18-Year Old Impersonates Cop in South Beach

18-YEAR OLD IMPERSONATES COP IN SOUTH BEACH

January 26, 2012
By David Arthur Walters

One never knows what imposters are up to until it is too late. Some of them are relatively harmless, wayward youth who are ambitiously overcompensating for an inferiority complex, usually blamed on their fathers. Residents and merchants received this Incident Advisory from the Miami Beach Police Department:

“Detective Oliva from the South District CST squad was patrolling the South District in undercover capacity when he observed a white Ford Crown Victoria resembling an unmarked police vehicle driving alongside of him. As Detective Oliva made eye contact with the driver he noticed that the driver was simulating police activity by typing on a laptop computer within the vehicle. Detective Oliva began a conversation with the subject who continued pretending he was a police officer by using police jargon and saying he was a cop here in South Beach. The subject at one point told Detective Oliva to “put your seatbelt on”. Detective Oliva did not recognize the subject as a Miami Beach Police Officer. Fearing the subject would possibly commit a crime involving the impersonation of a law enforcement officer, Detective Oliva decided he would create a story regarding drug activity in the area. After hearing the story, the subject said he would investigate and begin looking for the “suspected” drug dealer. At that time Detective Oliva advised over the police radio that he had a possible police impersonator and requested marked units to assist with a traffic stop. Officer B. Maher responded and together with other SIU Detectives conducted a traffic stop at the above location. Further investigation revealed the subject had in his possession a loaded .380 caliber Ruger pistol under the passenger seat, a Taser X-26, a set of handcuffs, a radio, an Osceola County Police badge and several police T-shirts from the same county. The subject was arrested and transported to MBPD for further investigation. A computer check revealed that the subject was arrested in September 2011 for impersonating a Physician’s Assistant here in Florida which made national news. The subject is still awaiting trial in that case.”

The subject here is Matthew Thomas Scheidt, 18 years of age. He was charged with impersonating a police officer, carrying a concealed firearm, and carrying a concealed weapon.

His previous impersonation escapade in Central Florida got national press attention for its similarity to the romantic imposter case best known to the public from the movie Catch Me If You Can, based on the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr., who conned people out of millions before he turned 19 and wound up as a highly regarded F.B.I. consultant, as absurd as that might seem.

The youthful South Beach imposter had previously pretended to be a physician’s assistant at a Central Florida hospital for five days, working in the operating and emergency rooms, examining patients and providing them with care including the application of CPR. The hospital made the usual claim hospitals make after the like events, insisting that all patients got the care they needed. When confronted with his imposition, Mr. Scheidt said he was on a secret mission as a deputy sheriff.

The young man’s conduct was incomprehensible to his dad, who said he did not know whether his boy needed psychological help or not. He should have been “Baker Acted” if he did; i.e. turned over to psychiatrists for examination.

Kids impersonating cops are a dime a dozen. It is relatively easy for them to lay their hands on police officer paraphernalia including guns. Success by any means is inculcated in our young from an early age. They are told they can create themselves, be anyone they want to be, even president of the United States in this great nation of ours. So we should not be surprised if the striving for superiority becomes inordinate in some of them given their circumstances and genetic dispositions. Furthermore, they expect instant gratification and are addicted to adrenaline rushes thanks to the media. Being a cop is presumably exciting and more than compensates for feelings of inferiority. Like Mr. Scheidt’s father, we cannot say if this sort of behavioral phenomenon is due to a psychological disorder or not. Nor have we been able to obtain a definitive statement from a psychiatrist. Some psychologists allude to the imaginative, ambitious behavior as “psychopathic,” as if it were, in updated psychological jargon, “sociopathic,” but that descriptive term does not fully fit the bill. Neither does the so-called imposter syndrome, most often used in reference to females who harbor feelings of inferiority hence feel that the superior personalities they assume are actually phony.

This particular wayward youngster obviously wanted to be an authority and was somehow motivated to skip all the steps needed to become one. He did not appear to be out to con people out of millions. Maybe he planned on advising people to fasten their seatbelts and the like. Or just maybe he would attempt to apprehend gunmen who frequent Washington Avenue and get in a gunfight with one of them. Who knows? If he is deemed sane, perhaps he should be sentenced to take the police academy course and pass the examination, or serve five years in prison.

The case of Mr. Scheidt reminds us of the boy who stole a bus because he wanted to be a bus driver. Mind you that there were several boys doing that in Florida, but 18-year-old James Harris, dubbed a “transit freak” by a Miami-Dade Transit officer, got the most media attention. He acquired a genuine bus driver uniform, swiped a bus and returned it to the barn after his shift, presumably with the fares collected and absent any customer complaints. After being arrested for that run, he used the same uniform to steal another bus from another depot, this time driving it thirty miles away to Florida City. Transit officials tracked the bus down with GPS. The young man fled and was not to be found. Security cameras showed him making out with a man on the bus. Now there was a fellow who knew exactly what he wanted to be, so perhaps he should be sentenced to a bus-driving career.

Another peculiar case of impersonation is that of Rufus Hawkins, a more mature man at age 24, who was charged with practicing law without a license i.e. impersonating an attorney for several months in an Orlando court. The case was admittedly not that peculiar to the licensing authority, the Florida Bar, for it handles scores of unauthorized practice cases very year. Mr. Hawkins was arrested after a judge noticed that his pleadings were a mess and questioned him about his credentials—a list of licensed lawyers can be viewed on the Florida Bar website. A client objected that she wanted him to continue with her case anyway. He said that he was an “attorney-in-fact,” something that a licensed attorney claimed does not exist although it does: you can give a non-attorney a power of attorney to do something as your attorney-in-fact, but of course he may not act in that capacity as an attorney-at-law. Mr. Hawkins was sentenced to a day in jail, already served, and two years probation. I recommended that he be sentenced to go to law school and pass the bar exam or do two years in jail. He prefers to be a non-lawyer advocate:

“Sadly,” he said in an email, “the bar and the power structure have to continually work to protect the legal system from the non-lawyers and the public, not protect the public from the non-lawyers. They lied about, and, at first, I thought it was all personal; however, after I was welcomed into the family of non-lawyer advocates, I learned, that is just what they do. They had to make up something in an attempt to hype up the public and make them fear me, little did they know, I was more embraced by the public because the majority of the public have been harmed by lawyers and the injustice in the legal system.”