Robert Sparling, Police Officer, Sends Flirty Text To DUI Suspect Marlee Viggers

R U 4 real, Officer?

"Utter stupidity" is how one judge described a flirty text message sent by a police officer to a DUI suspect in Ontario, Canada, according to the Observer.

After 21-year-old Marlee Dorinda Vigger crashed her pickup truck into another vehicle in March 2011, Const. Robert Sparling administered a breath test, which the woman failed. No one was seriously injured in the incident.

A few weeks later, the two happened to be sitting in the same bar, and Sparling sent Vigger a text message that read, “If you buy me a beer, I’ll forget everything at trial.”

Not only did Vigger refuse the offer, she showed the messages to her lawyers, who used them as part of her defense, the Observer reported Wednesday. Her attorney argued that the "entirely inappropriate" text called into question the validity of the officer's evidence against Viggers.

Sparling testified that he had been joking, he had no romantic interest in the woman before or during the testing.

Though the judge called Sparling's text "utter stupidity," he added that he did not believe there was any evidence the breath tests results were inaccurate.

Viggers was fined $1,500 and banned from the road for one year.

The police department will be dealing with the matter of the text internally, the Observer reports.

Police officers everywhere may need to be more cautious about what they text, especially if they're using their work phones. In 2010, the Supreme Court upheld a police department's search of the messages on an officer's government-owned pager.

Even if you're not a law enforcement official, text messages meant as a joke can often cause serious trouble. An Arkansas teenager learned that lesson the hard way in March when, as a prank, she texted "I hid the body… Now what?" to a random phone number. Too bad that number turned out to belong to a police detective.