Miami police lieutenant arrested on DUI charge, not his first arrest

Miami police lieutenant Thomas Carroll, 49, was arrested on DUI and refusal-to-test charges after a Saturday evening crash, and the Miami Police Department suspended him and relieved him of duty. Carroll had already made headlines after a 2024 arrest, turning the new case into a fresh test of discipline inside the city department.

A lieutenant is not a routine patrol officer. In Miami, that rank carries supervisory authority and a public expectation that the badge holder will model the conduct the department demands from civilians and rank-and-file officers alike. When a supervisor is accused of driving under the influence, the issue moves quickly from a traffic case to a question of judgment, credibility and whether command staff are held to the same standard as everyone else.

The arrest report listed charges of DUI and DUI refusal to test after the weekend crash, and the department’s decision to suspend Carroll signals an immediate internal response. That step matters because public confidence in Miami police depends not only on the criminal case but on whether the agency acts swiftly when one of its own is accused of violating the same law officers enforce every night on the streets of Miami-Dade County.

The case also lands in a region that has seen repeated scrutiny of police DUI arrests. In 2024, veteran Miami-Dade Police officer Victor Montalvo was arrested on DUI charges after an on-duty crash, and both officers in that wreck suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Separate South Florida cases have kept attention on how departments handle impaired-driving allegations when the accused wears a uniform instead of being stopped by one.

For Miami police, Carroll’s second headline arrest makes the stakes bigger than one weekend crash. The department now faces the same public question that follows any officer DUI case: whether the punishment, the reassignment and the follow-up are consistent with the standards imposed on ordinary officers and on civilians who are booked for the same offense.