Tag: murders

Days after Mary Catherine Gingles was hunted down and shot to death by her estranged husband, Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony vowed to “send the fear of God” to his deputies for a cascade of failures that led to the death of her, her father and an innocent neighbor on a quiet Sunday morning in Tamarac.

Tony fired eight deputies, including a sergeant he branded “absolutely a coward” for failing to order his team to immediately respond when the first 911 calls reported gunfire in the Plum Bay community. Instead, deputies lingered outside the suburban neighborhood where children play in parks and parents stroll on the sidewalks — a decision that would cost lives, Tony said.

Now, a year after Mary, 34, her father, David Ponzer, 64, and neighbor Andrew Ferrin, 36, whose home Mary sought refuge as Nathan Gingles, dressed in black, chased her down with a semiautomatic handgun equipped with a silencer, were gunned down on the morning of Feb. 16, those fired deputies have a chance to get their jobs back. The Gingles’ 4-year-old daughter, Seraphine, witnessed the murders, pleading with her father as she ran behind him barefoot, “Daddy, please don’t.”

READ MORE: No rush to scene after 911 calls. Lax BSO response detailed in Tamarac triple murders

The union representing the deputies are fighting for them to be reinstated, with retroactive back pay. Law enforcement unions negotiate collective bargaining agreements that often include arbitration clauses, allowing disciplined officers to challenge terminations or punishments and potentially secure reinstatement through a neutral third-party review.

“Arbitrations have been demanded and currently pending…” Dan Rakofsky, president of BSO’s union, IUPA Local 6020, said in a statement to the Miami Herald. “We are representing them and furthering these arbitrations with high hopes that justice will be served and these members’ jobs will be restored.”

The union has a “Deputy Relief Fund,” funded by union members; the fund is paying some of the fired deputies, though Rakosfky declined to say who or by how much.

Out of the eight deputies who were fired, six are union members up for arbitration: Sgt. Travis Allen, who ordered deputies to meet at a “rallying point” outside the community as 911 calls flooded in; Lemar Blackwood; Brittney King; Eric Klisiak; Daniel Munoz; and Devoune Williams. The non-union deputies terminated are Capt. Jemeriah Cooper, who oversaw the Tamarac district, and trainee Stephen Tapia.

Tony disciplined 21 BSO deputies after the triple murders, including the eight terminated. Those not fired averaged six days of unpaid suspension.

Echoes of Parkland

BSO is familiar with high-profile firings — especially those related to an active-shooter situation.

The failure of the BSO deputies to act urgently in the Tamarac triple murders echoes BSO’s response to the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland. In that case, BSO deputies waited outside the freshman building as 17 students and faculty members were killed in the Valentine’s Day rampage, and another 17 were injured.

READ MORE: Families of students killed in Parkland shooting blast BSO for delay tactics

BSO Sgt. Brian Miller, who was fired in June 2019 for hiding behind his car as the first shots rang out at the school, got his job back with back pay less than a year later after an arbitrator ruled in his favor.

“I’m focusing on making sure that they don’t win a damn arbitration because that happens too repeatedly in this profession,” Sheriff Tony told reporters three days after the Tamarac murders, speaking of the deputies in the Tamarac case. Tony declined to answer questions from the Herald for this article.

Arbitration is used after employees are fired but want to avoid the “trappings of court” — pleadings, discovery, trials and appeals — to fight their terminations, said Lee Kraftchick, a former Miami-Dade County attorney who specialized in labor and employment cases and now works as an arbitrator.

“Arbitration is designed to be quick and binding,” he said

Kraftchick, whose paper, “How hard is it to fire a police officer?” was published in the Stetson Law Review, says police departments that are thorough and consistent in their disciplinary process are far more successful at upholding terminations. He pointed to the-then Miami-Dade County Police Department, where about 90% of firings were sustained between 2010 and 2020, he said.

