San Antonio's feces sandwich cop illustrates broken accountability system

[Nevilledog]

https://www.expressnews.com/news/texas/article/sa120622CopAccounatibility-17635024.php

No paywall
https://archive.vn/t7Jlx

Few disagreed that San Antonio police officer Matthew Luckhurst’s behavior was appalling. It still took the agency four years to get rid of him.

In 2016, Luckhurst, a bike patrol officer, gave a homeless man a sandwich with dog feces inside it. A month later, after a female officer requested the women’s bathroom be kept clean, he and another policeman responded by defecating in the toilet without flushing, then spreading “a brown substance with the consistency of tapioca” on the seat.

The department fired Luckhurst several months after the sandwich incident — “a vile and disgusting act that violates our guiding principles,” the chief said then. But he was reinstated in 2019 after an arbitrator concluded the department had missed a 180-day legal window to discipline him.

Luckhurst appealed again when he was re-canned for the second feces-related incident. In June 2020 an arbitrator agreed the police department was justified in the dismissal. “This individual clearly has no business wearing an SAPD uniform,” City Manager Erik Walsh said.

Under the state’s weak and fragmented system of holding police accountable, however, that didn’t mean Luckhurst couldn’t wear another Texas law enforcement uniform.

*snip*

[Aristus]

1. So...if he isn't disciplined within a certain specific window of time, he doesn't get

disciplined at all?

How the fuck much sense does that make?

[70sEraVet]

3. Police union sense.

While I'm normally supportive of unions, police unions allow bad cops to flourish!

[BlackSkimmer]

2. Wtf?

[keithbvadu2]

4. DeSantis was looking for police to move to FL.

DeSantis was looking for police to move to FL.