A suspended Florida police officer—who's been fired six
times over the years for alleged misconduct, only to be reinstated—says he's
the victim of a "witch hunt" and wants to go back to work, even
though he's being paid $60,000 a year to stay home.
Since becoming an officer in 1990, Sgt. German Bosque of the
Opa-locka Police Department "has been disciplined, suspended, fined and
sent home with pay more than any officer in the state," according to the Miami Herald.
Bosque—who has been accused of "cracking the head of a
handcuffed suspect, beating juveniles, hiding drugs in his police car, stealing
from suspects, defying direct orders and lying and falsifying police
reports"—was suspended with pay in May after he allowed a newspaper
reporter to ride along in his patrol car without permission. (During the
ride-along, Bosque told the reporter, "I'm an excellent police officer,
but I break the rules.")
According to his lawyer, Bosque wants to return to duty
"rather than sleeping late and watching telenovelas and 'Cops'
reruns."
In 1990, he was tossed out of the Miami-Dade Police Academy
after being arrested for impersonating a police officer, auto theft and
possession of a firearm. In 1992, after graduating from the Polk County Police
Academy, he was arrested for driving with a suspended license.
"Back then I was a big hot dog," Bosque told
Herald. He became a full-time officer in Opa-locka in 1993.
In 1994, four people in a stolen car Bosque was following
were killed in a high-speed chase that crashed outside Opa-locka.
"Questions were raised about whether he was pursuing the vehicle against
department policy," the paper said. In 1998, he was suspended twice for
unauthorized police pursuits. The same year, Bosque called in sick with
"food poisoning." He was on vacation in Cancun, Mexico.
More from the Herald's profile, "The South Florida cop who won't
stay fired":
It seemed, in spite of all his past misconduct, there was
nothing Bosque could do to lose his badge.
Opa-locka inexplicably dropped the ball on almost all the
internal affairs complaints on Bosque. He was fired after police found cocaine
in his police vehicle, but appealed and managed to keep his police
certification and his job.
In February 2008, Bosque's questionable behavior took
another turn when the state attorney's office began noticing that key drug
evidence in some of his cases was missing. His police car was inspected, and
investigators found an empty Smirnoff vodka bottle, a small bag of cocaine,
crack pipes, Florida license plates, a pile of driver's licenses he had seized,
along with a stack of arrest reports he had never turned in. But the state
attorney declined to prosecute, saying there was no evidence of criminal
intent, and Bosque was back out on the street.
As the Herald noted, the Opa-locka Police Department has a
long history of corruption. Its current chief, Cheryl Cason, tested positive
for cocaine and was placed on probation in 1995. In 2011, Cason was suspended
after "failing to tell the city that she had had a crash with her
city-owned car."
Cason called Bosque a "time bomb that has now
exploded."