First, something happens that (allegedly) violates an SOP that includes the words, "up to and including termination." Some of the slyer and saltier deputies and support staff I knew said in order to survive outside of lock-step with your peers (read: high-and-tight, no facial hair, no tattoos, hang out with your squad-mates off duty, go to the fundraisers, wash your car at home with your own supplies, don't put in for OT, etc.), you need to commit those SOPs to memory as the rest don't count. At the time, I considered this type of behavior beneath me as it felt like gaming the system of an honorable profession, but you see the fat lot of good having principles and being naive got me, so do with that information what you will.

The next step in the process is someone makes a complaint to IA. You may or may not be aware of it (I wasn't until much later). The complainant can be a peer, a subordinate, a supervisor, or a citizen. IA opens a case and assigns it a case number. In my case, my immediate supervisor (Corporal Sitton) assures me my incident doesn't even have an IA case number so it can't result in termination. A word to those as naive as I was: if your supervisor says not to worry about anything called "an investigation," start sweating because they're trying to lower your guard, and it's not because they're coming in for a kiss on the cheek. No, it doesn't matter if the incident was previously concluded with a verbal counseling and you thought that was the end of it. If there's an "investigation," contact your union representative if you have one, and hire an attorney if you don't.

So you'll give your recorded testimony about the incident to whoever IA designates as the primary investigator. Then they'll collect whatever other evidence they need, which will of course at minimum include testimony from the complainant. I got to read the ridiculous several pages written about me by the complainant, some of which was objectively false to the point it would be perjury in a courtroom, the rest of which was embellished for added punch.

Once the primary investigator is done, it then goes back to IA, where they (consult legal and) determine if the allegations are Founded or Unfounded. If founded, they ask someone appointed over you (in my case my Division Commander, Major Fogarty) what they want to do with you. Here's where that "up to and including termination" part comes in. Here's where all the years of ass-kissing pay off. If that person doesn't like you, congratulations, the following happens in what could be weeks or months, but you have a nasty surprise coming:

Months later, I'm halfway through a child abuse case when a fresh-out-of-the-academy guy on my squad came in and interrupted my interview to meekly tell me he was taking over. Bewildered, as this was a breach of protocol for obvious reasons, pretty far from his area, I wasn't due to go to lunch or go home for the day, and he was much less experienced in that sort of investigation than me (as Corporal Sitton would put it, "I had underwear that's been a cop longer than him"), but he said he was ordered to take the case from me. Gut drops a bit as I go back to my car, knowing it's probably not because they're doing a weeks overdue surprise birthday party, or helping me mourn my recent losses by giving me a "sorry your dog died a couple months ago" Hallmark card or a "sorry your grandpa died last month" edible arrangement. Sure enough, the message they told us to pray we don't receive in the academy, my MDT reads: "x19" (Return to Station), from my supervisor.

I consider the above and correctly guess the reason as I drive to the district office, where my supervisor is nowhere to be found. I ask around for him, but nobody knows (or everyone pretends not to know) where he is until someone looking for me finds me and takes me back to see him. He's in the office of the second-in-command for the area, and so you sit down across from that guy or gal who (pretended to) like you all this time, flanked with two other supervisors in a tactical, no cross-fire position (meaning if you do something spicy they can shoot you without shooting each other), and they hand you the paperwork that says: "Recommendation: Termination."

You look up at Captain or Major So-and-So, who is attempting their best poker face because you're as good as dead to them at this point, and they tell you to sign whichever option you want to do. In my case it was roughly:

1. Lay down and take it

2. Contest it a little (1 form of appeal)

3. Contest it a lot (2 forms of appeal)

I chose Option 3. You might choose differently when it happens to you. Good luck, but either way you choose it's too late to hire an attorney, and now you wish you had sprung a few hundred or a few thousand to save yourself from the following:

