BSO Deputy Fired After Friend Uses Patrol Car Speaker to Heckle People on the Street

The off-duty officer took two drunk friends on a joy ride and gave one of them access to the P.A. system, according to reports..

A Broward Sheriff's Deputy was fired after letting his friend use his patrol car speaker to heckle people on the streets of downtown Fort Lauderdale, the Sun Sentinel reported.

Deputy Rodrigo Mello, 33, was off-duty and behind the wheel of his marked patrol car on the night of August 11, 2013, when he took two drunk friends on a joy ride and gave one of them access to the P.A. system, according to the Sentinel.

The newspaper reported 911 calls started coming in around 2:30 a.m. to report the police cruiser's activities. One caller reported that the men inside the car were "saying extremely lewd and really stupid things over the P.A." A hot dog vendor reported being heckled by the men in the car, and said they were also catcalling women on the street.

Mello was a deputy for nearly a decade when he was fired as a result of the incident, according to the Sentinel. He was terminated back in January, and is trying to get his job back, the newspaper reported.

"It was stupid as could be and I look back at it now and it's absolutely ridiculous," Mello said in a sworn statement obtained by the Sentinel. "It was the stupidest decision I ever made in my life."

NBC 6 reached out to the BSO Public Information Office for comment, but has not yet received a response.

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