The Nashville SWAT officer caught having sex on duty with a married colleague inside a middle school is himself married, and later launched into a tone-deaf rant accusing fellow officers of having ‘disgraced the badge,’ the Daily Mail can reveal.
SWAT team veteran Stephen Holland was this week identified as the officer who engaged in a months-long affair with fellow married officer Lisa Vidrios, including sexual encounters inside a city school and a police vehicle.
Holland, 43, is married to Tiffany Holland, 43, a respected business development officer and a well-known figure in the local community.
The couple share a $750,000 two-story home in Spring Hill, Tennessee, with a columned front porch and two-car garage, where they lived with their teenage daughter and younger son.
The affair came to light after Vidrios’ husband, fellow Metro Nashville Police officer Angel Vidrios, discovered explicit videos, photographs and messages on his wife’s phone and handed them to investigators in May last year.
The Daily Mail previously revealed text messages showing the pair arranging secret meetings, including one exchange where Vidrios wrote: ‘Unlock your door. I’m putting shorts on.’
A bombshell internal report into their affair found the pair had engaged in sexual activity while on duty, including inside Vidrios’ office at Madison Middle School and Holland’s patrol vehicle.
SWAT team veteran Stephen Holland was this week identified as the officer who engaged in a months-long affair with fellow married officer Lisa Vidrios
Lisa Vidrios admitted her role in the affair and resigned shortly afterwards
When Angel reported his wife’s infidelity to police supervisors, both officers were immediately stripped of their police powers, according to the Office of Professional Accountability report obtained by the Daily Mail.
Vidrios admitted her role in the affair and resigned shortly afterwards.
Investigators were unable to interview Holland because he had been placed on medical leave while battling PTSD.
But just three months after the investigation began, Holland sat for a three-hour podcast interview in which he spoke openly about faith, temptation, addiction and the psychological toll of police work, all without mentioning the affair.
Speaking to Andy Stumpf, a former Navy SEAL who hosts the Cleared Hot podcast, Holland described his spiritual journey and his belief that he had found God before the scandal unfolded.
‘I felt God’s presence in me,’ said Holland, a heavily tattooed K9 officer with a master’s degree in education and a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.
‘I’m encouraging my wife to start rekindling her [connection to God] so she’s getting into it. So now we have started taking our kids to church.’
Holland also launched an extraordinary broadside against fellow officers during the interview, criticizing members of his own profession who he said had failed to uphold the standards of the badge.
Tiffany Holland, 43, is a respected business development officer and a well-known figure in the local community
Holland launched an extraordinary broadside against fellow officers while appearing on a podcast after his on-duty affair was exposed
‘There are people in my profession who are pieces of s***. There are even people who are on SWAT teams,’ Holland told Stumpf.
‘There’s some guys that have tainted the badge. There are some guys that don’t do police work for the right reason. Their hearts are not in it. But mine is. That’s why I’m in it. I’m just going to do the best I can.’
Holland later clarified that he was not permitted to disclose the police department where he worked.
News of the affair prompted a damning response from Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office, which said it was unacceptable for first responders to fall short of the standards expected by the community they serve.
The scandal also renewed attention on the mental strain faced by America’s first responders, a subject Holland has frequently spoken about.
During the podcast interview, Holland claimed years on the SWAT team had left him suffering from PTSD, with the trauma intensifying after he was among the first officers to arrive at the 2023 Covenant School massacre, where a former student killed three nine-year-old children and three staff members.
Holland also revealed he had struggled with alcohol addiction, saying he relied on beer, seltzers, wine and whiskey to fall asleep.
He said he suffered a relapse in June this year, around a month after the investigation into the affair began.
Holland said his wife and children drove him to Magnolia Meadows, a residential treatment facility 90 miles west of Nashville that specializes in helping first responders dealing with PTSD and addiction.
He spent a month at the facility and was released in mid-July.
Asked by Stumpf how his return to the SWAT team had gone, Holland admitted he had not yet returned to the department.
‘I’m worried about that,’ he said.
He said clinicians had warned him that certain situations could be difficult and trigger past trauma.
Stumpf responded: ‘If any of those guys judge you for going to get help, f*** them. That’s a really rough way to put it, but if they don’t deal with their own stuff, it’s coming for them too.’
Away from policing, Holland built a public identity around helping first responders through his Tennessee-based apparel company Righteous Tactics, which sells shirts, hoodies and gear aimed at military personnel and emergency workers.
The brand grew out of his nearly two decades in law enforcement, including years on SWAT and as a K9 handler, with designs celebrating the ‘warrior’ mindset and the bond between officers and their dogs.
Holland has used the company to speak openly about his struggles with PTSD, depression and suicidal thoughts.
‘I’ve seen the toll critical incidents take on good people,’ he wrote on the company’s website.
Tiffany Holland promoting her husband’s apparel company
Angel and Lisa Vidrios joined the Nashville Police Department together after moving their family from San Diego
‘By God’s grace, I got help in time. Being one of the fortunate ones put a conviction on my heart: pay it forward and talk about the hard stuff out loud.’
Steve and Tiffany Holland did not respond to the Daily Mail’s requests for comment. Tiffany’s mother, Pamela Jackson, declined to comment.
Tiffany graduated from Western Kentucky University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 2005 and has spent the past 15 years as a business development officer with Ascend Federal Credit Union.
She was described by the Spring Hill Chamber of Commerce as ‘a connector, an encourager, and someone who genuinely wants to see others succeed.’
The couple married in 2005 and welcomed a daughter in 2012, before later having a son.
Lisa Vidrios, meanwhile, had been regarded as a rising star during her early career with the San Diego Police Department, where she worked alongside her husband Angel.
The California-born couple, both former Marines, transferred to Metro Nashville Police in 2022 and later appeared in departmental promotional videos celebrating their life as a police family with their three young children.
‘I came here to Nashville with my family, and my husband included, who is also now a member of the Metro Police Department with me,’ Lisa said in one video.
‘We have three children together — ages six, four and one year old — and we love spending time as a family and doing everything we can throughout the city of Nashville.’
According to the Office of Professional Accountability report obtained by the Daily Mail, Angel became suspicious of his wife’s behavior and searched her phone, cross-checking messages and other evidence he believed pointed to an affair with Holland.
Angel told investigators he confronted Holland in an attempt to end the relationship but said the sergeant refused.
He then handed over videos, photographs and text messages from his wife’s phone, triggering an internal investigation that would ultimately end both officers’ careers.
Investigators said Angel discovered videos showing the pair having sex on a couch inside Lisa’s school office while staff could be heard talking just outside the door.
Lisa later admitted the pair had sex inside the school on approximately four occasions during late afternoons while children were still in the building.
The report also alleges the pair performed oral sex inside Holland’s police vehicle, with at least one encounter taking place near an abandoned hospital.
