Florida cop suspended after stopping runaway car with kids inside but no driver

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Some might call Karl Hirsch a hero.

A Fort Lauderdale cop, Hirsch used his patrol cruiser to help stop a moving car that had two little girls in the backseat and no driver. But instead of praise, Hirsch got a 20-hour unpaid suspension.

The Jan. 26 incident caused no injuries, but triggered an Internal Affairs investigation ordered by Police Chief Patrick Lynn. On May 24, Internal Affairs investigators notified Hirsch he was being investigated for potentially violating department policy by “carelessly, negligently or intentionally causing waste, loss or damage to any city property.”

In the process of stopping the runaway car, Hirsch caused nearly $10,000 in damage to his own squad car.

Lynn declined to comment for this story.

Hirsch, 27, was not able to comment without permission from the chief.

Hirsch, who joined the force in June 2019, comes with a law enforcement lineage. His late father was a sergeant with the Fort Lauderdale Police Department; his mother has had a long career there as a traffic homicide investigator; and his maternal grandfather is a retired Hollywood cop.

The incident was Hirsch’s third accident within the year. There is no dash-cam footage of the accidents because Fort Lauderdale squad cars are not equipped with dashboard cameras. All three accidents were deemed preventable.

Officers with the Fort Lauderdale Police Department can face termination if they are involved in four preventable accidents within a year, the city’s Human Resources director said.

Mayor Dean Trantalis declined to comment on Hirsch’s suspension as did Commissioner John Herbst, who won police union support in his election last year, and Commissioner Steve Glassman. All three said they didn’t feel comfortable commenting because they did not have details on the case.

The department’s policies and procedures are designed to protect not only the officers, but the public, City Manager Greg Chavarria told The South Florida Sun Sentinel. And the command staff relied on those policies when reviewing the case.

“This was the officer’s third incident within one year,” Chavarria said. “We follow a matrix that tells us what action to take. We took action based on the recommendation made by the chief.”

Would the outcome have been different if it was Hirsch’s first accident? Chavarria couldn’t say.

But he said he plans to ask staff to review the department’s policies and procedures to see if there’s room for improvement.

“And if there is, we’re happy to look at that,” Chavarria said. “We always look to be better.”

Hirsch was involved in two accidents three days apart in March 2022.

In the first accident, he hit another car while backing up his squad car, damaging one of the wheels. For that, he received written counseling.

In the second incident, Hirsch hit another vehicle while driving through an intersection. No one was injured, but investigators determined he did not have the right of way. For that, he was given a one-day unpaid suspension. He appealed the decision and wound up with a written warning instead. He was also required to go through driver training.

Here’s what happened on the day he helped rescue the girls, ages 5 and 6.

According to the official record, police were chasing down three armed robbery suspects in a black Infiniti. One of the suspects was a mother with her two young daughters in the back seat.

Hirsch, who told Internal Affairs he was providing backup to a deputy already involved in the chase, saw the driver jump out of the car while it was still moving and escape over a wall in the 4700 block of West Commercial Boulevard. Soon after, a second suspect, a friend of the girls’ mother, jumped out of the backseat of the moving vehicle, police said.

That’s when Hirsch noticed a child’s feet hanging out of the rear driver’s side door. The driverless car was traveling along at around 10 mph by Hirsch’s estimate.

“It was apparent that this was a 5- to 7-year-old child hanging on to the inside of the vehicle to prevent themselves from falling out,” Hirsch wrote in a report detailing the incident. “At this point, I greatly feared for the safety of the children as this vehicle was picking up in speed towards an oncoming roadway.”

A Broward Sheriff’s deputy driving an unmarked unit following behind maneuvered his F-150 truck in front of the car to bring it to a stop.

In his report, Hirsch said he was worried the car might roll backward or the third suspect might jump behind the wheel and take off. He attempted to maneuver his squad car behind the Infiniti to barricade it in place. But as he hit the grass he lost control of his cruiser and ran into the Infiniti, causing $9,721 in damage to his vehicle.

