Tampa cop who threatened to detain tow company worker says he’ll fight to get job back
Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.·Arielle Bader/Tampa Bay Times/TNS
Tony Marrero, Lesley Cosme Torres, Tampa Bay Times
Updated 5 min read
John Holmstrom says he knew immediately he made a bad decision that August day.
While on duty working as a Tampa police officer during Hurricane Idalia on Aug. 30, Holmstrom learned his personal vehicle had been towed from his Tampa apartment complex. Still on duty and in uniform, he went to the tow yard to sort out the issue.
In a tense exchange with a tow yard employee, Holmstrom recalled, he said something along the lines of, “I should arrest you for illegally towing my vehicle.”
”I should have stayed calm in my position as a police officer, but I’m also a human being,” Holmstrom, 32, told the Tampa Bay Times on Friday.
Holmstrom said he expected a harsh punishment for the incident but was surprised when he was told this week that he had been fired for it.
The department announced Thursday afternoon that Tampa police Chief Lee Bercaw had terminated Holmstrom after an internal investigation by the department’s Professional Standards Bureau found he violated policies related to misuse of authority and abuse of position or authority, among others.
“It is unacceptable that an officer would use their position or badge to settle a personal matter,” Bercaw said in a statement Thursday. “Tampa Police officers are held to the highest standard of professionalism and this officer’s actions are not a representation of the hard work and dedication of the nearly 1,000 sworn officers serving this community every day.”
The full investigation report and body camera video were not immediately available Friday, but a disciplinary notice to Holmstrom and a final disposition letter to Bercaw provide more details.
When he realized his car had been towed, Holmstrom contacted the department’s communications bureau, learned his vehicle had been towed by AutoPros Towing and called the company. He identified himself as a police officer, said he was “not a regular guy” and that his vehicle was used for “city work.” He said if the company did not return the vehicle, it could affect the company’s contract with the apartment complex, records state. He said he was on his way there in his patrol vehicle.
On the way to the AutoPros location on North Coolidge Avenue, Holmstrom activated his emergency equipment on his patrol vehicle to bypass traffic control devices. Once at AutoPros, the documents state, he accused the employees of stealing his vehicle, and at one point threatened to detain one employee in handcuffs.
AutoPros employees contacted the department to complain to Holmstrom’s supervisor, who responded to the business.
“Your actions were seen as an attempt to intimidate and were inappropriate when you threatened to use your authority as a police officer to impact a private business relating to your vehicle,” the disciplinary notice states.
During the internal investigation, Holmstrom acknowledged “freakin’ out” after learning his vehicle was towed and that he made statements to tow company employees that he should not have made, the disposition letter states.
A person who answered the phone at the AutoPros on Friday said the business had no comment.
Holmstrom told the Times that there were several mitigating factors that should have saved his job and that he plans to fight his firing by appealing Bercaw’s decision to the city’s Civil Service Board.
He said it had already been a difficult summer for him. The previous month, he was among the officers involved in the shooting of a domestic violence suspect who led police on a chase that ended in a hail of gunfire on North Florida Avenue. He was placed on standard administrative leave after the shooting, then returned to duty in time to work several additional duty days during Hurricane Idalia.
By then, the married father of two had learned that his wife, who is in the U.S. Coast Guard and was pregnant at the time, was getting deployed. He also had recently been struck by a drunken driver in his patrol car.
“So this incident was kind of like the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.
Holmstrom said he had just moved into a new apartment and had parked his personal vehicle in an area where management said to do so. The day it was towed, Hurricane Idalia was still swirling offshore, and Holmstrom had to pick up his young daughter from day care in St. Petersburg.
“It was just a moment of panic,” he said.
Holmstrom noted that he had no prior disciplinary history at the Tampa Police Department or at the other three agencies he has worked for during his 12-year career. He said he told department officials he would accept a lengthy suspension and then move on with his career at the department.
Holmstrom said department officials likened the incident to the behavior that prompted Mayor Jane Castor to demand former police Chief Mary O’Connor’s resignation in 2022. In that incident, O’Connor flashed her badge during a traffic stop in Pinellas County and asked a deputy to “just let us go.” The stop happened while O’Connor was riding with her husband in a golf cart near their neighborhood.
Holmstrom said the two incidents aren’t comparable.
“I was working on a hurricane duty when this incident occurred after a whole bunch of other incidents occurred, and then in the onset of the incident, admitted to what I did,” he said.
Holmstrom could file a grievance to get his job back, but the final decision in that process would ultimately be Bercaw’s. So Holmstrom is taking the other option, appealing to the city’s Civil Service Board to hear his case and decide if he should be reinstated.
Brandon Barclay, president of the Tampa Police Benevolent Association, said the union does not represent officers who opt to take their case to the Civil Service Board.
Holmstrom thinks his firing is emblematic of a larger issue.
“It’s upsetting that in the climate today, instead of progressively disciplining good law enforcement officers — and everybody admits I was a good officer — cities and counties will just fire them, wash their hands of them and have them fight for their jobs back just to say, ‘We did our job,’” he said.
