EDITOR’S NOTE: This report contains references to strong language used during the arrest booking process. The original report also left out the sixth offense, driving while intoxicated, and has since been corrected.
Trysta Eakin
trysta.eakin@lakenewsonline.com
A mostly uneventful 40-minute video at the center of a dispute unfolding between the Lake Ozark Police and a woman they arrested may not be released this week due to an ongoing investigation.
Police Chief Mark Maples said the video of the arrest is being held by the Miller County prosecutor as they decide whether they want to bring charges against Stacey Shertz for excessive citations for driving without a license (the third such charge, which makes it a felony offense), driving while intoxicated, 3rd degree assault of an officer, resisting arrest, failure to drive on right half of roadway and failure to produce motor vehicle insurance.
Maples did, however, allow the Lake Sun access to the video at their station.
The video starts as Shertz is brought into the booking area in handcuffs by arresting officer Jeff Skinner.
She is uncuffed and asked to sit down in a chair next to a desk, across the room from the ceiling camera. Facing the camera, she begins to sob.
From there, Skinner, who sits at the desk with his back facing the camera, asks her several questions that she is reluctant to answer, such as what her address is.
Skinner then reads her the implied consent law, which informs her if she refuses a Breathalyzer, her license will be suspended according to Missouri law. At the end of each reading, he asks if she will consent to the test.
During the first read-through, Shertz talks loudly over him, and then claims she did not understand what he read.
He tells her, sternly, to be quiet through the next reading.
He read through it another three times with no definitive answer from her, the second of which another officer is present in the room.
“F--- it. You know what, if you request it, then no. But if he does (the other officer), sure,” Shertz said.
After the fourth reading, Shertz sat quietly looking at the floor, swaying back and forth in her chair.
Without reading the implied consent law again, he directly asks her three more times if she will take the test. Shertz does not answer.
He then informs her that her license will be revoked in accordance with Missouri law.
As Skinner writes quietly at the desk, Shertz mumbles to herself, swaying back and forth again in the chair.
Skinner begins to read Miranda rights to Shertz, who seems to panic. She sat straight up saying she doesn’t understand the rights and wants her phone call and her attorney. She then tells Skinner she wants to call the owner of the Lake Ozark club where she works, Gentleman’s Quarters.
Thirty minutes into the video, Skinner says he does not have to give her a telephone call and begins to ready her for the booking photo.
Shertz becomes defensive and asks for a female officer; Skinner, still in view of the camera, says there is not a female officer and tells her again to stand at the wall situated just out of view of the camera in the doorway to the left.
They struggle in the doorway as Skinner tries to get Shertz to back up against the wall of the hallway to be photographed. Skinner can be seen backing up slightly, toward the ceiling camera, waving his arms toward her in a motion that suggested her to back up in the opposite direction.
She screams for a female officer and he asks her again to back up against the wall.
“Not without a vagina present in this room,” she said, as she backs out of the camera’s view. “If you touch me one more time, I’ll claim so many things against you.”
Skinner, who is still in the camera’s view, takes the photo as Shertz seems to be cooperating. She asks Skinner if he wants her to smile for him and shake her “ass.”
“That’s not necessary,” Skinner can be heard saying as he goes out of the camera’s view to retrieve Shertz.
He informs her that he would then be taking her fingerprints and asks her to empty the contents of her pockets onto the table.
She became erratic, accusing him of trying to physically put his hands in her pants and saying she wanted a female officer to do it instead.
He asked her to turn around to be handcuffed, Shertz said, “F--- you.”
“I’ll let (a female officer) put her hands in my pockets all she wants,” Shertz yelled, as Skinner leaves the room and comes back with a plain-clothesed female dispatcher.
He asks Shertz again to empty out her pockets onto the table, which she refused to do. She then walked out of the camera’s view in the adjacent hallway for several minutes.
She can be heard crying as Skinner walked out to get her. He can be heard asking her to put her things in a bag and to stand up.