Body camera footage shows Hirsch racing to the car to check on the terrified girls, who were screaming and crying but unharmed. The girls’ mother, the third suspect, was in the backseat with the children. Hirsch scooped up both girls, one by one, and tried to calm them down.

Hirsch’s body camera footage later shows him discussing the crash with the deputy, Jerry Wengert, who helped stop the car.

“The fact that this car had kids and the ——- feet of the kids were hanging out of the ——- car,” Wengert told Hirsch.

“But are they gonna say, ‘Hey, you hit a car that had kids in it? Was that the smart thing to do, to stop it?’” Hirsch said in response.

“We had to stop it,” Wengert replied. “Like I had a car in front of it, dude. Because the kids were by themselves in the ——- car. We had no choice. You think I’m gonna wreck my car like that? We had to stop it. There was no driver in the ——- vehicle. The kids’ feet were hanging out of the back of the ——- car.”

All three suspects were arrested that day.

According to police, the trio were involved in an armed robbery a month earlier at a Home Depot in Sunrise on Dec. 26, 2022. A man and woman walked out of the store with $655 in merchandise, then headed to a black Infiniti parked out front with another woman in the passenger seat.

Two loss-prevention officers following close behind told police the two women swung steel pipes at them, forcing them to retreat. As the suspects drove off, the man made a gun symbol with his finger, pointed at the two employees and said “Bang bang.”

One month later, two Sunrise detectives conducting surveillance saw the Infiniti backed into a parking space at Oswald Park in Fort Lauderdale. A man, two women and two children were inside. When the detectives approached the car on foot, the man climbed from the back seat to the front and took off, driving over parking stumps and shrubs and nearly hitting one of the detectives, who had to jump behind an unmarked police vehicle.

The detectives followed the car, soon joined by Fort Lauderdale police and Sheriff’s deputies.

A Broward Sheriff’s Office helicopter followed the car throughout the chase along on Interstate 95 and through Fort Lauderdale, Lauderhill and Tamarac.

During the chase, the Infiniti caused several traffic accidents, police say.

After all three were arrested, both women told police the man driving the Infiniti that day was the same man who drove the getaway car the day of the robbery. The man, however, denied any involvement in the Home Depot robbery.

The girls’ mother, Moesha Pierce, is now in prison. Pierce, 27, of Pompano Beach, pleaded no contest to the robbery and was sentenced to two years in prison. Shatarise Brown, 27, of Fort Lauderdale, pleaded not guilty and awaits trial. Joshua Ross, 32, of Pompano Beach — the driver who police say bailed out of the car on Jan. 26 and was later found hiding in a nearby hotel — was never formally charged with armed robbery.

According to a memo filed by a prosecutors with the Broward State Attorney’s Office, there was no independent witness who could identify him as one of the people who robbed the Home Depot.

After the police pursuit on Jan. 26, Ross faced several charges, including aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, attempt to flee and elude law enforcement and neglect of a child without great bodily harm. Those charges were dropped for different reasons, including the fact that Ross has outstanding warrants on other felony cases, according to the prosecutor’s memo.

Wengert was neither disciplined for his role in stopping the vehicle nor investigated by Internal Affairs, the Sheriff’s Office said. The agency’s Pursuit Review Board reviewed Wengert’s actions that day and found them compliant.

In his official report, Wengert said he saw the driver and rear passenger bailing out of the car and attempting to flee, leaving small children in the back seat while the car was still in motion.

“Knowing the vehicle had no driver behind the wheel, the fear that great bodily harm was imminent to the children still inside, and that the vehicle was headed into traffic and towards a large tree, I utilized my vehicle as a barrier to immediately and safely immobilize the vehicle,” he wrote.

