A rural Florida police department has banned cowboy boots after an officer wearing the smooth-soled footwear slipped off the brake and crashed his patrol car into a convenience store, according to AP. «They had leather soles and when I hit the brake, my foot slipped off and hit the accelerator. It was my fault,» said Michael Herko, who is one of two full-time officers in this rural north Florida town of 1,800 people. Herko, 62, said he was pulling into the store when his squad car crashed Sunday evening. He was wearing a type of cowboy boots called ropers. Herko's patrol car knocked about an opening where the store's two glass doors had been, Trenton Police Chief Billy Smith said. Damage was estimated at $3,500 (¤2,537). Smith decided to ban cowboy boots for officers on duty. «This has never been an issue before because it had never been a problem,» Smith said. «It came up now because I knew he (Herko) was a good driver and a good officer so I knew there had to be something mechanical involved and that is why we got to looking at the cowboy boots.»
