Springfield security guard charged with impersonating police officer
Springfield MO July 5 2019
A Springfield security guard was charged Monday with impersonating a police officer.
Caleb O’Pry, 21, was charged with the misdemeanor crime after court documents say he searched a man’s vehicle and found a small amount of marijuana. The car owner allegedly thought O’Pry was a cop.
According to a probable cause statement, O’Pry was a Southern Missouri Judicial Services (SMOJS) employee in July 2018 who was tasked with checking a parking lot in the 2100 block of West Republic Road.
While O’Pry was checking the lot, he noticed what appeared to be a marijuana pipe in the center console of a car, according to the statement.
The car owner then came out of a business, and O’Pry asked to search the vehicle, where he found a small amount of marijuana inside a chewing tobacco container, according to the statement.
The statement says O’Pry then had his dispatch contact 911 and a Springfield Police Department officer was sent to the scene.
When police talked with the car owner, he said he allowed O’Pry to search the vehicle because he believed O’Pry and his colleague were law enforcement officers.
“They look like police officers,” the man allegedly told police. “They have guns, the clothing, the cars have spotlights. I thought they were actual police officers.”
The man said O’Pry never identified himself as a police officer or a security guard, according to the statement, but either he or his colleague made reference to a “citizen’s arrest.”
The police officer who wrote the probable cause statement noted several times where he felt O’Pry had overstepped his bounds as a private security guard — investigating an unoccupied car, assuming the residue in the pipe was marijuana, detaining the car owner and asking to search the car without making it clear he was not a law enforcement officer.
The statement says authorities have two other documented incidents of O’Pry searching a citizen’s vehicle.
Natalie McGuire, a spokesperson for SMOJS, said O’Pry is no longer with the company. She said he left on his own accord earlier this year.
O’Pry was in the news in January when the company said he heroically pulled a woman from a burning home in Springfield. The woman was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
McGuire said SMOJS employees take steps to ensure they are not mistaken for law enforcement officers, like wearing uniforms and displaying logos that are different from Springfield police or Greene County Sheriff’s Office uniforms.
McGuire said the company’s goal is to help make things easier for police by handling the “grunt work” like noise complaints and parking issues for the businesses that contract with them.
“We support our local law enforcement,” McGuire said.
The owner of SMOJS, Tim Brenner, was indicted in November on felony drug possession charges after allegations that the firm’s security guards seized drugs from private citizens and kept the narcotics at the SMOJS facility on Boonville Avenue.
Brenner told the News-Leader those drugs were used to train drug-sniffing dogs, which he believed he had the permits to do.
It does not appear the man whose car was searched by O’Pry last summer is facing charges related to that incident.
O’Pry’s misdemeanor charge of impersonating an officer is punishable by up to a year behind bars.
Springfield News Leader
