Fort Lauderdale Criminal Attorney Blog
A 20-year-old sheriff’s deputy from Broward County has been arrested for allegedly attempting to extort sex from a security guard by threatening to charge him with possession of crack cocaine. 
Deputies from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office arrested Trazell McLeod, alleging he groped the male guard during a purported search and then demanded sex on a regular basis in exchange for not falsifying charges of drug possession and prostitution. McLeod is accused of propositioning the guard and even showing up at his house while he was on patrol in Pompano Beach. At one point during the encounter, the guard, concerned for his safety, fled on foot and jumped a fence and hid behind a cluster of bushes until his wife arrived. The guard and his wife returned home to see a patrol car parked in their driveway, so they drove past and spent the evening in a hotel. The following day, the guard reported the incident to investigators with the sheriff’s department’s internal affairs office. He also assisted them in gathering evidence used to obtain McLeod’s arrest warrant.
McLeod is facing charges of extortion, official misconduct and tampering with/ fabricating evidence. F.S. 836.05, threats/ extortion, states that anytime someone – verbally or by a written or printed communication, maliciously threatens to accuse someone of a crime or to expose a secrete affecting the other or impute “some deformity or lack of chastity” in order to extort money or “any pecuniary advantage” or to compel someone to do something against their will, it’s a second-degree felony. That means it’s punishable by 15 years in prison. Tampering with evidence, meanwhile, is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, according to F.S. 918.13. Official misconduct, per F.S. 838.022, is also a third-degree felony. Continue reading
