Deputy suspended over numerous phone calls

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — A St. Lucie County sheriff’s detention deputy received a two-day suspension after calling her child’s father’s girlfriend 70 times in one day and lying to a sheriff’s captain, recently released internal affairs records show.

Deputy Yasheka Ridley, 28, who’s worked for the Sheriff’s Office for about three years, made the calls to the woman on Jan. 31. A day later, the girlfriend called a sheriff’s official saying she was getting “harassing telephone calls” from Ridley.

The girlfriend told sheriff’s officials she answered the phone to establish a record. The girlfriend, who provided investigators her phone records, said she told Ridley “she should know better, that she is a police officer.”

Although Ridley’s actions appeared sufficient to support an arrest on a misdemeanor harassing telephone calls charge, the girlfriend didn’t want Ridley arrested, the report stated.

On Feb. 5, Capt. Patricia Walsh, who is the captain in charge of the jail, and a lieutenant met with Ridley, who was told to stop calling. Ridley at the time told Walsh she might have called the girlfriend once, but not repeatedly.

However in a later interview, Ridley said she did call the girlfriend “repeatedly because she was emotionally upset,” records show.

“Deputy Ridley also said she knew when she talked to Captain Walsh that she was lying,” records state. “Deputy Ridley said she has great respect for Captain Walsh and did not want Captain Walsh to know that she had done something that she shouldn’t have.”

Reported by: Will Greenlee/Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers