Officer Blames Ambien For Cruiser Crash
POSTED: Monday, May 5, 2008
UPDATED: 11:26 am EDT May 5,
2008
A former police officer who crashed her cruiser into parked cars will not get her job back, even though she blames a sleep aid for the problems.Molly Olson pleaded for her job back in front of a grievance board Thursday, claiming she was fired unfairly after police said she erratically operating her patrol car on Christmas Day 2006.Palm Beach television station WPBF reported that video shot that day from inside Olson's car shows her vehicle weaving around town, crossing into oncoming traffic and crashing into parked cars.When a fellow officer pulled her over, the video shows Olson denying she was in a crash, even though she had stopped to examine the damage. An excerpt from the video shows Olson speaking with the captain who pulled her over."I didn't hit anything," Olson said on the videotape."Well, obviously you did, Molly," the unidentified captain said. "You got all this damage here. I got another guy who saw you swerving all over the road.""I was on my cell phone; I wasn't swerving all over the road," Olson said.Later in the videotape, Olson denied that she had taken medication, although part of her case for getting her job back included her claim that she had taken a sleep aid before getting behind the wheel."Are you on any medication right now?" the captain asked."No. I'm just really, really tired. I worked until 2 in the morning last night," Olson said.At Thursday's hearing before the grievance board, Olson said she had taken medication, including the sleeping aid, Ambien, the night before she reported for work. WPBF reported that Ambien has been linked with erratic behavior in some people, and that there have been reports of people taking the drug and driving around with no memory of it later on.After seeing the videotape from Olson's car, the board decided she acted irresponsibly by taking drugs with known possible side effects and then lying about it when she was pulled over.At the board hearing on Thursday, Olson's lawyer argued that supervisors should have known something was wrong with her that day when she showed up late for daily roll call and was wearing pink flip-flops.The board, which includes a police sergeant, unanimously disagreed.
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