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For wearing LAPD cap, he got matching cuffs
By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE © St. Petersburg Times, published November 12, 1998
Neidrich's girlfriend happened along the scene looking for him, worried that he hadn't returned from what was supposed to be a quick trip to the store. She asked him through the closed cruiser window, "What did you do, rob the store?" Neidrich, a 25-year-old graduate with honors from a Hillsborough police academy, shook his head and uttered words he knew she wouldn't believe. "They arrested me for wearing my hat." Indeed, Pinellas sheriff's deputies had arrested the Palm Harbor man for wearing a baseball cap. Not just any cap. It was a hat legally purchased at an Oldsmar flea market -- a gift from a friend -- and it had four white letters above the bill. "LAPD," the abbreviation for the Los Angeles Police Department. It is a misdemeanor under state law for anyone who isn't a sworn officer to wear anything that might fool a "reasonable" person into thinking someone is, in fact, an officer. State law provides examples -- police badges, uniforms, identification cards. Baseball caps aren't specifically mentioned. "This is the most moronic arrest I've ever seen," said John Trevena, Neidrich's attorney. "It's unbelievable." So unbelievable that even the arresting deputy's own are slow to defend him. "A shift commander who wasn't involved in this case told me that he was glad it didn't happen on his watch because he would have had a problem with it," said Sgt. Greg Tita, the Sheriff's Office spokesman. The Florida Highway Patrol also might wonder about the arrest. The FHP sells to the public caps unabashedly emblazoned with the FHP's initials. Neidrich thought he was a good student of the law, having just graduated from the police academy. He even applied for a job as a deputy with the agency that arrested him. On Oct. 25, Neidrich drove to a convenience store in Largo. Deputy Richard Wright, 44, saw him and asked if he was an officer from Los Angeles visiting the area on vacation. Neidrich said he wasn't an officer at all. "At that point, he told me to take the hat off or I'd be arrested," Neidrich said. He complied. But after Wright departed, Neidrich got in his car, drove to another store and, when he got out to use a pay phone, put the cap back on without really thinking about it, Neidrich said. Wright, who has been with the Pinellas Sheriff's Office for three years, hadn't forgotten. As Neidrich talked on the phone, Wright saw him with the cap and arrested him. "I told him I wasn't trying to impersonate anyone," Neidrich said. "I was just on the phone talking. It's not like I was wearing a badge or uniform. It's a hat with four letters. You see them everywhere. "Besides, why would anyone be fooled into thinking a Los Angeles cop had jurisdiction in Largo?" Wright could not be reached for comment. It is a felony to impersonate an officer, a charge Neidrich does not face. After his arrest, he was issued a notice to appear in court Friday for arraignment. Tita, the sheriff's spokesman, said state law contains language that, strictly interpreted, would allow a hat arrest. Tita acknowledges the deputy might have been stretching it. "The officer went by the letter of the law. Maybe it didn't apply to this type of situation. Our deputies have great discretion on what laws to enforce. And maybe the officer's time could have been better spent," Tita said. "I think this may have been carried to an extreme," he said. Prosecutors with knowledge of the case could not be reached Tuesday to determine if they would proceed with the charge, which carries a sentence of up to a year in jail. Their office was closed Wednesday for Veterans Day. If Neidrich does get a job as a Pinellas deputy, he said he would do things a little differently than Wright. "The day I arrest someone for wearing a hat," he said, "is the day I resign from the force."
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ARGO -- Chris Neidrich admits it must have been quite a sight. There he was one day last month, handcuffed, sitting in the back seat of a sheriff's cruiser, three other patrol cars surrounding his Camaro in a convenience store parking lot. 