigator there are "many members of LPD that don't use this equipment even when it is issued."

"Had the audio equipment been utilized," Brown wrote, "there would be little to no speculation as to what occurred during that traffic stop that evening."

[ Matthew Pleasant can be reached at matthew.pleasant@theledger.com or 863-802-7590. ]