Florida detective who wrote drug search warrant for wrong home resigns

MELBOURNE, Fla. — A Florida detective who wrote a warrant that led to a drug search of the wrong person has resigned, police said.

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According to the department, the Melbourne detective who wrote up the warrant never drove his confidential informant up to the right residence to have that individual point out the home.

The warrant was supposed to be conducted at a home across the street.

Dorothy Pond said she still remembers watching her neighbor being taken out of her house and searched.

“It was frightening. I’ve never seen anything like that. You can see it in newsreels and movies, but you don’t expect it in front of your house,” she said. “It took a lot out of her.”

In a letter to the former Melbourne police detective who authored the warrant, Chief David Gillespie told Detective Jonathan Hawk, “You did not conduct a competent investigation by failing to keep a visual contact of the confidential source to confirm the correct address of the residence where the drug purchase was made by the confidential source."

According to the department's own internal investigation, it was clear almost immediately to officers at the scene that they were at the wrong location.

They spotted the targets of their investigation coming from a house on the other side of the cul de sac.

Residents said the people who lived in the home have moved.

A supervisor noted that, “Detective Hawk obtained a search warrant for a residence where he in fact, it appears, did not have probable cause to obtain a search warrant because no drugs were actually purchased (there).”

Hawk resigned from the department effective Oct. 24.

The woman who was mistakenly searched did not want to be interviewed.

Cox Media Group