Eric Schwartzreich, a high-profile attorney who has previously represented Wengert, was not surprised to learn the deputy had not been disciplined for his actions that day.

“There would be no reason for him to be disciplined,” Schwartzreich said. “He saved children that day. Deputy Wengert has not done anything wrong. I don’t think anyone did anything wrong in this case. Police officers need to be flexible, instinctive and intuitive — not trained robots. Flexibility is key. The actions of the officers were heroic that day, the definition of the words protect and serve.”

Jeff Marano, former union president for the Hollywood Police Department, told The South Florida Sun Sentinel he’s known Hirsch since he was a kid and is friends with the family.

According to Marano, Hirsch would probably do it all over again, even with the 20-hour unpaid suspension.

“It’s a judgment call,” Marano said. “And you take your hits. I’m sure Karl would do it again in order to save those children. I’m sure he’d do it again. Policies are policies. But there are always extenuating circumstances. And in this case, there was a life-saving component.”

Marano said he’s been friends with Hirsch’s grandfather for decades. He knew Hirsch’s dad, too.

Like any street cop, you have to make split-second decisions that mean life or death for not only the officer but the people they’re paid to protect, Marano said.

During the Internal Affairs investigation, Hirsch was asked whether he’d ever been trained in the maneuver required to stop a moving car.

“No sir,” Hirsch answered. “And I understood that going into it, but I made the decision that I thought I had to make in that moment.”

The outcome in this particular case could affect police morale in two ways, said Eugene O’Donnell, a law professor with John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“The fallout from this kind of decision will reverberate, especially among the cadre of the most dedicated cops,” he said. “They will take this to heart more than anybody. If you can’t stand up for your people when they do something courageous and honorable, even if it violates something technical, then we’re lost. The profession is lost.”

Nowadays, some police agencies get too caught up on protocol, said O’Donnell, who was a police officer and prosecutor earlier in his career. Back when he was a cop, rules were guidelines and mitigating circumstances were taken into consideration. That is no longer the case, he argues.

“Increasingly, the rules are paramount and there’s no allowance for judgment and no allowance for exceptions,” O’Donnell said. “Not intervening is the safer side of the street for cops now.”

Police departments today face a challenge in striking a balance between holding officers accountable and slapping them with harsh punishment that discourages them from doing their jobs, O’Donnell said.

“You have to take into account morale and what kind of culture you want to create,” he said. “Are you going to make risk aversion the center of what police do, where the main goal is to not get into trouble? And if you even think a rule might be broken, do nothing?”

The fact that Hirsch got a two-day suspension stunned Bob Jarvis, a law professor with Nova Southeastern University.

“It’s just outrageous,” said Jarvis, who argued the cop played hero that day, not villain.

“You are vilifying him by suspending him,” Jarvis said. “They should have commended him for saving those two little girls. You have to give cops a lot of leeway. We pay them to read the situation and make split-second decisions.”

Jarvis also said the suspension could have unintended consequences, hurting morale throughout the department.

“If you feel upper management does not have your back, you think, ‘Why stick my neck out? Management is not going to back me.’”

Who knows what would have happened if Wengert and Hirsch hadn’t pinned the car, and how much longer the chase would have lasted.

As for Hirsch, he has already served his suspension.

In a Facebook video created by the city before the Jan. 26 incident, Hirsch speaks with boundless enthusiasm about his work as a road patrol officer.

His mother, Jill Hirsch, also appears in the video. She tells viewers her son has wanted to be a police officer just like his dad ever since he could walk and talk.

The video includes footage of Hirsch in his squad car and photos of him as a tow-headed child posing with his father, Karl Hirsch Sr. The elder Hirsch retired from the department in 2005 and died on Sept. 29. He was 67.

The video ends with these words from his son: “I’ve always said this job is the best job in the world. And I wouldn’t rather do anything else. Who’s to say you shouldn’t chase that dream and enjoy going to work every day. There’s not many people who can say that each day.”

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