Man who flashed badge at off-duty officer pleads to impersonation

By Michael R. Moser / mmoser@crossville-chronicle.com

March 27, 2007 07:48 pm

— A Crossville man who was accused in two separate incidents of flashing a police badge and impersonating an officer entered a guilty plea to one of the charges in Cumberland County Criminal Court last week.
David Anthony Garber, 39, was in court facing two counts of criminal impersonation. He pleaded guilty to one count of impersonation and was placed on six months probation, and is to pay court costs in the case. Both charges were misdemeanor cases.
Last summer Garber was arrested on one charge of impersonation, and was cited into court on a second charge.
In a May incident, Garber and Crossville Police Officer Sgt. Gary Green, traveling in his private vehicle and off duty, were involved in a minor traffic accident on Hwy. 127 N in the area of Movies Four Sale. In the arrest affidavit, Green stated that Garber approached his vehicle and flashed a sheriff's style badge and told the officer to pull his vehicle over to the shoulder of the road.
Green later found out that Garber was not a police officer and in July a warrant was filed against Garber for criminal impersonation.
The second charge came from an employee of Country Place Nursing Home who reported arriving at her Livingston Rd. home after getting off work and being approached in the parking lot by Garber who "flashed a badge and informed me that he was a law enforcement officer and that I had ran him off the road and said my speed was 95 mph," the arrest affidavit said.
Garber then told the woman he was going to call the police to have her arrested. When the victim told Garber she, too, was going to call police, Garber left.