A police officer who played a cruel prank on a homeless man is fighting for his job yet again after being suspended for another, poo-related incident.
Matthew Luckhurst, who was a bike patrol officer with the San Antonio Police Department, was fired in 2016 for giving a homeless man a sandwich filled with dog poo. However, after appealing his first termination, a judge sided with Luckhurst’s request to get his job back due to a technicality.
He was then given a second ‘indefinite suspension’ the same year for another faeces-related incident.
The technicality that let Luckhurst off the first time was down to rule that said an officer cannot be punished for conduct that occurred more than 180 days prior to the disciplinary hearing.
However, two months after receiving his first suspension, Luckhurst received a second one for another childish prank he was involved with in June 2016.
The officer was found to have defecated in the women’s restroom, not flushed and smeared a brown substance on the seat. Luckhurst is now undergoing his second arbitration trial in the hope of being reinstated for a second time.
His indefinite suspension report describes the ordeal:
On or around June 12, 2016, during the night shift, between approximately 5:30pm to 3:30am, after another male officer went into the women’s locker room at the Bike Patrol Office and defecated in the toilet assigned to female personnel, Officer Matthew C. Luckhurst went into the same facility and defecated on top of the previously deposited excrement.
The toilet was left unflushed by both officers intentionally. Luckhurst and the other officer obtained a brown substance with the consistency of tapioca and spread it on the toilet seat, giving the appearance that there was fecal matter on the seat.
A city attorney said Luckhurst harassed, intimidated and degraded female officers with the prank.
However, the police officer’s attorney has argued it was ‘extreme’ to terminate Luckhurst for the incident.
The first witness of the trail, who was a colleague of Luckhurst’s working at the time of his ‘prank’, was Jessica Medrano.
Medrano was eight months pregnant when it happened, and was ‘mad and disgusted’ at what the men had done to the only female toilet available.
During the trail, which has been taking place this week, it was said that Luckhurt’s colleagues didn’t want him back on the force.
If I was on the same team as him, I don’t think I’d want him back either.
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Niamh Shackleton is a pint sized person and journalist at UNILAD. After studying Multimedia Journalism at the University of Salford, she did a year at Caters News Agency as a features writer in Birmingham before deciding that Manchester is (arguably) one of the best places in the world, and therefore moved back up north. She’s also UNILAD’s unofficial crazy animal lady.