Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

An offier´s  arrests come into question

 he was  essentially was employing  like  magic tricks  to hide evidence

but proving a crime  was commited by a  member of law enforcement….is not an  easy task.

the police don’t actually  ever see him planting their narcotics.
that  raises some red flags  to the  investigators.

sometimes you think you can trust are the very ones  you shouldn´t .
Law enforcement are supposed to bet he good guys and many times if not most of the time they are.
however there is something very odd that happens in one florida county

and a spotlight is put on an officer who may not actually be arresting people for crimes

but committing them himself.

it’s april 18th 2018 in jackson county florida. what should have been a typical day for a motorist suddenly becomes a lifechanging enounter

with sheriff’s debuty zachary wester.

 the day  Joshua emanuel got  stopped he was  on his way to work he was coming through  a small town  there was a police officer sitting underneath the overpass and when he pulled  in behind  him.

joshua  still  didn’t think anything of it until the ligths came on.

and thats when joshua  was like ” this is  really  weird.”

deputy wester   told  joshua that  he’s license had  been suspended and he realized that when he ran joshua’s plate.  

Joshua was like ” that’s strange.,because you were facing me under the overpass and you followed me for  3 miles before you flick the lights on.”

so the red flags were already going up , joshua said.

deputy wester  asked if there was anything in the vehicle that joshua  thought  he  should be conserned  about  and joshua  was  honest, joshua told   debuty wester , he hada  handgun in the center console and asked joshua if he had a  concealed weapon permit. joshua said “no, you dont need one in florida”

  at tht point  he had probably cause  to pull that car over , keep in mind, a lot of times the reason  police officer pull   you over does lead into futher investigation  based on what officer’s see or maybe informatuon that the officer gather during that traffic stop.

joshuas feelings changed when deputy wester  read the Miranda Rights.

dep.wester : opened  up  the center console.showed down in between the frong pasenger seat and where the center console is at .i saw  what  appeared to be a  syringe  sticking out.whenever i went , i looked further , pulled the seat apart. the syringe is actually in , like , a plastic larger baggie  ,with a plastic container with a substance in it  that appears to be.. an illegal narcotic. do you know anything about that?

joshua: i do not.

Joshua  was shocked and  he had no idea what the heck dep. wester  talking about  because he is not a meth  a meth user . he doesn’t do drugs ,he never smoked pot and physically never done drogs in his  life. it blew his mind that he was   questioning him about it . 

Joshua answerd that he had no idea.

Joshua was so suprised that it was methamphetamines of all things .it wasn´t weed  , it wasn´t like a crack pipe ,it was methamphetamines it was a used  needle.

Joshua  says it has to be an explanation  maybe somebody left it in his car , he has employees maybe that´s a possiblility, but joshua know the people he  hire,  joshua says  they do  background checks he simply dont addicts working for him .

if officer’s had a dollar for every time  someone told them “this  aren’t my pants,though you  have  them on  and the officers find  drugs in them  , officer’s would be a very wealthy  police officers.

There’s that initial denial phase.

Dep.wester took joshua to jail, his  dad worked at the  federal prsion there  and joshua grew up around his lieutenant.joshua´s mom mad the phone call to  his dad. 

 and she said” hey , something’s wrong,joshua just got arrested. for methamphetamine possesion . joshuas dad went in and he signed a paper for conditional release and he even question joshua, he grilled me pretty hard.” is there something  i dont know?” are you making me look an idiot?”

joshua answered  his dad ” no”.

joshua  was treated like a criminal through the whole thing.it was  the worst  two years of joshuas life.

Joshua Emanuel is adamant,he´s  innocent, is he telling the truth.is something else going on here

little did  he know at the time . he would not be the only person claiming the same thing after being pulled over by  deputy wester.

This drug crime are serious , these were possession charges of methamphetamine which can carry years  in jail if people have other  prior  offenses.the penalty can be even more extrerme.

There  also coolateral consequences ,people lose their job ,lose their standing  in the community cistody of  their children. trust of their loved ones,people hwo have taken different path in life and have become sober now, people believe that they’ve been lying.

at first glance ,these stops appear to be somewhat routine and by the book.