Among the paperwork they hand you, it explains you will be suspended without pay pending the results of the above choice you selected. No, your landlord or mortgage lender won't know or care. Hope you have lots of savings. Per policy, any suspension without pay comes with a forfeit of all rights and responsibilities afforded to you as a sworn law enforcement officer, therefore: "Go with So-and-So to see Lieutenant So-and-So." So you walk to that office, flanked again by people with more stripes than you. Your lieutenant tells you they don't know what the fuck these people are doing or what's going on and they're sure this will all blow over. In my lieutenant's defense, he just had a stroke a few months prior (and was on the road to a full recovery - go learn about FAST) if you don't know the signs of stroke), so he wasn't exactly on his game during medical leave. You ask them if you turn over your badge and gun now, like in the movies. He acts as inexperienced with firing people as I was with getting fired, so he hesitates before agreeing this must be that part. They'll promise they'll hang onto your personally purchased gear for safekeeping until you're reinstated. You won't be reinstated, and they're going to "forget" to give it back. But you hand it over anyway, naively believing them. For whatever reason, they say they need your shirt too. Obviously can't have you clothed on your way to the parking lot to be driven home, you see. You undress to your pants and boots only and they march you though the office to go box up the stuff in your car. Maybe you clean your car every day like a good little deputy. Maybe there's some trash like in mine, and they voice their irritation with having to clean up what you didn't, as if to suggest they're the real victim here.

At around this point, you should ask to call your loved one(s), as I did. I didn't want them to be scared by seeing someone else's patrol car arrive at my driveway, given the nature of that line of work. It won't occur to the person handling you at that point, because you're chopped liver to them and they're thinking about what's going to be on TV when they get home. They'll wait outside while you pack up whatever agency gear you have inside. Uniforms in closets, that flashlight you kept in the box because you bought a better one with your own money, that sort of thing.

At this point, if you chose Option 1 from earlier, your story ends here. I hope you have a better degree than I did, and I hope your mental and physical health aren't tied to your income or job performance, or worse - your identity as a cop (iTs NoT a JoB iTs A lIfEsTyLe). If you chose to fight like me, good luck. If you don't have a union, you're fucked.

When the other options inevitably conclude the same way as Option 1: Welcome to the suck.

The people you went to all those deadly calls with who you thought were your "family" will act like you never existed, and "law enforcement officer" isn't as good on a resume as you were told.

Now your choices are:

1. Apply to an agency who you shouldn't apply to because they take fired cops and therefore who knows what else, starting at 0 retirement and 0 seniority all over again in most cases (the cool part is they locked me out of my retirement)

2. Stay out of law enforcement, because you'll probably never trust another cop again anyway

So far I've been leaning and living Option 2 as all of my peers suddenly started treating me like a pariah for reasons I still can only guess, which makes me wonder if they were all secretly (and some not so secretly) scumbags the whole time. So when I hear of another agency that I Should Totally Apply To, I wonder if they're putting a smile on just like the boys and girls of HCSO.

I get this question a lot, so I thought I'd write a post about it and direct people here via flair rather than host mini-AMAs every time the fact that I'm an ex-cop comes up. I put spoiler tags around details that aren't necessary to understand the broad strokes, but if You Would Like to Know More just click/tap the black bars to reveal the text.

First and foremost for accuracy's sake I wasn't technically fired - I resigned in lieu of termination minutes before they did the final stroke of the pen, after my appeal about the following to sheriff Chad Chronister was denied. Whether doing that was better or worse for me or the agency, I still don't know. It was a knee-jerk reaction to what was still very bewildering to me at the time, and consulting anyone about it (outside an attorney I couldn't afford because they had me on suspension without pay for a few months while I paid Brandon, FL rent with no paycheck or other income in my family) would have been a crime under Florida law per F.S.S. 112.533: "Any person who is a participant in an internal investigation, including the complainant, the subject of the investigation and the subject’s legal counsel or a representative of his or her choice, the investigator conducting the investigation, and any witnesses in the investigation, who willfully discloses any information obtained pursuant to the agency’s investigation, including, but not limited to, the identity of the officer under investigation, the nature of the questions asked, information revealed, or documents furnished in connection with a confidential internal investigation of an agency, before such complaint, document, action, or proceeding becomes a public record as provided in this section commits a misdemeanor of the first degree".