They both appear at the doorway again, where Skinner attempted to handcuff Shertz again. She yanks her hand away and Skinner tells her to stop resisting arrest.
“I’m already under arrest,” she said as she tried to forcibly move away from the officer’s grasp. “How can I be resisting arrest then?”
The two struggle more as Shertz falls to her knees and Skinner attempts to grab her free arm again. He then gets both of her arms behind her back and maneuvers her face and chest to the floor to restrain her.
Shertz frees her hand, swinging it up at the officer’s face, striking him.
The two fall through the open door at the right of the camera and Shertz can be heard screaming at the dispatcher, telling her that she requested her presence as an officer and asking why she did not help her.
Skinner tells Shertz not to “talk that way” to the dispatcher.
The tape ends at that point, with all three out of the camera’s view.
After the video ended, Maples said Skinner brought Shertz back through, handcuffed, and put her in a holding cell. Skinner said it was when he put her in the cell he noticed Shertz had what the chief described as a small cut under her eye and asked if she wanted medical attention and called an ambulance.
Maples said he believed Skinner acted appropriately and was patient with her from the beginning.
“After the second refusal, he could have moved on; he was more patient than most officers would have been,” the chief said. “The only thing that I will say he did wrong was bringing the dispatcher in.”
He said it is not in their policy to involve civilian employees in those situations because they are not trained. He also said he thought Skinner was a “smart-ass” at times, but given Shertz’s behavior, he understood.
Once EMS arrived, Maples said the shift sergeant decided to release her to them and mail the citations later. By the time Skinner called the hospital to follow up with Shertz’s condition, he was told she’d checked herself out, Maples said.
The booking video also reveals
Officer Skinner’s statement
I pulled her over for two reasons: failing to maintain a single lane and her tags were covered in so much dirt, I couldn’t see her registration. Once I pulled up behind her, I could see that her tags were OK, but I could tell she was impaired when I spoke to her.
I’m just glad there was video available; it gives us credibility as a department and it’s definitive and conclusive evidence of what happened.
Discrepancies in Shertz’s story
CLAIM Shertz said Skinner gave her one opportunity to submit to a Breathalyzer. When she hesitated for a few seconds, he immediately threatened to revoke her license.
FACT Skinner read the implied consent law four times and asked another three times for Shertz to submit to a Breathalyzer. She sat silently for many of them or said she did not understand what he was saying.
CLAIM Shertz said she stepped outside of the booking room then immediately back when Skinner tried to physically search her.
FACT Shertz stepped out of the booking room into the hallway for several minutes, refusing to voluntarily hand over the objects in her pockets. Skinner never asked to physically search Shertz.
CLAIM Shertz said she never resisted arrest and never assaulted the officer.
FACT Shertz clearly would not peaceably allow Skinner to put her in handcuffs. She struggled against the officer and hit him in plain view of the camera. Due to that struggle, Skinner had to hold her against the floor to get both hands behind her back.
Other things on the video
• Shertz becomes angry that the officer is calling her by her first name but would not be given his first name. She demands to be called “Mrs. Shertz,” and becomes uncooperative if Skinner says differently throughout the video.
• During the reading of her Miranda rights, Shertz said she wants a lawyer and he can’t ask her any more questions until she has one. She asks for her phone call. Skinner asks who she will call, she gave the name of GQ’s owner.
• The “smart-ass” remarks the chief described that Skinner made were in response to Shertz’s request for a phone call and her insistency that he either give his first name or call her Mrs. Shertz. She also makes many claims to know the law on several issues brought up through the course of the conversation. His response indicates a lack of faith in her knowledge.
• Skinner asked Shertz several times if she is cold. She did not answer him.
• Shertz told Skinner that she lived in tents and did not have an address. Eventually she produces one that he could use.
• While stubborn about giving personal information, Shertz takes note of the ants on the floor and offers the officer advice on how to get rid of them.
• Shertz claims to love the police everywhere else except Missouri.
