MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A jury found
suspended Opa-locka police Sergeant German Bosque guilty of felony false
imprisonment and tampering with a witness, but found him not guilty of battery.
The jury deliberated for about
2 hours Thursday night before convicting the so-called “dirtiest cop in
Florida” on two out of three charges.
“I’m hurt obviously,
disappointed, surprised, very surprised,” Bosque told CBS4 News reporter Gaby
Fleischman after the verdict. “I’m dubbed the dirtiest and most corrupt, it’s
just been out of control.”
Watch Gaby Fleischman’s report,
click here.
Bosque, who has been fired a
total of eight times by three different agencies, six times by Opa-Locka alone,
was arrested for a 2011 incident in Opa-locka in which he allegedly punched a
man during a domestic disturbance call.
When Korey Davis tried to go to
the police station and file a complaint, Bosque forcefully removed him from the
department’s lobby, handcuffed him and placed him in a holding cell for 14
minutes.
Bosque did not threaten Davis
with arrest until after Davis tried to file the complaint against him.
Bosque declined to testify in
his defense, but maintained his innocence and stood by his actions after the
verdict was read.
“You make a bad decision you
should get written up, suspended, terminated, as is happened to me in the past
and I’ve been able to fight for that, but to get arrested for making the
decision,” he said. “What’s important for everybody to know is I’m against bad
police men, I’m against dirty cops, I stand on the beside of good officers that
are out there.”
The prosecution said they stand
by the jury’s verdict.
“It’s just never a good day
when you have to bring down a police officer because we expect them to protect
us, so it’s kind of bittersweet,” said assistant state attorney Sandra
Miller-Batiste.
Bosque’s defense attorney said
they plan to appeal.
A judge allowed Bosque to
remain free on bond under house arrest until his sentencing hearing. He could
face a maximum of 10 years in prison.
The judge also withheld
adjudication on the false imprisonment charge, and said he would review the evidence.
“Besides the community to
answer to, I have a son, a baby to answer to, my family,” said Bosque. “I like
the person in the mirror so one day almighty god, so I know nobody could tell
me: ‘GB how could you?’”
During the trial, the defense
called only two witnesses. Former Opa-locka Police Chief Cheryl Cason testified
that Davis called her as Bosque was trying to get him to give up the child he
was holding in his lap in the car.
“Let the child go to bed,”
Cason recalled telling Davis. “It’s late, Korey, we can deal with this
tomorrow.”
Cason said she eventually
directed Bosque to take the child.
“I told him to get the baby,
give the baby back to (the mother), and that you could arrest him for
obstruction.”
Cason thought the threat of
arrest would persuade Davis to surrender the baby.
While Cason helped corroborate
Bosque’s claim that he was acting under orders, she also bolstered Davis’s
claim that the cop slugged him in the face.
Over the cell phone, the Chief
said she heard Davis say, “you hit me in the face.” She then heard someone say
“nobody hit you.”
Cason said when Bosque called
her from the police station to report that Davis had gone there to file a
complaint, the officer made no mention of having handcuffed Davis and putting
him in a holding cell.
“Bosque said ‘he wants to file
a complaint.’ I said ‘let him file a complaint. To arrest him would seem
retaliatory.’”
The chief said she directed
Bosque to see that someone took Davis’s complaint, but Bosque didn’t do that,
escorting him from the station instead.
Joanna Flores, the mother of
the child at the center of the domestic call, testified that she asked Davis to
give her the baby repeatedly and he refused, and attempted to back into her
when she tried to get into the car.
Other officers who were on the
scene have testified they didn’t believe Flores’s claim, didn’t think Davis had
committed a crime and the issue was a custody dispute, not a police matter.
On Wednesday the alleged
victim, Davis, was cross examined by the defense attorney, who got him to admit
he refused police orders to hand over his son at the domestic call scene.
Davis, a city employee, even conceded that he was on his cell phone with then
Police Chief Cheryl Cason, who told him he should hand over the child, over
whom he had no custody rights.
Bosque has a checkered past
with the police department. During his career there, he’s been fired, then
re-instated, eight times. The last time the city fired him, October 2012,
Bosque faced a number of allegations including:
• Busting a handcuffed suspects skull
• Beating juveniles
• Caught with drugs and alcohol in his squad car
• Ripping off suspects
• Falsifying reports
• Participating in an unauthorized chase where four people
were killed
• Calling in sick from Cancun.
Bosque says he has been wrongly
portrayed in the news.
“Anybody who doesn’t know me or
know about the case exactly, they hate me. I hate myself when I read what the
media says about me, and it’s not true.”
