The Hollywood cop who did a "Walt Disney" on a DUI suspect is being accused of lying under oath in yet another DUI case, and this one was caught on camera too.
Officer Dewey Pressley has been suspended with pay for the February incident in which he and a group of cops plotted to frame Alexandra Torrens-Vilas for an accident she didn't cause, made famous in a police dashboard video the officers didn't know was on.
"We'll do a little Walt Disney to protect the cop," Pressley was caught saying as he tried to pin a cop's careless crash on Torrens-Vilas.
And now a lawyer has come forward to accuse Pressley of concocting yet another fairy tale, trying to rig the system while under oath.
Defense attorney Robert Reiff represents a man who was also arrested by Pressley for DUI, and he says that throughout the man's trial, Pressley swore his patrol car camera wasn't working and that there was no videotape of the arrest.
The only problem is that the camera was rolling, and the videotape does exist.
"It was almost like I wanted to stop at one point and say 'What are you talking about?'" said Reiff.
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Reiff says Pressley was "testilying" when he said in a sworn deposition and in court filings that the cameras weren't rolling.
"His testimony of the case was such that I thought he was talking about another case entirely. That what I had seen on videotape and what his testimony was were two differnet things," Reiff said.
In the newest video, Pressley is seen with Reiff's client, who was arrested based on Pressley's observations. Pressley appears courteous, patient and professional throughout the video.
"I am Officer Pressley of the Hollywood police department DUI task force," Pressley tells the man, who had been involved in an early-morning accident.
Pressley wasn't so courteous during the February 17th arrest of 23-year-old Torrens-Vilas.
A police dashboard camera recorded Pressley, Officer Joel Francisco, Sgt. Andrew Diaz and community service Officer Karim Thomas discuss how they intended to pin the accident on Torrens-Vilas.
Torrens-Vilas tells the officers she had gotten out of her car to chase after a cat that had gotten away from her, so the officers go to work concocting a story that says she swerved when the cat jumped out, causing Francisco to hit her.
"I know how I'm going to word this with the cat so we can get him off the hook. I'll write the narrative," Pressley says. "We're going to bend this a little bit. We'll do a little Walt Disney to protect the cop because it wouldn't have mattered because she is drunk anyway."
"I don't lie and make things up ever because it's wrong, but if I need to bend it a little bit to protect a cop, I'll do it," Pressley says in the video.
The charges against Torrens-Vilas have been dropped, and Francisco, Pressley, Diaz, Thomas and crime scene technician Andrea Tomassi have all been suspended with pay and are under investigation for the incident.
There's no claim the driver was framed in this latest case. He pleaded guilty, but to a much lesser charge because of the disputed deposition.
But Reiff said arrests and convictions must be done properly, no matter the circumstances, and that Pressley's behavior in both cases brings into question any other arrest he has made.
"You have to look at it this way: Does the ends truly justify the means? Should the cops become criminals in order to catch criminals? And what about the innocent people they catch along the way?" Reiff asked.
