The most surprising aspect of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's epic exposé of Opa-Locka Sgt. German Bosque's history on the job isn't the forty cases of reported brutality, theft, and general dumbfuckery, or the five times he's been fired before being forced back into action by his union.
No, the truly shocking thing here is that Bosque allowed the reporters to ride in his squad car and even appeared proud at being declared Florida's least fit police officer. It's as if after dozens of second chances he shouldn't have gotten, Bosque doesn't see the career-ender when it finally comes.
As part of an investigative series on the lack of accountability for Florida police, the Herald-Tribune -- the same feisty paper whose expletive-laden investigative reporter job listing went viral -- requested from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement a list of the officers who had nearly lost their policing certificate due to misconduct the most times.
Bosque topped that dubious lineup. The guy is a real-life Sgt. Eugene Tackleberry. Before graduating from a police academy, he was arrested for impersonating an officer with a store-bought badge, police jacket, and semiautomatic weapon. He got his start on the Opa-Locka force in 1992 when cops there allowed him to help keep the peace during Hurricane Andrew because he once again had his own police jacket and gun.
Since then, Bosque has had allegations sustained that he beat up a handcuffed suspect, smacked around a teenager, caused an auto crash by continuing a high speed chase against orders (and then tried to cover it up), slapped himself in order to make it look like violence with his girlfriend was mutual, called in sick to take a vacation in Mexico, was caught with crack pipes, cocaine and a vodka bottle in his squad car, and, well... have a look-see for yourself.
Of course, the fault for this goon being in uniform isn't his own, but that of the Opa-Locka Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The Herald-Tribune exposed that the police department never investigated several credible complaints of Bosque's abuses on the job. And the FDLE allowed him to keep his job because of faulty policies -- such as only looking at one incident rather than a cop's entire personnel file -- and because it's been made ineffectual by police unions throughout the state.
We won't even try to excerpt this thing -- read it yourself and laugh/weep here-- but our favorite part has to be when an FDLE honcho was finally confronted with Bosque's entire case file. His response was the same as ours: "Holy shit."
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