‘I’ve lost count.’ Notorious Opa-locka police sergeant German Bosque fired for seventh time
By David Ovalle
Miami Herald
May 26, 2021
German Bosque, the Opa-locka police sergeant who became notorious for repeatedly getting fired and getting his job back, has been canned yet again.
“I’ve lost count. I don’t know if it was the seventh or eighth time,” Bosque said when reached on Wednesday evening. “It’s a wrongful termination. Again, I’ll be getting my job back again.”
It’s actually the seventh time Bosque has been fired in the nearly 28 years he’s worked for Opa-locka police. He’s also been arrested, and cleared, three times — most notably, Bosque went to trial and beat allegations he unlawfully handcuffed and punched a youth counselor who wanted to file a complaint against him
Opa-locka city manager John Pate, reached on Wednesday evening, declined to say why Bosque was fired. The city is expecting to issue a press release on Thursday.
The Herald has learned that Bosque is being fired after he delivered a tongue-lashing to an underling who failed to properly secure a crime scene.
It stems from a shooting that happened back in October, when a gun believed used in the incident was discovered under a boat in someone’s back yard in Opa-locka. Officer Luis Serrano was assigned to watch the gun until Miami-Dade detectives got there to process the scene. But Serrano, left to go to his police car briefly — and someone on the street took the gun and replaced it with a toy pellet gun.
According to Opa-locka, when Bosque arrived, he appeared to be coaching Serrano on lying to Miami-Dade police.
“What do we tell them you get to get in the car?” he asks, according to body-camera footage. When Serrano repeated that he’d gone to the car to look some paperwork, Bosque said “No. No. Something else, anything else ... you thought it was going to rain and you came to get a tarp.”
Bosque is also heard cursing and calling the gun switch an “embarrassment.” The department fired Bosque for breach of duty, failure to supervise and conduct unbecoming.
The South Florida Police Benevolent Association, which is representing Bosque, pushed back on the idea that he was trying to get his officer to lie. Bosque “expressed his displeasure. He’s heard on body camera, saying why did you go to your car? He may have used profanity,” said police union attorney Andrew Axelrad, who is representing the sergeant.
Axelrad pointed out that the officer who lost the gun was only given a reprimand.
“The idea that the department is going to terminate him for this is truly unbelievable ... I have very little doubt that he will be re-instated,” Axelrad said. “”This is more a function of his reputation.”
Like the city itself, Opa-locka’s police department is perpetually troubled — and Bosque is not the only officer with a checkered past to have gotten his job back.
Sergio Perez was fired after he got into a car chase in 2013 that ended when the suspect crashed into an SUV on Interstate 95, killing four tourists. But he later got his job back and is now a captain. Perez made the news last year when a family accused him of using excessive force in dragging a handcuffed teen out of a house.
As for Bosque, the controversial cop’s lengthy record and internal affairs file has earned him unflattering headlines from publications across the state. Most famously, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune wrote an exposé in 2011 that outlined his 18 years in law enforcement to that point as looking more like “a rap sheet than a resumé.”
The Herald-Tribune found that of Bosque’s 40 internal affairs complaints, 16 of them were for battery or excessive force. He’s been arrested three times. Once, before he was a cop. Another time in Broward County and a third time in 2013 for his alleged actions while on duty against the youth counselor. He was acquitted or the cases were dropped all three times.
In the most recent case, prosecutors said, Bosque in August 2011 punched the youth counselor after responding to a domestic dispute. Soon after, the man showed up at the police station to file a complaint. A dispatcher summoned Bosque, who was alleged to have grabbed the man’s cellphone, hurled it across the police lobby, pushed him up against the wall and handcuffed him.
Jurors acquitted Bosque of battery but convicted him of two felonies: witness tampering and false imprisonment.
The imprisonment charge didn’t hold up — Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Miguel de la O, while frowning upon Bosque’s behavior, ruled that prosecutors failed to prove Bosque acted without probable cause. He dismissed the charge. But the witness tampering charge was allowed to stand, and was eventually overturned by an appeals court.
The State Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute him again. An arbitrator eventually awarded Bosque his job back.
Bosque declined to comment on details of the latest firing.
“It’s sad because I love policing,” he said. “I don’t like corrupt cops. I hate when I’m portrayed as a dirty cop who slipped through the cracks.”
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