IAPE Evidence Blog

St. Peters­burg Times (Florida)
BYLINE: CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD

Hills­bor­ough, FL

Dur­ing Christo­pher Madiedo’s career with a badge, he shot an unarmed man, brawled at a bar and fed a crack cocaine habit by loot­ing the evi­dence lock­ers of his own agency. His method: sign­ing out seized drug sam­ples and return­ing fakes. On Wednes­day, the 27-year-old for­mer Hills­bor­ough sheriff’s deputy pleaded guilty to 24 crim­i­nal counts that include imper­son­at­ing an offi­cer, offi­cial mis­con­duct, tam­per­ing with evi­dence, pos­ses­sion of cocaine and mar­i­juana, and traf­fick­ing in cocaine.

He had been released on bail after his arrest last sum­mer, but Cir­cuit Judge Ronald Ficar­rotta revoked his bail Wednes­day and ordered him held in the county jail until his June 7 sen­tenc­ing. He faces up to 121 years in prison.

Madiedo has spent the past 10 months in a drug reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ter. But last month, he slipped away and checked into Room 126 of a Fowler Avenue Ramada Inn, where a female police informer claimed he had $ 500 worth of crack in a drawer.

Accord­ing to the informer, Madiedo said he was dis­sat­is­fied with the qual­ity of drugs he was get­ting from Ybor City, and on four occa­sions gave her $ 100 to obtain crack for him.

The informer said Madiedo claimed his habit began after he took crack off a sus­pect dur­ing an arrest, stared at it for three days, and suc­cumbed to curios­ity about its effects. As pros­e­cu­tor Suzy Rossomondo char­ac­ter­ized his story: “He wanted to know what the big hype was.”

Madiedo also bragged that he con­tin­ued to use drugs that he took off sus­pects in the street, the informer told authorities.

Pros­e­cu­tors invoked the reported Ramada Inn crack binge to argue Madiedo’s bail should be revoked, but he is not fac­ing new charges because of it.

Madiedo’s attor­ney, Ron Hanes, admit­ted that the ex-deputy had relapsed, but noted that he had vol­un­teered to put him­self in drug reha­bil­i­ta­tion. He said Madiedo suf­fers from bipo­lar dis­or­der, severe depres­sion and a post-traumatic stress dis­or­der that stemmed from two shoot­ing inci­dents on the job.

In the first, in Octo­ber 1998, Madiedo was sus­pended for 15 days for shoot­ing an unarmed motorist twice in the back after a strug­gle.
While chas­ing a drug dealer in May 2000, Madiedo claimed, he was shot by a bul­let that dented his vest but left him unin­jured. There were no wit­nesses to the shooting.

“After he was shot, it was just a down­ward spi­ral from there,” Hanes said.

Madiedo also was sus­pended in Decem­ber 2000 after get­ting into a bar fight. He resigned in June 2001 and was ar-rested the next day. Author­i­ties said he had stolen drugs from the evi­dence room over the course of four years, start­ing in 1997. Be-cause of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions, he is only charged with crimes that occurred begin­ning in Decem­ber 1999. The State Attorney’s Office said it has had to drop two cases against men charged with cocaine pos­ses­sion because Madiedo took the evidence.

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