PBA STATEMENT ON THE TERMINATION
OF DBPD OFFICER JOEL LLINAS
August 18, 2026
Daytona Beach – The Coastal Florida PBA was made aware by news release this afternoon that Officer Joel Llinas was sacrificed to an angry mob of cop-haters and terminated. We could not disagree more with this absurd outcome. Officer Llinas was trained and instructed to be a proactive cop, and that doesn’t just include shopping with kids at Christmas or passing out school supplies in the summer. Sometimes that job is to go into problem neighborhoods and address ongoing concerns raised by residents. In March of this year, that is precisely what Officer Llinas was doing.
On this particular evening, Officer Llinas was grabbed and possibly bitten by the resisting suspect during an arrest and made what could have been a simple arrest into an unnecessary fiasco. This entire incident is the fault of the suspect, not the officer. Sadly, this department has chosen to ignore the obvious – that he did what they asked him to do – and terminated a hardworking cop who proudly served our country in the military as well. None of that mattered to the Mayor or the Chief, who we should all recall openly telling the same angry cop-hating mob months ago how “troubling” and “concerning” the arrest was to them, long before the investigation even began. Was there any ever doubt this would be how the chapter ended? We don’t believe so. It’s clear to our members the city decided some time ago that this was going to be the outcome, facts be damned, and that’s unfair, if not illegal.
For now, the witch hunt is over, and the city has gotten its temporary pound of flesh. Fortunately, we have seen this before and we will be aggressively fighting to get Officer Llinas job back through the arbitration process in the months ahead. Our officers will not be bullied by a spineless administration that succumbs so easily to blatant political pressure instead of recognizing the valuable protection our members provide in the community.
No comments:
Post a Comment