Miami-Dade officer not investigated for DUI despite witness complaints he appeared impaired

A Miami-Dade mother and teenage son – who told police they believed a drunk driver rear-ended their car – are questioning why the responding officer did not appear to investigate their complaint.

The NBC6 Investigators found the at-fault driver who they suspected was under the influence was Willy Knapp, a prominent Miami-Dade police officer himself, husband of a police major and brother of Mario Knapp, a candidate for sheriff.

And while the crash occurred more than 18 months ago, the department has still not released the crash report or other records requested by the NBC6 Investigators in December.

For months, the department said a related internal investigation was ongoing and withheld the responding officer’s body-worn camera video.

The video was released last month, on the morning after NBC6 visited the MDPD Professional Compliance Bureau, which conducts internal investigations, and questioned how long it was taking them to investigate the matter.

While MDPD has yet to release any other record, the responding officer Anthony Santillan’s body-worn camera confirms what the driver of the car and his mother told NBC6 about their encounter with police.

At 11:47 p.m. on Oct. 1, 2022, it shows Santillan pulling up to the rear-end crash on SW 216th Street, where he was greeted with a fist bump by a then-police recruit who drove to the scene to retrieve Knapp.

“Everybody’s good,” the recruit said. “I’m going to take him home because he’s a little shaken up.”

“Is he alright?” Santillan asked.

“He’s okay,” the recruit responded.

The pair then walked up toward and past Knapp, who, assigned to the department’s training bureau, had been one of the recruit’s instructors.

“How’s it going?” Santillan asked Knapp.

“What’s up, my brother. How are you?” replied Knapp, still wearing the jersey from that morning’s charity softball event for a fallen colleague, Det. Cesar Echaverry.

On the back of the jersey, the last name of Knapp’s wife, Major Vanessa Holden-Knapp; on the front, the name of the police district she commands, the Hammocks.

After softball, the couple, the recruit and others spent a few hours at the Tap 42 bar and restaurant in Kendall, according to a source who was there that night.

But the couple split up and as midnight approached, Willy Knapp rear-ended a 2010 Lexus IS3 whose 16-year-old driver was stopped in line at the red light at SW 112th Avenue.

Santillan asked if the woman standing by the Lexus was in the car.

“No. He was in this car,” said Juliet Samalot, pointing to her son, RJ. “I’m his mom. I showed up after the fact.”

Samalot had summoned RJ from their home to pick her up at a friend’s house nearby.

Instead, she got a call parents dread.

“He had just been driving all of 30 days,” Samalot told NBC6. “And it was like, ‘Mom, I just got in a car accident.’ It's like, the worst, like, one of the top 10 worst phrases.”

There were no injuries or major damage.

But first RJ and later his mom said they sensed something wrong with Officer Willy Knapp.

RJ said Knapp offered him cash for the damage if he did not call police, a request Samalot said RJ relayed to her by phone while she was still at her friend’s house.

Then, as Samalot told the investigating officer almost immediately, “My concern really is that he’s under the influence. And it’s very obvious.”

“Yeah, he can’t even stand straight,” added RJ, who later told NBC6, “There was one point where he actually fell on me.”

Samalot recalled, “He couldn't stand straight. He kept doing the swaying thing. And then he was waving his arms and dropping his phone everywhere. At one point, his phone, like, he swung his arm, and his phone went, like, literally flying.”

But Santillan’s body-worn camera does not record him saying anything in response to Samalot and RJ’s complaint that Knapp was under the influence.

After a friend of Samalot’s on scene said she just wants to make sure Knapp gets home safely, Santillan does say, “Okay. Yeah. I’ll make sure. I’ll double-check.”

But when Santillan first walks back toward his patrol car past Knapp’s 2022 Jeep – bearing a tag that, the crash report states, expired five months earlier – he walks on the passenger’s side, while Knapp remained outside the driver’s side door.

Though Santillan was told twice those on scene felt Knapp was intoxicated, his body cam does not show him talking to Knapp again during the remainder of the 15-minute crash investigation.

When he submitted his report, it said no alcohol use was suspected.

The lesson RJ said he takes away from all this: “There's a lot of power differential. One, I'm a minor, and he's a grown man, and he's a cop and I’m just another person.”

Asked what he thinks may have happened if the roles were reversed, and he had rear-ended a police officer under similar circumstances?

“Yeah, I definitely would have lost my license, gone to jail,” he said.

Santillan concluded Knapp was at fault for following too closely but did not cite him for that or for having an expired tag.

Without a DUI investigation, there’s no proof of whether or not Knapp was in fact impaired.

He was driven home from the scene in his SUV by the recruit, alleviating a concern the video suggests Santillan harbored as he returned Knapp’s license and a copy of a crash record to the recruit.

“Good to go?” the recruit asked Santillan as he took the license and crash record.

“Yeah. Who’s going to take this one?” Santillan asked, referring in the direction of Knapp and the Jeep, “or you gonna need a ride?”

“I got it,” the recruit replied.

Santillan: “You got it? … Okay.”

“Thank you,” the recruit said.

“No problem,” Santillan replied.

NBC6’s requests to interview Santillan and Knapp, relayed through an MDPD public information officer,  have not received a response.

Still unknown: what discipline, if any, resulted from this.

The department says it’s still processing our months-old request for records involving a crash that happened more than 18 months ago.