Just because you’re a former police officer doesn’t mean you’re allowed to present yourself as a police officer — even when trying to get out of a traffic ticket.
But that’s exactly what the Edcouch Police Department accuses 56-year-old San Juan resident Patricia Decanini of attempting.
Police there arrested her on Wednesday and charged her with impersonating an officer.
The officer who charged Decanini first encountered her on Sunday, Jan. 25, when he pulled over the red Chevy Colorado she was driving in the 300 block of East Highway 107 for going 40 mph in a 30 mph zone.
The officer issued her a traffic citation and then went back to work.
When he showed up for his shift the next day at 3 p.m., he was told Decanini had called three times, first at 6 a.m., second at 2:57 p.m. and then again at 3:06 p.m. — and she was still on the line, according to the affidavit.
The call was transferred over to the officer’s office phone since he had just showed up.
“I asked Decanini how can I help you and she said if I could help her with the citation I had given her yesterday, that she had talked to her chief of Police and that he told her to call me and see if I would change it to a warning,” the probable cause affidavit stated.
When the officer asked Decanini who she worked for, the woman replied that she worked for the Mercedes Police Department, police say.
“I asked if she had her Credentials (sic) for her police department and she stated yes, she advise (sic) she could text me a picture of the credentials and I agreed to it and provided her with my number and she sent me a picture id (sic) and badge,” the affidavit states.
With that info, the officer contacted a friend of his at the Mercedes Police Department who said no one by the name of Patricia Decanini worked there, authorities say.
The following day, one of the officer’s co-workers mentioned that he had a friend who is an investigator at the Mercedes Police Department and offered to share the photo Decanini texted with the investigator, who said the woman hasn’t been an active police officer since 2006 and shouldn’t be in possession of the credentials, according to the affidavit.
Decanini bailed out on a $30,000 bond on Thursday, records show.
