Matthew Luckhurst (image via the San Antonio Police Department)
A former San Antonio cop fired for his strange obsession with shit-related misconduct while on the job somehow found another law enforcement-gig just a 40-minute drive away—at least for a couple years.
Matthew Luckhurst was fired from the San Antonio Police Department in 2020 after a series of offensive acts he considered “pranks.” First, he gave a homeless man a sandwich filled with dog feces, and later that same year, Luckhurst defecated in the toilet in the women's bathroom at the department’s Bike Patrol Office and smeared a brown, tapioca-like substance on the seat and wall.Luckhurst decided to commit the second act after seeing pictures of actors like Ryan Gosling and Dwayne Johnson on the bathroom walls and assumed that the images were a dig at him and his male colleagues for not being as muscular or handsome as them, according to local news outlet MySanAntonio. Both incidents took place in 2016. He didn’t deny the bathroom prank but claimed that he gave the feces sandwich to the homeless person to discard, not eat.
After four years of appealing termination, as allowed by the police union’s contract, the firing was upheld in June 2020. But within five months, Luckhurst managed to earn back the same powers and privileges he’d lost in San Antonio in the neighboring city of Floresville.
Luckhurst was hired as a Floresville Police Department reserve officer in late 2020 and managed to stay employed in the department until last week, when Floresville Mayor Cissy Gonzalez-Dippel said her office received a flood of calls, messages, and emails from local residents demanding he be fired. Luckhurst’s employment in Floresville received public attention after the San Antonio Express-News published a story highlighting it as an example of why Texas needs statewide accountability rules for the practice of hiring new police officers.
Gonzalez-Dippel said that she and the city council have no say in who the police department hires but contacted the city’s manager to discuss his future on the city’s payroll. Ultimately, the decision was made to release him altogether.
The department explained that it was not aware of the publicized incidents in San Antonio despite the years of arbitration over his firing.
“Unfortunately, the Floresville Police Department [FPD] was not fully aware of the entire incident involving the alleged incident,” Floresville Police Department said in a public statement, adding that as far as they knew, Luckhurst had been discharged from his former employer under the equivalent of an honorable discharge. “Please rest assured that the City of Floresville and FPD does not condone any of the alleged actions and will do whatever is necessary to ensure the continued safety of its citizens.”
The city of Floresville is implementing “stricter hiring policies” for all of its city employees, according to Gonzalez-Dippel.
Bad cops getting fired, then rehired at smaller law enforcement agencies is a common—and often criticized—occurrence in the profession. In July, the Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice managed to get a new job as an officer in a small Pennsylvania town before he was pressured into resigning two days later.Some states, like California, Virginia and Massachusetts have passed laws allowing them to decertify an officer, essentially ensuring that their record of bad behavior follows them if they try to find a law enforcement job elsewhere in the country.Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.
Matthew Luckhurst was fired from the San Antonio Police Department in 2020 after a series of offensive acts he considered “pranks.” First, he gave a homeless man a sandwich filled with dog feces, and later that same year, Luckhurst defecated in the toilet in the women's bathroom at the department’s Bike Patrol Office and smeared a brown, tapioca-like substance on the seat and wall.
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After four years of appealing termination, as allowed by the police union’s contract, the firing was upheld in June 2020. But within five months, Luckhurst managed to earn back the same powers and privileges he’d lost in San Antonio in the neighboring city of Floresville.
Luckhurst was hired as a Floresville Police Department reserve officer in late 2020 and managed to stay employed in the department until last week, when Floresville Mayor Cissy Gonzalez-Dippel said her office received a flood of calls, messages, and emails from local residents demanding he be fired. Luckhurst’s employment in Floresville received public attention after the San Antonio Express-News published a story highlighting it as an example of why Texas needs statewide accountability rules for the practice of hiring new police officers.
Gonzalez-Dippel said that she and the city council have no say in who the police department hires but contacted the city’s manager to discuss his future on the city’s payroll. Ultimately, the decision was made to release him altogether.
The department explained that it was not aware of the publicized incidents in San Antonio despite the years of arbitration over his firing.
“Unfortunately, the Floresville Police Department [FPD] was not fully aware of the entire incident involving the alleged incident,” Floresville Police Department said in a public statement, adding that as far as they knew, Luckhurst had been discharged from his former employer under the equivalent of an honorable discharge. “Please rest assured that the City of Floresville and FPD does not condone any of the alleged actions and will do whatever is necessary to ensure the continued safety of its citizens.”
The city of Floresville is implementing “stricter hiring policies” for all of its city employees, according to Gonzalez-Dippel.
Bad cops getting fired, then rehired at smaller law enforcement agencies is a common—and often criticized—occurrence in the profession. In July, the Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice managed to get a new job as an officer in a small Pennsylvania town before he was pressured into resigning two days later.Some states, like California, Virginia and Massachusetts have passed laws allowing them to decertify an officer, essentially ensuring that their record of bad behavior follows them if they try to find a law enforcement job elsewhere in the country.Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.