During  police officer’s  caree’r they saw  drugs  in a numerous places,  many times  people who are drug users,if they  get stopped and they  have  the drugs  ,they’re in that panic mode  so they´re just going to slide it between  the  seats the’re going to try  to hide it really quick so it doesnt´suprise police officer’s  that some of the legal drugs were found  like in a  crack of  a seat  that doesn’t rease any suspicious to some police officers.

but  is everything  really a it appears to be?

upon a closer  review , there´s something off with wester  arrests.

 there  was  troubling behavior  that  the officer exhibitied, such as going  back and forth between his and the recovery vehicle vehicle

every time that this contraband was recovered there was a appeared intentional deflection of the body cam.to not be looking  in the direction of the recovered item

and so it looked that all of a sudden these contraband were found within  this vehicle in places where , if they were originally the number one could not have been seen by the naked eye of the officer.

or number two would have been known to have existed by other vehicle officers

what is going on  here exaxtly  is deputy wester fidning drugs? or planting them ?

There´s a lot of discrepancies between  the reports and the body  cam footage.these body warn carmeras were either turned on late or they malfunctioned or the video is acctually deleted off of the surface.

Between 2016 and 2018  jackson county florida sheriff’s deputy  zachary Wester is making arrests for drugs possession

But  something is trange with dept. wester.

The problem in in zachary wester’s case is  investigators have a repeated  pattern of zachary wester  either turning off his camera , not turning it on,videos being deleted.that riess red flags to anybody.

Is  it possible that  wester  could be planting drugs on  innocent people?

When you watch these body cam footages most of these searches are only being  conducted by zachary wester , there’s is not a second  person in the car helping him , so he´s in there by himself while the second officer  the backup officer is watching the suspect. so that does give zachary wester ample opportunity and time to plant those drugs.

The how he  planted it in joshua´s car is still a question that literally keeps him up at night. he cant still figure it out. joshua know ehat happened, he doesn’t know how.

The only  explanation ,joshua says  he´d been able to come up with ,is wester went to the back of his car he  put the bag with the syringe in his glove, carried  the gloves to  joshuas car, dumped in the passanger seat,then put the gloves on and  quote unqoute  started his search.

Jackson county police officers  they whore shorts sleeves, they weren’t long sleeves , wester couldn’t tucked it in his  shirt ,he didn’t like  reach down on his boot or anything like that ,joshua  think he just carried it in his glove from the back ofhis patrol car into joshuas car.

Lets  take a closer look at these stops to see if wester is the one  breaking the law.

crawford says he never seen that in his life.

Most peole will make denials and that’s why  the las is pretty clear when  you try to  refute the existence of probable cause  a suspect´s denials are not  siffocoemt to refute probable cause .

But there is a consistent look of suprise on this people  faces. 

you can tell when people fain  suprise. you can tell when it´s an  all chuck,” you found my stuff.”

this was a little bit different.

fear’s says  ” cause i do not drugs .

It was a level of indignation

shock

the other problem is this  officer was trying to convince them  that maybe somebody else   left something in their vehicle.

 to explain away why they genuinely might not know that  there was contraband in their vehicle and so that is able to to create some plausible deniability for him that maybe it  wasn’t him that put it  there.

Wester’s demeanor on the side of the road was probably the worst part not because  he was mean but because he was so nice. says  joshua.

the buddy  buddy  demeanor then ” oh no your going to jail”.it was a lot  the same  over and over again he was playing a game which is sick .says joshua.

But cath wester in the act is not so simple.

combed through hese videos and you do not  directly see him planting evidence,you see what could be argued to be an inadvertent a version of body camera  at the critical  moment.this stuff is  recovered.

can the truth be uncovered?

out in  jackson county florida between 2016  and 2018,sheriffs deputy zachary wester is arresting  various people after supposedly finding  narcotics in the cars they were driving.

Not only these motorist claim the drugs don’t belong to them .

but between  inconsistencies  and his  reporting, the body cam  turning off at key moments and the locations of where the drugs  are found, something’s not right  and someone  starts taking notice.

There was a whistleblower in this case named christina pumphrey.

she worked for the state of attorney´s office at  the time. there was  a lot of things with this case tha tjust didn’t sit right with her  so she started doing her own investigation

they actually start picking up on some discrepancies  from his reports to what’s actually shown on the body worn camera and this  right here  is the  crucial moment investigation  need to look into this  a little bit futher. 

and  notify  the  supervision to start running an investigation  into wester, at that point they start pulling  all these traffic stops.

However ,there’s a big problem.

On his body cam  footage  investigators  dont acctually ever see him planting their  narcotics. that raises some  red flags .

did he actually find the drugs ?or were they  actually planted?

he had mastered  what he was doing, he knew when to turn his body camera off. he knew when to keep it on. he knew when to find whatever he was going to find.

