Sunrise Police sergeant who grabbed officer by throat retires; records say he ‘wiped’ phone, sent text to quell witnesses

Officers handled the call imperfectly. And so when Sunrise Police Sgt. Christopher Pullease arrived to the scene in November 2021 and found his platoon attempting to place an unruly suspect in the back of a police cruiser, the veteran officer’s frustration was evident — so much so that spittle was flying from his mouth as he shouted at the suspect that he would “remove” the man’s soul from his body.

Pullease, who has now retired from the police department after 22 years, was seen on body-worn camera video on Nov. 19, 2021, screaming at suspect Jean Similien and pointing his pepper spray at him before a subordinate female officer pulled the sergeant away in an attempt to deescalate the heated encounter. Pullease then quickly turned around, grabbed the officer by her throat and pushed her backward into another police car.

Pullease, 47, submitted a one-sentence memorandum to Chief Anthony Rosa on Nov. 4, formally notifying the chief of his retirement, effective that same day. The criminal case against Pullease is still pending in Broward County court after an arrest warrant was issued in July on charges of battery on a law enforcement officer, tampering with evidence, assault on a law enforcement officer and assault against Similien.

Court and police department records say Pullease claimed after the incident that he thought the female officer who grabbed him that day was someone else who could be a potential threat, that he wiped his phone clean of its history the day he learned he was under a criminal investigation and that hours after the incident, he sent a text message to officers who witnessed it in an attempt to keep them quiet.

[ PAST COVERAGE: Sunrise Police sergeant in throat-grabbing video arrested on battery, assault charges ]

Shortly before 2 p.m. on Nov. 19, 2021, Sunrise Police officers were called about a fight that happened at a convenience store on Sunset Strip. Jean Similien punched several people outside the store after a clerk told him he was 50 cents short for the purchase he tried to make and told Similien to leave, a probable cause affidavit says.

Before Pullease arrived, Similien told the officers: “Y’all steady following me,” the body-worn-camera video shows. “If I open fire on one, two or three, I told y’all …”

An officer at the scene said over radio that he had threatened to open fire, the video showed. Similen resisted the officers who were placing him under arrest and into the police cruiser, but by the time Pullease arrived, Similien was handcuffed and inside the car.

Pullease approached Similien inside the car with pepper spray in his hand and shouted, “Look at me motherf—–,” Pullease said. “You want to play f—— games? … I will remove your f—— soul from your f—— body.”

The video then showed the female officer grab Pullease’s belt and pull him away. Pullease quickly flipped around, while still holding the pepper spray, placed his left arm up to her neck and held it there briefly before moving it to her shoulder, pushing her backward. Pullease cursed at the officer before saying, “Don’t ever f—— touch me again.”

The female officer responded, “Sir!” before he told her, “Get the f— off me” and let her go, the video shows.

[ PAST COVERAGE: A dramatic video shows a Sunrise cop grabbing another officer by her throat. Broward’s public defender alleges inaction by department. ]

Chief Anthony Rosa launched a formal investigation into the incident on Nov. 24. Two days later, the female officer said she did not want to prosecute Pullease. She would later retain an attorney and reconsider, according to records.

An Internal Affairs complaint report says “the call itself was handled somewhat poorly” because it took too long to detain Similien, and several officers on the call “seemed to be confused as to what actions they could or could not take to detain Mr. Similien, or if they even had probable cause to detain him at all.”

“The way this call was handled clearly frustrated the supervisors working that day and that were responding to the scene,” the report says.

A Broward Sheriff’s Office dispatcher said during the Internal Affairs investigation that she remembered the call because “it was messed up. It wasn’t the way calls normally are handled. There was a lot of confusion and it lacked organization,” the report said.

On the body-worn-camera video, one sergeant could be heard asking officers over radio why Similien hadn’t been detained yet by the time he said he could “open fire.”

“It is this investigator’s belief that Sergeant Pullease was already frustrated when he arrived on scene due to how long it took to detain Mr. Similien. When he observed the officers having a difficult time getting Mr. Similien in the rear of the vehicle, Sergeant Pullease became even more agitated, took out his pepper spray and decided to take matters into his own hands,” the Internal Affairs investigator wrote in a May report.

The female officer who Pullease grabbed said that evident frustration is why she intervened.

“I felt that collectively at this point this guy’s secure in the car, he’s handcuffed and the fight should be over,” she said in an interview during the Internal Affairs investigation. “And at this point it sounded like Chris, Sergeant Pullease, was getting angry and I did not want his anger to make him act out of character. Make him do something that we should not be doing as police officers. So, I tried to remove him from the situation.”

The criminal case against Similien is ongoing.

Within hours of the call, Pullease sent a group text message to the witness officers, the court and police department records show.

“All, it is important not to air our dirty laundry to any officers that are not on this platoon, as it’s none of their business,” Pullease’s text, sent shortly before 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 19, said. “I received texts from other officers in special units and from other platoons about the last incident. I hope that everyone understands and respects this request.”

