A former Jackson County, FL Sheriff’s Office deputy has been arrested and charged will pulling over random drivers and planting drugs in their cars.
Zachary Wester, 26, was fired last year but officially charged last week with racketeering, official misconduct, false imprisonment, and several other felonies.
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According to reports, Wester, 26, targeted innocent drivers and planted drugs in their vehicles so he could arrest them on false charges. He was able to hide his evil actions from superiors by tampering with and manipulating his body camera recordings.
For Benjamin Bowling, his life was altered dramatically after being pulled over by Wester. Bowling had been clean and off all drugs since his release from prison on a DUI conviction. But suddenly a Jackson County, FL sheriff’s deputy was accusing him of possessing a tiny amount of methamphetamine.
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The incident took place in October 2017. Bowling had been out of prison for less than a year, and was doing everything he could to get his life back on track. He passed all his drug tests and he had recently been awarded custody of his daughter. He was on his way to the store with his friend Shelly Smith to pick up diapers when they saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror. Unbeknownst to them, Deputy Zachary Wester was turning a traffic stop for swerving over a white line into a search for illegal drugs.
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Webster claimed to smell marijuana but Bowling and Smith were confident they had nothing to hide and told him to search the car.
Wester emerged with meth.
Bowling lost custody of the daughter he had just gotten back after being convicted of felony meth possession. Now, two years later, he knows exactly how it got there. Wester, state investigators now say, planted it there himself. Bowling was far from the only victim, there are at least eleven others.
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Wester was fired last September from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in Florida over the allegations. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FLDE) Pensacola assistant special agent in charge Chris Williams said in a statement:
“There is no question that Wester’s crimes were deliberate and that his actions put innocent people in jail.”1
State Attorney William Eddins told reporters:
“You’re never certain of the ways of the heart of man. We have some ideas and some theories, and we’ve talked about that a lot. But I do not feel that it would be appropriate to go into it in any detail at this time.”1
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The FDLE said the case remains under investigation, and there may be more victims who have not yet been identified. The Tallahassee Democrat reported that at least 119 cases involving Wester have been dropped. Besides the dropped charges, Circuit Judge Christopher Patterson ordered at least eight inmates released from correctional facilities last fall, and 263 cases remain under review.
Investigators said that there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the drivers Wester selected for false arrests on meth possession. Several were parents with a carseat and a diaper bag in the back seat. Others were young women and men, some crying, adamant that they had never touched drugs, let alone meth, in their lives.
State Attorney William Eddins is correct – we can never be certain of the ways of the heart of man.
