'I Don't Give a F*** Who You Are': The Off-Duty Miami-Dade Officer Stopped at 110 MPH in Key Largo, and the Jury That Acquitted Him of DUI

At 3:57 a.m. on Sunday, June 12, 2022, Monroe County Sheriff's deputies in Key Largo clocked a white Chrysler 300 heading north on US-1, the Overseas Highway, near mile marker 101 at more than 110 mph. They lit it up. It kept going. For roughly four miles, with lights and sirens behind it, the car swerved toward other traffic before it finally stopped near mile marker 105.

The deputies came out with guns drawn. "Get out of the fing car! I don't give a f who you are." The driver stumbled out. He was Donovan William Rojas, 26, an off-duty officer with the Miami-Dade Police Department, and the Chrysler was his unmarked agency vehicle.

What followed, on the deputies' body and dash cameras, became the most-watched footage on our channel: a police officer treated the way any other driver would be, a refused breath test, and a tearful phone call from the back of a patrol car. What followed in court is the part most viewers never saw. This file is built from the arrest, the footage aired by Local 10 and WSVN, and the March 2024 verdict.

The stop

Deputy Joel Torres initiated the stop. The bodycam shows the felony-stop posture, weapons out, commands shouted, and Rojas complying slowly and unsteadily. He declined field sobriety tests at the roadside. At the sheriff's office he refused a breath test, which in Florida carries its own consequences for a driver's license regardless of the criminal case.

In the patrol car, the camera kept running. Rojas cried. He made a phone call: "This is detective Rojas with Miami-Dade Police department. I'm currently getting arrested for possibly, I guess, DUI." A deputy's response is also on the recording: "You used to work for Miami-Dade."

He was charged with fleeing and eluding a law enforcement officer, a second-degree felony, and DUI.

The department's response

Miami-Dade Police Interim Director George Perez relieved Rojas of duty without pay within a day. Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay called it "a singular case and not indicative of the Miami-Dade Police Department as a whole." When Local 10 and WSVN obtained and aired the footage on July 13, 2022, the case became a fixture of police-accountability coverage in South Florida.

The trial

The footage looked decisive. The jury did not see it that way. On March 26 to 28, 2024, a Monroe County jury acquitted Rojas of felony fleeing and eluding and of DUI, and convicted him of reckless driving, a misdemeanor. His attorney, Larry McMillan, argued that Rojas "immediately stopped when the police officer with active lights and sirens pulled behind him," and that without a breath test or field sobriety tests the state could not prove impairment beyond a reasonable doubt.

That outcome is worth sitting with. A refused breath test is admissible as evidence of consciousness of guilt in Florida, but it is not a number, and a jury weighing a DUI charge with no chemical result and no roadside tests was left with a deputy's observations and a stumble on camera. The fleeing acquittal turned on when the lights came on relative to when the car stopped, which the video shows but does not time-stamp for a jury. Our explainer on charged versus convicted covers why a viral arrest and a verdict can look like two different cases.

His sentence on the reckless-driving count has not been publicly reported.

What is still open

As of the verdict, Miami-Dade police said Rojas "remains suspended without pay" with an internal-affairs investigation still open. No final employment decision has been publicly reported. In January 2025, the department became the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, which would now hold that file.

One note on our own coverage. Our short clips describe an internal-affairs interrogation on video. No published account describes such footage in this case; what the released material shows is the roadside stop, the booking, and the patrol-car call. We have corrected those clips.

Why this case file matters

The footage is a clean record of a department not extending professional courtesy, which is why it traveled. The verdict is a clean record of something else: that dramatic bodycam and a felony conviction are different things, and that the elements the state has to prove, impairment and willful flight, are not on a video the way a stumble and a siren are. Both halves belong in the file. Our videos cover the stop from three angles; we track the open internal investigation on our court dates tracker.

Sources & records

• CBS Miami: Miami-Dade officer Donovan Rojas arrested for DUI (June 12, 2022)
• NBC 6: Miami-Dade officer arrested for DUI, fleeing in the Keys (June 12, 2022)
• Local 10: exclusive video of the Monroe deputies' arrest (July 13, 2022)
• WSVN: bodycam footage of the arrest (July 13, 2022)
• Local 10: DUI charge reduced after 2022 Keys arrest (March 28, 2024)
• Donet, McMillan & Trontz: defense statement on the verdict (April 11, 2024)

Case status as of this writing: Donovan Rojas was acquitted in March 2024 of fleeing and eluding and of DUI and convicted of misdemeanor reckless driving; his sentence and final employment outcome have not been publicly reported. This article is based on the arrest as reported, released body and dash camera footage, trial coverage, and a statement from defense counsel. Featured image: the Overseas Highway at Key Largo, Florida, via Wikimedia Commons, credited below the image.