By Tonya Alanez
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
MIAMI — A former Miami-Dade corrections officer will spend five years in prison for fleeing a Hollywood roadside DUI test and leading police on a cross-county chase, a Broward judge ordered Thursday.
Ronald F. Hill, 46, took a bullet to the gut and led police on an eight-mile 4 a.m. chase from North State Road 7 to the parking lot of a Miami-Dade police substation.
Police said Hill ran over an officer’s foot and briefly dragged another officer who tried to cling to his Ford F-150 pickup window during the March 3, 2006 fracas.
Circuit Judge Kenneth Gillespie rebuked Hill for endangering himself, police and the public and said it was clear that he had tried to use his position as a corrections officer to garner special treatment during his DUI stop.
“When that special treatment was not afforded, he took matters into his own hands,” Gillespie said.
Broward County jurors in October convicted Hill of five felony charges, ranging from battery on a law enforcement officer to fleeing and eluding police. They acquitted him of more serious assault and aggravated battery counts.
Hill, a father of 10 children, ages 2 to 23, faced a sentence ranging from probation to 26 years in prison.
He dabbed at tears with a folded paper towel as his mother, sister, brother and niece took turns pleading for leniency, emphasizing Hill’s criminal-free life and more than 20 years as a corrections officer.
Upon hearing her brother’s five-year sentence, Delores Hill, stood and shouted: “Since when the police right? Since when they right?”
She slammed her open palm against the courtroom door and stormed out. Another female relative sobbed. Hill’s mother held her hands in prayer before her face.
“It’s a cover up, it’s a cover up,” Hill’s mother, Daisy, 74, of Hialeah, said outside of court. “We’re going to appeal it, we’re going to appeal it. I’m not going to let them railroad my son.”
Copyright 2009 South Florida Sun-Sentinel