Last year, a Boynton Beach cop beeped her horn in the parking garage.
David Coffey, also a Boynton Beach cop, got scared from that beep and decided to retaliate by sneaking up behind her a month later and blasting his Taser next to her head, causing her to be treated for hearing loss.
Coffey, who's no longer employed by the Boynton Beach Police Department, was found guilty by a jury yesterday of improper exhibition of a firearm, and he'll be on probation for the next year because of that.
On April 2, Boynton Beach Police Officer Rachel Loy was in the department's report-writing room using a computer.
Coffey walked up behind her, placed his department-issued M-26 Taser within 2 to 3 inches of Loy's ear, and activated the Taser for a few seconds, according to a police report.
After Loy got upset about the incident, Coffey explained that he had "gotten her back" for an incident the month before in which he got upset that Loy beeped her horn in the parking garage, which "caused him to be startled."
Since then, Loy has experienced hearing issues and is currently being treated for hearing loss. (If her name sounds familiar, it's probably because she's gotten into three crashes in her police cruiser since being hired in 2006.)
In Loy's sworn statement, she said the horn-beeping was an "accidental short beep," and she wasn't even close to Coffey. They weren't friends outside of work, and Loy said Coffey never even apologized about that.
Another cop that was in the room at the time relayed the same exact story Loy told, and added that if Loy had moved even a little bit, she would've gotten a Taser blast to the head.
When Coffey was arrested for the incident on May 5, he told the investigating officer that "he was only test firing the taser and that he only did what everyone else does."
New Times on Facebook | The Pulp on Facebook | Matthew Hendley on Facebook | Twitter | E-mail Matthew Hendley |