The fact that he was so  comfortable doing it, he was so  good  at only  showing what he wanted to show until it  came to the teresa odum video that’s when he really slipped up.

investigators saw in teresas  odum case where  there was a frame by frame  shot  of his body camera.and we saw that there was a clear baggie wester´s hand during the  stop

you can pysically see a packet  with white powder in his hand before he puts his glove on

which he later finds that same packet  in teresa  Odum’s trucks.

that´s  wht blew the  case wide open in reality .

what you see  in his hand before he ever searches the truck.

Thats what really really gothim in trouble

authorities discover a stash of drugs and paraphenalia hidden  in the trund of wester patrol car

After an investigation by the florida departement of law  enforcement.

It suspected that zachary wester planted narcotics in dozens of traffic stops

In 2019 Wester is arrersted  and he´s ultimately charged with  67 crimes with respect to 12 victims.

zachary wester may have been arrested.but he is presumed innoncent. the more challenging issue now is .. can prosecutors prove zachary  westers is guilty

DA:s office actually took this  to trial,everybody  in law enforcement in the DA’s office ,they  knew  att he pit of their  stomach that there was something really  wrong here

but convincing people who are not in the industry a jury of  just regular folks that this was a deviation and a criminal act,was actually a heavy lift.

In may 2021 a florida trial began that was quite startling to see.

former police officer named zachary wester was facing  67 criminal charges .

in connection with planting drugs

on  unsuspecting and innocent motorist

T. williams:this is  a case about an abuse of an incredible power ,the defendant used his position as a  deputy sheriff to make traffic stops on 12 members of this community  implant methamphetamine in their cars . methamphetamine and paraphernalia, he turned  what should be a  law enforcement agency in to something for his own use that was criminal .

K. Smith :the strongest evidence what was examined under a closer professional eye, we had a very  similar Mo  a policy a  practice that  this  individual employed, the rtecovery  of the samet type of substance,not witihn direct  view of body-cam, movements that  could not be accounted for divergent paperwork, unexplained discepancies in tests and  field testing.

mr wester  went  one by one through each and very stop and many of other officers saw nothing unusual

no red flags with  anything mr wester did.many of  those same oficers were not suprised   at all that those suspects  denied  ownership of the drugs  in the paraphernalia that mr wester found in their cars there is no direct evidence of mr  wester doing  enything wrong.

Not one person saw him doing anything unusual

C. Ayers:not  actually  seeing him plant the drugs,that may come  off as ” ah, you know that is just  bad angle of the  camera. but again ,jury’s  do want  to actually see that see the physical evidence. 

 

many of them entered pleads.no one challenged anything in the courtroom and nobody  complaints with  the sheriff’s office.

This is the other  harder part .the victims some of them pleaded guilty  and what  that means is if you plead guilty you cant later say  that you didn’t do it.

The people who admitted that the drugs were theirs in the eye of the law ” the drugs ” were  theirs.

some of these people  on traffic stops entered a guilty plea, because they felt like hwo´s going to believe my word over a deputy sheriff’s  word .  that’s a legitimate concern. so you got  a public defender or  your  attorney that’s saying ” hey look if you just plead  to this  your going to get no prison.  time. the pressure is on you just to say ” i want  this to go away.”

and the  jury got  to hear from those alleged victims themselves

joshua: testifying agains  wester , was scary, just for   the fact  that you´re testifying against a law enforcement  officer.this is someone the state has put in place to protect and serve,

they´re entrusted  with the public safety,they ´re entrusted to do the right thing and they took an oath to do  so. so when you´re sitting in a courtroom saying ” that´s a dirty cop” it doesn´t look good.

 

joshua:everybody says they´re innocent, everybody  said it wasn´t mine. everybody says they have nothing to do with it. so going into that   you´re how many other people have been in my  spot .testifying against  an officer,typically  that doesn’t go very well ,but i knew i had to do it, i head a clean record.i was the  the quote  unquote key  witness in  this case  because of my  clean records So me testifying was a big deal  for the state.

Then it was time  for zachary wester , to take the stand.

