A Miami-Dade police officer who failed to investigate a colleague for DUI — despite being told by witnesses his fellow officer appeared intoxicated — is facing termination, after the department director concurred with a recommendation he be fired.
An internal investigation found Officer Anthony Santillan falsified a crash report when he asserted alcohol was not suspected after fellow Officer Willy Knapp rear-ended a car just before midnight on October 1, 2022.
A disposition panel of three high-ranking officers also sustained allegations he failed to properly investigate the crash by not interviewing or approaching Knapp to determine whether signs of impairment were present after the 16-year-old driver, whose car he struck, and others told him Knapp appeared under the influence.
The panel did not sustain an allegation Knapp was driving under the influence. Knapp told investigators he had not been drinking prior to the crash.
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The panel found insufficient evidence to prove or disprove the allegation because, it noted, Santillan failed to conduct a DUI investigation. Further, it said, a review of Santillan’s “limited” body-worn camera video did not show Knapp was swaying, having coordination issues, or slurring his speech.
The only interaction Santillan had with Knapp was when he walked past him without stopping and asked, “How’s it going?”
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“What’s up, my brother? How are you?” Knapp replied.
Santillan’s dismissal has been concurred with by the chain of command, including director Stephanie Daniels, according to a department public information officer. But, he added, Santillan remains employed at least until he can have what’s called a pre-determination meeting with the director, after which he could be formally dismissed.
An officer, who at the time was a police trainee, went to the scene after speaking with Knapp by cellphone and wound up driving Knapp home in Knapp’s SUV, the investigation found.
He was dismissed in October after he’d become a probationary officer, which does not require cause for dismissal. However, the disposition panel also found he acted improperly when he intervened between Santillan and Knapp, explaining how the crash happened and handling the exchange of driver information.
“Listen, um, we both work for the county. He’s 17,” the recruit told Santillan, using police code 17 for a traffic crash. “Everybody’s QRU,” he added, using a code that means everybody is okay.
But witnesses told Santillan on the scene Knapp did not appear okay to them.
“There was one point where he actually fell on me,” the then-16-year-old driver of the car Knapp struck later told NBC6. “He stumbled forward, and I had to catch him … I was like, okay, yeah, this guy's obviously not okay … He's actually intoxicated.”
The driver’s mother, Juliet Samalot, sensed the same after she got to the scene.
“He was slurring. He could barely stand straight,” she said in an interview. “And that's not tipsy. That's drunk.”
Another woman who went with Samalot to the scene told internal investigators, “I did get a good look at his face and he was very inebriated,” citing his slurred speech. “He looked like someone who had been drinking quite a bit.”
Another witness told investigators, “He definitely was not stable on his feet. He had trouble walking around… Officer Knapp was clearly inebriated.”
But, again, Knapp denied drinking prior to the crash and the department did not sustain that allegation.
Santillan is fighting dismissal, writing in a February memo he “could have been more proactive in conducting my investigation,” but “at no time did I intentionally misrepresent or falsify any matter.”
When an internal investigator asked him in August 2023 why his report stated alcohol was not suspected, he said “I believe I was on autopilot … I just rushed through it.”
But when then asked if he “falsif(ied) the State of Florida traffic crash report” by stating no alcohol use was suspected, he answered, “I did.”
In his February memo, Santillan said he only meant to admit he created a report that contained false or inaccurate information – not intentionally, but as “the product of oversight, an automatic response, not a cognitive act.”
So far, his pleadings have not been enough to persuade the department not to follow the recommendation he be fired.
Willy Knapp, a 29-year veteran, is the brother of Mario Knapp, who is running to become Miami-Dade County sheriff. Mario Knapp had left the department before his brother’s involvement in this incident.
Neither Willy Knapp nor Santillan have responded to NBC6’s request through the public information office to discuss the matter.
The department said it had no contact information for the recruit.
NBC6 Investigators first requested the video and internal affairs records in December, but the records were withheld as the department said the matter was still under investigation.
The video was released last month on the morning after NBC6 went to the Professional Compliance Bureau offices and asked internal investigators why the investigation was taking more than 18 months.
The department provided the rest of the internal affairs records Wednesday, two days after NBC6 first reported on the incident and aired Santillan’s body-worn camera video.
