Teen accused of lying about fake cops behind bars

18-year-old claimed 2 men impersonating police officers pulled her over

CLAY COUNTY, Fla. – An 18-year-old Fleming Island girl has been charged with falsely reporting a crime for claiming that she was pulled over by two fake cops earlier this month.

According to the arrest report, Amanda Roeske called 911 on May 5 about 1:30 a.m. and said she had been pulled over by a dark-colored van with flashing red and blue lights in the area of Raggedy Point Road in Clay County.

Roeske originally said that she was driving down Pine Avenue when two men in a van pulled her over and tried to force their way into her car.

"He walked up really fast and then just started banging on my window. I don't know if he's trying to bust it or if he was just trying to get me to open it," Roeske said in a TV interview with News4Jax reporter Vic Micolucci. 

The arrest report said Roeske gave the same account to the 911 dispatcher, the responding deputy from the Clay County Sheriff's Office and the detectives who interviewed her at the Orange Park substation.

The report said she was given multiple opportunities to recant the false statement, but she insisted that it had happened. But deputies said after dozens of investigative hours, detectives established that the reported incident did not occur.

Details about her reaction and possibly why she filed the false report were redacted from the public version of the document.

Roeske is being held in the Clay County Jail on a $25,000 bond. 

News4Jax crime and safety analyst Gil Smith said filing a false police report can be costly for others.

"The thing about that is, if detectives are following it up, that means they have to set their other cases aside to work on this, which puts them even further behind and delaying cases that could be solved that are legitimate cases," Smith said. "It is hard to understand why she would do that. There's nothing really for her to gain by making this false claim. That's the thing that I really can't understand myself."