Even when bad cops face consequences, police union rules often shield them from punishment – even for “despicable and disgusting” behaviour.
San Antonio Police Department officers in 2016 to clear A homeless camp with private parking. Bike Patrol Officer Matthew Luckhurst, who was involved in the effort, was trying to get residents to clean up on their way out when he allegedly offered a homeless man a shit sandwich — literally Means shit on bread.
Luckhurst will later proved He picked up the feces with a piece of discarded bread so he wouldn’t step on it, and put it in a food container, which he thought the man would throw away. But another officer at the scene, David Ramos, testified that Luckhurst laughed about it at the scene and later told the other officers he “made a sandwich and force-fed someone.” . Ramos said it was false, but claimed that “Lakehurst spread the rumor because he was a prankster.”
Luckhurst was fired in October 2016, and San Antonio argued that if the man got sick from eating the sandwich, he held the city accountable.chief Police officer call it “A despicable and disgusting act that violates our guiding principles of ‘treating all people with integrity, compassion, fairness and respect’.” But under local government regulations, officials must be disciplined within 180 days of the incident. The exact date of the event was somewhat confused, in part because Luckhurst’s body camera was not turned on.arbitrator Decide In March 2019, it was too late and the department ordered Luckhurst restored.
At that time, Luckhurst had committed other Dastardly prank: A San Antonio police officer complains about the cleanliness of the police department’s women’s restroom facility. In response, Luckhurst and another officer defecated in the women’s restroom toilet in June 2016 and spilled a brown substance on the seat. Luckhurst bragged about it to the other officers.The department placed him on another indefinite suspension and in June 2020, a full four years after the incident, an arbitrator definitely termination.
But earlier this month, san antonio express-news Report Just five months after he was last fired, Larkhurst was hired as a reserve officer by the Floresville, Texas, police department 30 miles away. This week, after being inundated with emails, Floresville Mayor Cissy Gonzalez-Dippel Announce On December 13th, “Matthew Luckhurst was fired” and the city will “implement stricter hiring policies for all City of Floresville employees.”
San Antonio manager Erik Walsh after Luckhurst’s second firing upheld Say“This man clearly does not have the right to wear a SAPD uniform, and it shouldn’t have been this difficult to fire him.” This is a common problem in police departments: In Washington, DC, for example, the city’s reinstatement At least 37 police officers have been fired over six years, costing the city more than $14 million in unpaid wages. Nearly half of the officers were fired for conduct deemed a “threat to security”.
But Luckhurst’s case provides a further example of how difficult it is for officers to be fired keep firedA cursory Google search reveals his history when Floresville hired Luckhurst. Timothy Loehmann, Cleveland police officer who killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice employment as an official twice In the past few years, the resignation has been publicly reported every time. Loehmann was fired not for shooting an unarmed child, but for concealing the fact that the police department in which he was previously employed deemed him “unfit for duty.”
Like Luckhurst, Loehmann’s history has had no problem securing further employment as a police officer, and he only left in the face of public outcry.