Several officers in their Internal Affairs investigation statements said they took Pullease’s text to mean they weren’t supposed to discuss what happened. One officer said the text unsettled him and took it to mean “he was just trying to sweep things under the rug, keep it quiet, handle it amongst ourselves.”

“The overall consensus was we didn’t realize what had happened and how it escalated so quickly,” another officer said in the Internal Affairs investigation. “We were very concerned that, you know, Sergeant Pullease had put his hands on Officer [redacted] in front of everybody and then we’re told not to talk about the incident. We’re very concerned at that point what was going to happen and if this was going to be the new culture at work.”

Even officers who didn’t get the group message or witness the incident heard about it at the next day’s patrol briefings where Pullease and a lieutenant discussed how the call was mishandled. Pullease had asked to be present at all three briefings on Nov. 20, the investigation report said.

When the lieutenant left the room, Pullease addressed the officers alone, the record says, and said officers should never put their hands on another.

That lieutenant was aware Pullease was going to send out a group text message, according to the investigation report, but the lieutenant thought the reason for the text would be to address the call itself, not the altercation between Pullease and his subordinate.

A total of 26 witnesses were interviewed in the Internal Affairs investigation, some who were at the scene of the call. All who saw it happen said they felt what Pullease did constituted battery and that it would have been “nearly impossible” for Pullease to have confused the officer for a member of the public or another suspect, the report said. Pullease can be seen in the body-worn-camera video looking at the other officer’s face for a second before grabbing her throat.

After the incident, Pullease said he thought he was being “attacked” when he was grabbed by the belt, the report said. Pullease spoke to another sergeant about 30 minutes after the altercation and said he thought it could have been Similien’s friend or acquaintance who grabbed him and realized after pushing them off it was the female officer.

Pullease downplayed what happened during the call to the lieutenant he spoke to, according to the report. The lieutenant said he didn’t learn of the “severity” of the call until the day after it happened. The lieutenant told the investigator Pullease never told him he had grabbed the officer’s neck or pointed pepper spray at her. And he left out pointing the pepper spray at Similien and “threatening to remove the soul from Mr. Similien’s body,” the report said.

Another sergeant who was working that day said the body-worn-camera video showed a different picture from what Pullease described to him, the report said. He never mentioned grabbing the woman by the neck to him, either.

Once Pullease learned the next day that the body-worn-camera footage of the incident would be reviewed, he told the lieutenant, “Well, listen. Full disclosure; You’re not gonna like what you see on my camera,” the report said.

[ PAST COVERAGE: Fight between chief and union escalates over Sunrise police sergeant’s videotaped conduct. Experts debate throat-grabbing incident. ]

In a Dec. 30 memo, Sunrise Police Department Legal Advisor Gregg Rossman wrote he was asked to review the videos and determine whether they warranted a criminal investigation. He wrote that he believed no crime was committed.

Rossman commended the female officer in his memo, writing that she “demonstrated exactly what is expected of Sunrise Officers by acting on her obligation to intervene and deescalate the situation even to the extent of physically grabbing a superior ranking member …”

“In the moment, Sgt. Pullease clearly did not appreciate her intervention and reacted badly to it. It is also clear his reaction occurred reflexively and without contemplation,” Rossman wrote. “He did not act with any requisite criminal intent and in fact reacted viscerally to the force applied to him.”

But Pullease learned on Jan. 19 that he was being criminally investigated for battery on a law enforcement officer and was placed on administrative leave with pay.

After obtaining a search warrant, Pullease’s phone was taken in February to search for text messages about the battery between Pullease and other officers, records say.

“Just for transparency purposes, I want you to know that I did an update on my phone a couple of weeks ago and all my data got erased,” Pullease said to the investigator.

[ RELATED: Sunrise sergeant in throat-grabbing video under criminal investigation and placed on leave, officials say ]

A detective with the U.S. Secret Service Miami Digital Evidence Forensic Laboratory performed the phone search and found that the phone had been reset the same day Pullease was placed on administrative leave in January, within hours of learning he was under investigation, the records said.

Pullease had also used the phone to email himself the police report of the incident from his work email to his personal email and that “there was an internet search for ‘tampering with a witness,’” the report said.

The court records show there were also internet searches on Nov. 19 and 20 for how to recover an iPhone’s data, how to back up an iPhone, how to recover deleted messages and locations of nearby Apple stores.

Pullease’s attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment Thursday evening.

The Internal Affairs investigation has not been completed, Officer Justin Yarborough, a spokesperson for the police department, said in an email last week. It was put on hold during the criminal investigation. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will receive the investigation results, Yarborough said.

“If an officer retires or resigns while under investigation, that is their choice. Internal Affairs investigations are administrative,” Yarborough said.

Pullease was first placed on desk duty days after the incident, then on administrative leave with pay in January. He was on administrative leave without pay when he retired Yarborough said. His annual salary was $102,304.

It is unclear whether the pending criminal case could affect Pullease’s pension.

“The Board of Trustees are governed by Florida law and local ordinance, as such will act accordingly,” said David Williams, Sunrise Police Officers’ Retirement Plan administrator, in an email Thursday afternoon.

Pullease will be in court next in January.