WINTER HAVEN -- Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd describes himself as "livid" after his detectives arrested one of his volunteers Thursday (28), charging him with selling painkillers in the parking lot of a Lake Wales convenience store.
"I am hotter than a bare butt on a tin roof in August," Judd said, as he spoke to reporters about the arrest of 69-year-old David Roberts. He'd been a volunteer service officer with the sheriff's office for about a dozen years, getting compliments for his work assisting the sheriff's office with issues such as directing traffic around accident scenes.
Deputies got a tip that Roberts was selling off his monthly prescription of 90 Oxycodone pills. Undercover detectives reached out to Roberts and asked to buy some. The detectives had to outbid street dealers by offering $12 a pill instead of $10, Judd said. They set up a meeting at a Lake Wales convenience store to buy the whole set of 90, and called Roberts on his phone. He told them to look in the corner. "You're in the po-po car?" they asked. Roberts answered yes. He was in uniform when the deal went down.
Roberts drove to a regional sheriff's office after the transaction and was immediately arrested, with the money from the drug deal still in his front pocket. Deputies say they found a rifle, a handgun, ammunition, the pill bottle, and marijuana. They say Roberts told him he was holding the weed for a family member. Roberts isn't allowed to own firearms, Judd said, as they discovered he has a felony conviction from 1971. Judd said a former employee in his office made a mistake when signing Roberts as a volunteer 12 years ago. Roberts insisted he couldn't be a felon, saying "I've been voting since Nixon."
Photo: Canva/Polk County Sheriff's Office