Fired cop ‘wasted second chance’

Arbitrator rules against officer

The Coral Springs Police Department for years tried to get rid of a police officer who had run-ins with the law.

Now, nearly two years after the agency fired Officer Stephen Degerdon for a second time, his appeal to an arbitrator failed, making the city’s decision final.

City Attorney John “J.J.” Hearn notified city commissioners this month of the arbitrator’s ruling. The city’s police department demands the “highest level of professionalism,” Hearn said. “Mr. Degerdon failed to uphold those standards by a long shot.”

Degerdon said Monday he will appeal the decision. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “The Coral Springs Police Department had a vendetta against me” since their first firing attempt failed.

Although he’s appealing, he said he doesn’t want the job back, just back pay from the latest termination through now, which would allow him to be vested 10 years of service to collect his retirement pension.

“I want to retire and be done,” he said. “It’s purely on principle because of how I was treated by the Coral Springs Police Department.”

Degerdon, now 34, who earned $68,217 a year, worked for the agency since October

2005.

Degerdon in 2010 was accused of choking a suspect in a car burglary and pleaded not guilty to battery. Degerdon was convicted by a jury and sentenced to six months probation and ordered to attend an anger-management program.

After he was fired, he fought for his job back and an arbitrator ruled in his favor. Degerdon returned to work in December 2013, although he was not awarded back pay.

The Sheriff ’s Office held him on a domestic battery charge in March 2015, when he was accused of putting his wife in a headlock and using a crowbar to deflate her car’s tires.

Days later, he was re-arrested, accused of violating a judge’s order not to contact his wife.

A neighbor called 911 after seeing him go inside her house, leading to a SWAT situation.

The Sheriff ’s Office arrived and a sergeant reached him on the phone, telling him, “We would like to talk to you face to face,” according to records.

Degerdon told authorities the call was “dropped” and no calls were received for the next one and half hours. The SWAT team surrounded his house, and only after his wife texted and called him, did he come outside.

His wife, who is now his ex-wife, declined to pursue charges, prosecutors said. There was “no reasonable likelihood of conviction,” a prosecutor wrote in a memo explaining why charges weren’t pursued.

Still, city officials said he still violated a half-dozen internal policies, including untruthfulness and conduct unbecoming an officer, and they wanted him gone.

He was put on leave, with pay, after the 2015 arrests and fired in February 2016.

The arbitrator, Martin Holland, wrote in his final ruling that it was “absurd” to believe Degerdon’s testimony that he did not know the SWAT team was outside his house. “I find [Degerdon’s] past infractions of criminal battery as significant,” Holland wrote.

The officer, he wrote, “wasted his second chance” at being back at work.