BSO lieutenant who searched Wreck Bar mermaids in cop database won’t be charged

A veteran Broward Sheriff’s Office lieutenant will not face any criminal charges for using his access to law enforcement databases to search for information about three women who perform as mermaids under a “criminal investigation” code when they weren’t under any criminal investigation.

The Broward State Attorney’s Office released a close-out memo Wednesday, authored by Assistant State Attorney Kayla Bramnick, concluding that Lt. Jeffrey Mellies’ searches of The Wreck Bar performers Whitney Fair, Marina Anderson and Janelle Smiley in the the Driver and Vehicle Identification Database, known as DAVID, did not rise to a criminal level.

Smiley, Fair and Anderson have performed in the underwater shows at The Wreck Bar inside the B Ocean Resort in Fort Lauderdale for years. Internal Affairs records and federal court records show Mellies, who has worked at the Sheriff’s Office for over two decades, made searches in DAVID for information about them in 2018.

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The women are suing Mellies in federal court, alleging the searches came about the same time they had ongoing issues with Mellies’ wife, who also performed in the show and whom Anderson, the manager of the show, fired. They allege that Mellies searched for their information to “retaliate against them,” the complaint said. The lawsuit has been on hold pending a decision from the State Attorney’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office investigated Mellies’ searches in 2021 and ultimately suspended him for five days without pay for violating their policies.

DAVID, maintained by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, compiles “highly restricted personal information,” including a person’s photo, Social Security number and medical information, according to the federal lawsuit complaint.

Internal Affairs records said Mellies also asked an investigative aide to search for information on Fair in another database that is linked to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center.

Assistant State Attorney Bramnick wrote that there was no proof that any information about Smiley or Anderson from the database was disseminated or disclosed and that there was “insufficient evidence” in Fair’s case.

“In this instance Mellies accessed each woman’s personal information DAVID/NCIC one time,” Bramnick wrote. “There is no evidence that he used the information derived to support a pattern of conduct or that he used the information with no legitimate purpose.”

In July 2018, Mellies accessed Fair’s driver’s license information and her criminal history, the memo said. Fair got into legal trouble in Oklahoma when she was 18, and the case was dropped and expunged.

“The obtainment of this information might constitute an administrative violation in and of itself, but to constitute a crime there needs to be more than merely exceeding ones’ authority and accessing the information unrelated to any law enforcement related activity,” the memo said.

After the workplace feuds with Mellies’ wife and the other performers, the Mellieses moved next door to Fair in 2019. Mellies in 2020 “posted on social media derogatory comments about Fair referencing her as ‘the convicted felon, ex-convict living next door,'” the memo said.

Fort Lauderdale Police reports obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel through a public records request detail several neighbor disputes between the Mellieses and Fair, each calling officers and making reports complaining about the other.

Bramnick wrote that Mellies’ social media comments were inaccurate because Fair is not a convicted felon, “therefore, it was not information obtained from the database.”

“Ironically, the fact that Mellies was purporting incorrect information about Fair is an important part of the analysis that his conduct does not rise to the level of a crime,” the memo said.

The Sheriff’s Office forwarded its investigation to prosecutors in April 2022. The memo said the matter is now “referred back to BSO for administrative review.”

A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson did not immediately return an email seeking comment after business hours Wednesday.

Bramnick later wrote in the memo: “Mellies’ actions appear to be against BSO’s administrative policy; however, the State cannot prove beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that he criminally used protected information impermissibly.”

The allegations considered by the State Attorney’s Office are the same the women have raised in the federal lawsuit against Mellies.

Michael Piper, one of the attorneys representing Mellies in the civil case, said in an emailed statement in late July: “As lawyers, our benchmarks of professionalism include respect for and deference to our established civil and criminal judicial processes. A lawyer fictionalizing a public narrative and fomenting a salacious interest in the fiction to influence pending or potential litigation compromises those benchmarks. We will not be a part of that.”

Gary Kollin, the attorney representing Fair, Smiley and Anderson in the federal action, reasserted the allegations in the federal complaint in a written statement Wednesday evening and wrote that he believes the State Attorney’s Office’s decision is a misinterpretation of the state statute pertaining to computer-related crimes.

Kollin emphasized a section of the statute that says accessing computer systems “with knowledge that such access is unauthorized or the manner of use exceeds authorization” is a crime.

“The conclusion the State makes in denying the criminal prosecution is that the State Attorney cannot prove beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that Mellies used protected information impermissibly. The State is wrong beyond all shadow of a doubt. The crime committed by Mellies was not the distribution; it was the ACCESSING,” Kollin wrote.

Mellies’ attorney Stephen Melnick said, “The memo says what it says.”

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