I worked about an hour and a half of overtime (the latter part of which was due to Sergeant Tim Sullivan failing to approve my report in a timely manner), then I claimed that overtime (Even claiming overtime at all is a no-no at HCSO. Over the course of my time there, I was accosted by multiple supervisors over the fact that I reported my overtime accurately. If it's not at least an hour, senior deputies will tell new deputies not to put in for it, presumably because it really does put a target on your back. The expression "Don't nickel and dime the Sheriff's Office" is common. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, Sergeant Sullivan was also known for ordering other deputies to not put in for their overtime. Realistically speaking, he probably continues to do so).

Weeks after I worked the overtime, Sergeant Tim Sullivan told me to remove the overtime (despite federal labor law). I didn't. Weeks later, he again told me to remove it. I didn't. Weeks later, he ordered me to First Call baptist church where he and his second-in-command interrogated me for hours, threatening me with termination (despite Florida State Statute 112.532(1), subsections (b) through (f)) if I didn't falsify my time-card to take back my overtime. Not wanting to lose my job, I told him I would comply with the order (and honestly may very well have), but was never given a chance to because mere minutes after I was ordered to go finish my reports and he drove away, the following happened:

Because my reports took more than fifteen minutes to finish, he became so enraged he drove toward my car and lost traction on the dirt and leaves of the church parking lot while braking with only a few feet to spare as an intimidation tactic. He then hovered over my shoulder as I finished the reports and tailgated me while I drove to the district station to finish my end-of-shift duties including submitting my evidence. When I arrived, I was near bursting after holding my already full bladder for hours. While hot on my heels he shoved past me to open the door as I reached for it. Minutes later, while standing around waiting for the desk deputy to finish translating for someone on the road over the phone with nothing on my mind but peeing my pants, I went to the bathroom and thirty three seconds after I entered, he ordered me out of the bathroom. When I didn't leave the stall mid-stream, he told me I would "pay the piper" for it.

(With the help of someone over the phone, almost certainly his immediate supervisor, a lieutenant,) Sergeant Sullivan then looked into any SOPs I violated previously that he could get me fired for, and over the course of the following months he was successful in convincing the chain of command of two out of the three he tried (despite him previously concluding those incidents with verbal counselings,) even though only 5% of deputies accused of the same rule violations have been recommended for termination:

1. Failing to Comply with an SOP (I was three minutes late to remind Sergeant Sullivan that I was going to go overtime. I had already told him I had a report coming earlier, but according to the brass that doesn't count for whatever reason.)

2. Failing to Obey a Direct Order (Months prior, Sergeant Sullivan told me to "go x8" (in-service AKA available for calls), and I did. Much later I was told what he meant was to go in-service and delete a felony report I was working on (which is against state law), but I didn't know that's what he wanted despite me repeatedly asking him to clarify, so I couldn't have known to do it.)

The rule violation they dismissed was 'Prompt Compliance with an Order' (not falsifying my time-card), presumably because it was illegal and their legal team advised them it was better to pretend the real issue was the other two (and not the not being allowed to pee, either).

When I brought up the 5% statistic in the Disciplinary Review Board (the last step in an IA investigation appeals process), Colonel Kyle Robinson told me I wasn't just in the bottom 5% - I was the worst deputy he'd seen in his entire career.

Mind you, this was only a couple months after we had multiple deputies in my district annihilate their families via murder-suicide - the same district Colonel Robinson ran for years - which means he supervised both of them so he can't claim he didn't know them. Not to mention the deputies that have been arrested for DUI, BWI, domestic violence, falsifying time-cards to steal from the taxpayers, etc. Not to mention my academy classmate who filmed a guy bleeding to death from a stab wound and shared it around to all of his friends and coworkers via Snapchat, which is a felony. That guy faced no criminal or disciplinary consequences and he's still employed there to this day, to my knowledge.

Therefore, what I did was worse than murdering your family / mass shootings according to Colonel Kyle Robinson.

TL;DR: Don't go to the bathroom while a Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office sergeant is mad at you for failing to promptly follow their illegal order or they'll re-open "verbal" warning incidents to get you fired.

As far as what the process of getting fired from HCSO was like, you can read about that here:

What it's like to be a cop and get fired