The case  is  tought because your’re dealing with a professional witness  ,cops, part of their jog is  they testify, police officers are trained to be  great witnesses

their are certain  strategies and techniques when  people  testify that become   learned and  practiced over  time , not getting overly  emotional answering only  what is  asked.

responding in a way that is non- confrontational – non- argumentive .

he was really good  on the stand

wester:  methamphetamine is very  prevalent in Jackson County , i’ve seen firsthand the destruction that methamphetamine has on families .. um ,has on friends, and my job is  as a deputy  sheriff, i wanted to be as proactive as i could, i didn’t feel  that the citizen’s of jackson county wanted to pay  me to just sit somwhere and wait for a call

Wester even tried to explain the way the arguably  incriminating evidence from the odom stop.

wester:  in the void space ,there was a  baggy of some sort  i didn´t  know  at the time if it was of evidentiary value or not ,it  didn’t appear as if  it had narcotics in it . it didn’t appear as if it had anything  that  may have been of value, but  nonetheless i wanted to try  to preserve it ,so i grabbed  it . 

and  whenever i  entered the vehicle, it was in my  left hand.but i wanted to be able to still use my fingers before i put my gloves on,i moved my hand and i place that  item in  the driver’s side. floorboard and i continued my search .

It was obvious to  chad ayers  that wester had been coached a lot  for  his  testimony  and that’s not  uncommen , wester had done his homework and really prepped for  the questions that would probably to be aksed  by the  state prosecuton. said  chad.

Joshua: i didn’t expect  him  to actually get on the stand ,he kept like  moving his nose, he was  very twitchy  and nervous the whole time, he lost his cool on the stand several times  with  state attorney 

chad  ayers:  wester came across a little cocky,a a little  arrogant versus “hey i´m truly  innocent  here”.

 

Joshua: the defense’s case was actually  pretty  solid and its not  really due to the defense attorney. it was wester  covering of his actions, he hadam explanation for evertything. he had cut  his body  cam on and off at certain time perfectly and  explained away as malfunction, and they  questioned people involved in  it in that departement. yeah  ,it’s a  possible , it’s a body cam.

joshua :it was tough to sit in the courtroom and say i dont know   ,how he did it ,but i know he did . and i hope there´s enough evidence  to prove it., the packet  being in in his hand before  he put his glove on . the fact that  he didnt’ have him finding  anything on camera,it  was just  there.so the  jury really  had to go by their belief in wheter or not he was a dirty cop.

and to the jury  this  case went , would they believe zachary wester upholding the law or breaking the law.

after  delibering morrethan seven hours over   the course of 2 days this was the jury´s decision.

may 18, 2021

 -we the jury find as  follows as  to the coun’s charge and the information:

• count  one:guilty of racketerring as charged.
• count  two: not guilty.
• count three: not guilty
• count four :not guilty
• count seven : guilty of  official misconduct related to teresa odom as charged

In a split decision the jurors found zachary wester  of  19  charges

But not guilty on 48  other charges

Joshua: there were so many more not -guilties called out  than their were guilty verdicts and that was rough to hear as someone wgo went  through it,he´s getting off on all of these cases. but in the end after allwas said and done. he was found guilty  on charges  relating to three of the people  involved.

myself ,steven van. and theresa odom .

Judge:  as to count one. racheteering , which is a first-degree felony ,you are sentenced to serve five years in floridas departement of corrections. 

as to count  seven  official misconduct ,18 months  as to count  31 fabricating evidence,one year and one day.

as to  count 64, that’s false imprisonment, your sentence to serve, one year and  one day . therefore it is the intention of the court  that you are sentenced to serve a total of 12 years  6 months and 8 in florida departement of corrections

 For a moment , just think about the impact  that  zachary wester had here , so in total  , prosecutors  dropped charges in a 119 cases involving wester.

over 30 of the people that he arrested agreed to a nearly 1 miljon federal court  settlement.his career, reputation ruined , he´s  locked behind bars. for years.

and you have all of these people who are going to go through life knowing that they  were falsely arrested by someone who was entrusted to hold the  law.

and  all of this  for what?

that question of  why he did it,it is still not clear.

honestly? it may never be clear.

UPDATE: Zach Wester NOT transferred to Hawaii prison

ALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) — The former Jackson County deputy convicted of planting drugs during traffic stops was incorrectly reported to be transferred to a prison in Hawaii due to a “VINE” error.

The Florida Department of Corrections confirmed to ABC 27 that the updated information on Zach Wester’s location was an error; however, they can not disclose his current location.

Inmate Zachary Wester is not in Hawaii, however his status is undisclosed for protection. We are unable to confirm any details related to him.

Any information previously disclosed on our website and through VINE was done so in error and should not be used to determine the location of this inmate.

-Florida Department of Corrections