Stephen Rushin, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago, found that of 624 arbitration awards issued between 2006 and 2020 from a range of law-enforcement agencies across the country, arbitrators overturned disciplinary decisions against police officers 52% of the time, according to his 2021 study. In 46% of those cases, arbitrators ordered police agencies to rehire officers who had been fired.

Kraftchick said the key to winning discipline cases is having clear written rules, properly trained officers, strong internal investigations and meting out discipline fairly, based on the seriousness of the misconduct, the officer’s record and how similar cases were handled in the past.

Sgt. Miller, the Parkland deputy, got his job back over a “procedural issue” by the Internal Affairs Investigator: The 180-day time limit for the investigation to be finished had expired.

Unlike criminal cases, where guilt has to be found beyond a reasonable doubt, civil arbitration cases go by the “preponderance of evidence” standard, meaning a disciplinary action against an officer is more than likely 50%.

Not a policy issue, sheriff says

Sheriff Tony has emphasized his deputies’ failings had nothing to do with BSO training and policy but rather what he termed their “piss poor performance.”

“We have trained these men and women, given them the necessary tools to be successful, and we’ve had officers out here who’ve demonstrated that they understood policy,” Tony said at a news conference announcing the firings in September 2025.

Yet Mary, a former U.S. Army captain, called BSO 14 times in the last year of her life, meticulously documenting Nathan’s behavior, including stealing memory cards from her security cameras, placing a tracker on her car, and hoisting a ladder against her home so he could climb in through a second-floor window.

“Despite this detailed record, the BSO deputies had a “lackadaisical” response, wrote Internal Affairs investigators in their final report. It took more than two months before Deputy King collected the car tracker as evidence, despite it being a felony to place a tracker on a car in Florida.”

And when a judge ordered Nathan on Dec. 30, 2025, to surrender his weapons — and for BSO to retrieve them — BSO failed to get them. Nathan, a former U.S. Army captain, told the deputy who came by his home in early January — six weeks before the murders — that he didn’t have any.

BSO could have seized his weapons arsenal, which included 12 firearms, six suppressors and more than 600 rounds of ammunition, under the state’s Red Flag Law. The law, enacted after the Parkland shootings, allows a law enforcement agency to get a risk protection order to confiscate weapons if a person is deemed a danger to himself or others. BSO failed to take that step.

READ MORE: Accused Tamarac shooter told cops he didn’t have guns. BSO failed to confirm under red flag law

There were also significant lapses on the morning of the murders. BSO’s nearly 300-page Internal Affairs investigation of the eight deputies, a report reviewed by the Herald, details how Broward deputies are trained to immediately respond to active shootings and not wait at a rallying point away from the active-shooting site. The first arriving deputy is expected to act alone if necessary to quickly “neutralize the threat,” per BSO policy and training.

After the first 911 call came in at 6:01 a.m. reporting gunshots in Tamarac last Feb. 16, Sgt. Allen instructed deputies to meet at a rallying point instead of rushing in. Several deputies later admitted they should have gone to the scene despite the order, according to the IA report.

Allen initially defended the decision but later acknowledged to Internal Affairs investigators that he should have directed deputies to flood the area and make immediate contact with callers.

The fate of the deputies now lies with an arbitrator.

Kraftchick, who defends arbitration, admits it’s not a perfect system.

In his article, Kraftchick laid out possible reforms: requiring a mandatory “harmless error” rule so discipline cannot be reversed on procedural mistakes; limiting arbitrators’ ability to reduce discipline unless management abused its discretion; and restricting arbitrators from overriding agency policy judgments.

He also proposes expanding judicial review of arbitration awards so courts can ensure arbitrators comply.

“Any system, no matter how venerable and successful it’s been, it is open to improvement,” Kraftchick said.

Yet as the fired deputies fight to reclaim their badges and back pay, the consequences of this case will be etched forever on Seraphine, whose mother and grandfather are dead and whose father, who has pleaded not guilty, is facing the death penalty if convicted.