Shocking bodycam footage shows moment Florida federal drug prosecutor Joseph Ruddy offers cops his business card during DUI crash

A prolific tough-on-drugs Florida prosecutor tried to offer cops his business card to avoid being arrested for driving drunk after sideswiping an SUV over the Fourth of July. 

Joseph Ruddy, 59, a federal prosecutor, was stopped by cops outside his home in Tampa. During his arrest, he was too drunk to stand up straight and had his Justice Department business card clutched in his hand. 

When officers arrived at Ruddy's home in the suburb of Temple Terrace, they found him hunched over his pickup, holding his keys and using the vehicle for support, the police report said. 

Officers noted that he had urinated on himself, was unable to walk without help and failed a field sobriety test.

Ruddy has been charged with driving under the influence with property damage. His blood-alcohol level tested at 0.17%, twice the legal limit. He could now face up to a year in prison. 

Despite being charged, Ruddy remained on the job for two months, representing the United States in court as recently as last week to notch another win for the sprawling task force he helped create two decades ago targeting cocaine smuggling at sea. 

He is credited with designing Operation Panama Express (PANEX), a task force contributing more than 90% of U.S. Coast Guard drug interdictions at sea. The average sentence for smugglers picked up at sea and prosecuted in Tampa, where Ruddy worked, was longer than any other court in the country. 

The prosecutor was captured outside his home in Tampa, Florida, with his Justice Department business card in hand while he hunched over his pickup truck

The attorney's blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit and could barely stand straight up. He was also found urinated on himself after hitting a vehicle and leaving the scene

Joseph Ruddy, 59, a prolific federal prosecutor, has been charged with driving under the influence with property damage after he was captured handing cops his business card after a DUI on July 4th

Ruddy is accused of sideswiping an SUV whose driver had been waiting to turn at a red light, clipping a side mirror and tearing off another piece of the vehicle that lodged in the fender of Ruddy's pickup. 

'He never even hit brakes,' a witness told police. 'He just kept going and he was swerving all the way up the road. I'm like, "No, he's going to hurt somebody." So I just followed him until I got the tag number and just called and reported it.' 

In bodycam footage of the arrest, Tampa police patrolman Taylor Grant is heard telling him: 'I understand we might be having a better night.'

Before looking at the business card clutched in Ruddy's hand, the officer says: 'What are you trying to hand me? You realize when they pull my body-worn camera footage and they see this, this is going to go really bad.' 

The officer then asks him: 'Why didn't you stop?'

'I didn't realize it was that serious,' Ruddy said in a slurred response.

'You hit a vehicle and you ran,' the officer said. 'You ran because you´re drunk. You probably didn´t realize you hit the vehicle.'  

Ruddy had been representing the United States in court for two months after the hit-and-run. But he was pulled off three cases and removed from the supervisory role a day after the Associated Press asked the Justice Department about Ruddy's case. 

He is expected to appear in court for his case on September 27.

Ruddy arrived at the United States Courthouse Friday, September 1st. He remained on the job for two months after the hit-and-run

Ruddy was pulled off three cases and removed from the supervisory role a day after the Associated Press asked the Justice Department about Ruddy's case.

On Wednesday, a day after the AP asked the Justice Department about Ruddy's status, the veteran prosecutor was pulled off three pending criminal cases. 

A Justice Department spokesman would not say whether he had been suspended but said that Ruddy, while still employed, had been removed from his supervisory role at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa. The case also has been referred to the Office of Inspector General.

Such an inspector general's probe would likely focus on whether Ruddy was trying to use his public office for private gain, said Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis who reviewed the footage.

'It's hard to see what this could be other than an attempt to improperly influence the police officer to go easy on him,' Clark said. 'What could possibly be his purpose in handing over his U.S. Attorney's Office business card?'

Ruddy designed the Operation Panama Express(PANEX), a task force contributing more than 90% of U.S. Coast Guard drug interdictions at sea. The average sentence for smugglers picked up at sea and prosecuted in Tampa, where Ruddy worked, was longer than any other court in the country

Ruddy is known in law enforcement circles as one of the architects of Operation Panama Express, or PANEX - a task force launched in 2000 to target cocaine smuggling at sea, combining resources from the U.S. Coast Guard, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Historically, PANEX-generated intelligence contributes to more than 90% of U.S. Coast Guard drug interdictions at sea. Between 2018 and 2022, the Coast Guard removed or destroyed 888 metric tons of cocaine worth an estimated $26 billion and detained 2,776 suspected smugglers, a senior Coast Guard official said in congressional testimony in March. The bulk of those cases were handled by Ruddy and his colleagues in Tampa, where PANEX is headquartered.

A former Ironman triathlete, Ruddy enjoys a reputation among attorneys for hard work and toughness in the courtroom. Among his biggest cases were some of the early extraditions from Colombia of top smugglers for the feared Cali cartel.

But the majority of cases handled out of his office involve mostly poor fishermen from Central and South America who make up the drug trade´s lowest rungs. Often, the drugs aren´t even bound for American shores and the constitutional guarantees of due process that normally apply in criminal cases inside the U.S. are only loosely observed.

'Ruddy is at the heart of a costly and aggressive prosecutor-led dragnet that every year pulls hundreds of low-level cocaine traffickers off the oceans and incarcerates them in the U.S.,' said Kendra McSweeney, an Ohio State University geographer who is part of a team studying maritime interdiction policies.

Research by Ohio State's Interdiction Lab found that between 2014 and 2020, the median sentence for smugglers picked up at sea and prosecuted in Tampa was 10 years - longer than any other court in the country and compared to seven years, six months in Miami, which handles the second-largest amount of such cases.

Last Friday, nearly two months after his arrest, Ruddy was in court to ratify a plea deal in the case of a Brazilian man, Flavio Fontes Pereira, who in February was found by the U.S. Coast Guard with more than 3.3 tons of cocaine aboard a sailboat off Guinea, in West Africa.

After two weeks aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel, Pereira made his initial court appearance in Tampa in March, charged under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, which gives the U.S. unique arrest powers anywhere on the high seas whenever it determines a vessel is 'without nationality.'