Update: This story was updated to clarify how many cases involving Epps the Wake County District Attorney’s office has dismissed.
A Wake County woman is asking the local district court not to use evidence and testimony from a former Raleigh police officer against her on charges of driving while impaired, misdemeanor child abuse, and failing to stop at a red light.
Dominique Jeffreys was arrested and charged on September 13, 2024. The arresting officer, Kyle Epps, was fired from the department in April following an internal investigation, the details of which were not released.
Additionally, the motion states, “Upon information and belief, hundreds of cases in which Epps was the charging officer” have been voluntarily dismissed. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told the INDY that “dozens” is an appropriate description of how many cases involving Epps her office has dismissed.
“Because we have reviewed these on a case by case basis to identify public safety concerns and how the Brady information applies to the case, we have not kept a count on the total number but it does not exceed 100,” Freeman wrote in an email to the INDY Wednesday evening.
This comes as Freeman dropped more than 200 cases against two state troopers in response to their actions following a crash that killed 31-year-old Tyrone Mason. In a report on her decision not to charge the troopers, Freeman criticized RPD for its handling of the crash investigation.
The motion to suppress, filed Tuesday, accuses Epps of malfeasance in Jeffreys’s case and three others.
The Raleigh Police Department said in a request for comment that it was not authorized to provide information besides Epps’s hiring and separation date, but noted that no criminal charges have been filed against Epps.
The motion states that Epps said he pulled Jeffreys over after he observed her turning left at an intersection with a red light on North Arendell Avenue in Zebulon. Jeffreys had her child with her in the car, and in his arrest report, Epps claims Jeffreys was “slow to stop” and “swerving in the roadway,” leading him to believe Jeffreys was driving while impaired.
Epps claims Jeffreys “was very talkative, [and] had an odor of marijuana coming from her breath.” He claims Jeffreys told him she had recently smoked marijuana with her brother and was on her way to drop off her daughter at her mother’s house nearby.
Epps then asked Jeffreys to walk to the rear of her car, and claims she “stumbled over her own feet.” He asked her to rate herself on a sobriety scale from zero to ten, and Jeffreys rated herself a two. Epps asked Jeffreys if she had medical issues or injuries that would prevent her from completing a field sobriety test. Jeffreys told him she had cancer that caused problems with her legs.
Epps then conducted four different sobriety tests, including the Walk and Turn and One Leg Stand tests, observing various clues that led him to arrest Jeffreys.
In the motion, Charles Gray, Jeffreys’s attorney, argues that Epps lacked “reasonable articulable suspicion” to initiate the traffic stop. While Epps’s arrest report claims that Jeffreys “turned left when approaching an intersection with steady red light,” his dashboard camera, which captured a view where the lights are clearly visible, show that Jeffreys “at worst, entered the intersection contemporaneously with the traffic light turning from yellow to red.”
The motion states that Epps “has a pattern of dishonest conduct,” citing his April 5 termination from RPD as well as a district court judge’s order from last week that RPD must turn over “Findings and Recommendations” from its internal affairs unit (IAU) investigation detailing some of Epps’s “malfeasance.”
Attached to Jeffreys’s motion is an RPD exhibit that describes three instances of malfeasance.
In July 2024, according to the IAU report, Epps stopped a vehicle for spinning its tires. Epps’s body-worn camera footage shows him reviewing an online general statute regulating street stunts, and the audio records him saying “Or other dangerous motor vehicle activity… so [I] think we have that all day.”
But Epps admits on camera and in the IAU interview that the tire spinning didn’t cause smoke, the standard under which to make an arrest under the stunts statute. Epps erroneously charged the driver for causing “burnout,” the IAU report states, and seized their vehicle.
“The seizure of the vehicle was unlawful and violated the 4th Amendment right of the driver,” the IAU report states.
Two further instances of malfeasance occurred on the evening of November 10, just 16 minutes apart, according to the IAU report.
At 12:24 a.m., Epps and officers with the department’s downtown district Hospitality Unit approached a parked car. Epps and the others advised the car’s occupants not to leave valuables in the vehicle and told them where they could pay for parking.
Epps then asked the men if there were any firearms in the vehicle, to which one responded that he had a concealed handgun permit and had a gun on him. Epps asked all the men in the car for ID, then asked them all to get out of the car. He frisked all of the men and searched the vehicle for weapons.
Epps admitted in his IAU interview that it was an illegal search, the report states.
Then, at 12:40 a.m. according to the IAU report, Epps and the downtown district officers approached another vehicle and asked the occupants if they were coming to or leaving Glenwood South. A passenger said they were leaving, and Epps asked the passenger if there were any firearms in the vehicle. The passenger repeated that they were leaving.
Epps told the passenger that the question was simple. The passenger responded that he didn’t have to answer. Epps said he was asking for the officers’ safety, and the passenger told him there were no firearms in the vehicle. Epps told the passenger he saw a bag in the vehicle. The passenger told Epps he did not have permission to search his belongings.
“What I’m going to do is frisk,” Epps said, according to the report.
“An officer must have reasonable suspicion that subject is armed and reasonable suspicion that the subject is dangerous to conduct lawful frisk,” the report continues. “No articulable reasonable suspicion was noted on [the body-cam footage] to suggest that the passenger was armed, and no articulable reasonable suspicion was observed to indicate that the passenger was dangerous.”
Epps admitted in the IAU interview that the passenger was “polite and cooperative;” still, he frisked the passenger and searched his vehicle, but found no weapons or contraband.
“The detention, frisk and search violated the 4th Amendment rights of the occupants of the vehicle,” the report concludes.
“That the State’s decision to dismiss … cases involving Mr. Epps certainly suggests that they themselves have apprehensions regarding his credibility,” the filing states. “As such, the State lacks the requisite reasonable articulable suspicion to support the above-referenced charges.”
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