Jail guard dodges being fired because BSO misses deadline

A detention deputy who faced firing for not helping a pregnant inmate who gave birth in her Broward County jail cell will return to work because of a technicality, the South Florida Sun Sentinel has learned.

Michael Troup, a sergeant, has been on paid suspension for the past year after the sheriff learned that Stephanie Bretas gave birth in her cell in September 2020. Troup is expected to go back to work as early as this week, his union leader said.

Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony had intended to fire Troup, accusing him of flouting a law that says pregnant inmates should be checked regularly and not be kept in isolation.

When Troup tried to appeal to a panel not to fire him, his team discovered that the internalaffairs division of the Sheriff’s Office missed a deadline to take any action. State law mandates that disciplinary action against deputies must be taken within 180 days of the start of an internalaffairs investigation. The Sheriff’s Office missed the deadline by four days.

“It was an honest error,” said Anthony Marciano, the head of one of the unions for detention workers.

This is not the first time such a deadline has been missed, sparing deputies from getting terminated. Last year, a judge ruled that two of the deputies who failed to confront the Parkland school shooter should be reinstated because the Sheriff’s Office missed a 180-day deadline by three days. The Sheriff’s Office is fighting that ruling.

Parkland Deputies Brian Miller and Joshua Stambaugh are asking for back pay plus other compensation. That includes accrued sick and vacation time, holiday pay, overtime and off-duty detail pay that they likely would have made had they not been fired. That compensation would be in addition to car stipends, pension contributions and medical expenses, among other benefits.

The sheriff does not plan to fight the recent decision about the detention deputy in the jailbirth case, the union leader Marciano said.

Carey Codd, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, said he could not comment because the case has not been officially closed.

“180 days is 180 days,” said Marciano, explaining there is really nothing to fight.

Bretas, the pregnant inmate, could not be reached for comments.

But in an exclusive interview with the Sun Sentinel last year, Bretas said she was denied medical care and left to give birth to her son in an isolated cell.

Disciplinary action in the Bretas case came very swiftly for some. Less than 24 hours after Sheriff Tony learned about the Boca Raton woman giving birth, he fired two highranking jail commanders, Col. Gary Palmer and Lt. Col. Angela Neeley.

Tony had the right to fire Palmer and Neeley immediately because they were not protected by union protocols. Troup and another detention deputy who was also investigated and still faces a possible suspension, Lt. Donald Shanks, are protected by unions and are entitled to an investigation and a chance to dispute any punishment.

The internal-affairs investigation found that Troup and Shanks failed the inmate. A panel that reviews the investigations recommended a 10-day suspension for Troup and a three-day suspension for Shanks. Tony disagreed, saying he was going to fire Troup for denying nurses access to Bretas because the jail was going into lockdown mode, which is customary during shift changes in the evenings, Marciano said.

Marciano said Troup told the nurses to wait until shift change because during lockdown everyone is to remain in place while there is an inmate count.

“The nurse walked away like there was no problem,” Marciano said.

Just 15 minutes later, he said, the baby boy was born. Bretas did have some assistance when a detention deputy walked by the cell and saw Bretas on her hands and knees giving birth.

Surges in COVID-19 late last year stopped all internal-affairs investigations — some longer than others. These delays stopped the clock and changed the deadlines.

Marciano said a sergeant working on the internal-affairs investigation wrote down the wrong date for the deadline for Troup, but not Shanks. Marciano said he was surprised to learn that no one checked to make sure the deadline was correct.