The Charleston County Sheriff's Office (CCSO) has provided the letter of suspension for a former deputy facing a lawsuit over a fatal 2022 collision.
Former deputy Clinton Sacks is one of the defendants in the lawsuit connected to the deaths of Stephanie Dantzler and her daughters Shanice and Miranda Dantzler-Williams. The three were struck and killed by former deputy Emily Pelletier last Mother's Day while Pelletier and Sacks were responding to help a motorist. Pelletier, the CCSO, and Charleston County were also named as defendants by the Dantzler-Williams family.
Following the collision, Pelletier was fired and charged with three counts of reckless homicide. Sacks, who joined the CCSO in 2016, was not charged and remained with the sheriff's office until his resignation on May 12, 2023. He was also not part of the CCSO internal investigation into the incident.
The CCSO issued the letter of suspension to Sacks on March 1, two months before his resignation, based on a review of his videos from Dec. 31, 2022, to Jan 31, 2023. Sacks was suspended from duty without pay from March 13 to March 20 for a total of 56 work hours.
"After a thorough review of your videos, it is apparent you lack professionalism, care, and competency to adequately do your job," the letter reads. "It is embarrassing to watch these videos and see the level of disservice that was done to the public. Your officer safety is reprehensible."
"Video after video, you approach vehicles on traffic stops, fail to touch the vehicle as taught, and then either lean on the car or position your body directly in front of the window," it reads. "You put yourself at risk of getting (dragged) down the road by the suspect vehicle, assaulted, or killed."
The letter details incidents in which Sacks purportedly did not complete reports, made inappropriate comments, and improperly followed CCSO procedure. In several videos, Sacks is said to have driven between 100 and 120 m.p.h. without responding to a call and activated his lights to get through a red light before immediately turning them off.
According to the letter, Sacks purportedly drew a gun on a driver who notified him of having a firearm in his car and did not complete a Use of Force form, did not properly help a theft victim who spoke little English, told a woman involved in a domestic disturbance to drive off with her children in her vehicle after she said she had been drinking, failed to discover a suspect was driving an uninsured vehicle with a suspended license, and erroneously told a vandalism victim she could not press charges and did not issue warrants for the suspect after saying he would.
The letter also says Sacks purportedly allowed a possibly intoxicated driver with an expired license to drive off with only a written warning, caused a driver who forgot his license to drive off after arguing with him, did not inform EMS of a motorcyclist who crashed into a barrier or run a background check on the motorcyclist, and did not check if a woman who said she had a gun in her purse was legally allowed to carry it, among other incidents.
The full suspension letter can be viewed below in Sacks' personnel file (pages 2-7):
Click here to view the full document.
On Friday, the attorneys for the Dantzler-Williams family released a two-page statement condemning the sheriff's office's lack of action concerning Sacks' alleged misconduct.
Today we learned that when CCSO finally got around to looking at Deputy Sacks’ interactions with the public and his driving during the month of January 2023, they discovered he was still an out-of-control Deputy in every respect and continued his own unlawful and dangerous driving some months after the deaths.
The attorneys say that CCSO has harbored a culture of dangerous driving.
This hypocrisy of CCSO is staggering - CCSO regularly enforces traffic laws and punishes citizens for traffic violations, as they should, all in the name of public safety – while at the same time placing the public at grave daily risk by not supervising or enforcing traffic laws as to their own Deputies’ driving.
Click here to view the full statement.