Suspended union president wins first victory

Leader disciplined by Broward sheriff likely to get his job back

The Sheriff ’s Office union president — who has been suspended by Sheriff Greg Tony for almost a year — should get his job back after publicly blasting the agency for its lack of preparedness in the early days of the pandemic, according to a recommendation by a hearing officer.

The 33-page recommendation, signed Friday, now goes to a three-person panel for the Public Employees Relations Commission for the final decision.

Last April, Tony suspended Jeff Bell with pay, alleging that the leader of the deputies’ union had conducted himself in an unbecoming manner. Bell was accused of lack of truthfulness, corrupt practices, employee statements and abuse of discretion, and an internal affairs investigation began.

The April 10, 2020, suspension came days after Bell blasted Tony in a South Florida Sun Sentinel opinion piece in which he wrote in part, “While BSO employees are being exposed and testing positive for COVID-19, Tony has been politically fiddling with facts like Nero as Rome burned; holding press conferences to state everything is fine.”

The hearing officer cited numerous examples of lack of masks for the rank and file to stay safe in the early days of the new coronavirus pandemic, which included one sergeant using his own money to buy hand sanitizer for his staff. On March 17, 2020, the agency handed out 20 masks “for the entire Deerfield Beach District, which consisted of approximately 100 sworn law enforcement officers and several civilian positions,” according to Friday’s report.

Bell said the suspension also came “four hours” after filing a whistleblower lawsuit.

“Action, reaction,” he said Saturday. “How dare he tell me I’m doing something wrong.”

A spokeswoman for the Sheriff ’s Office did not immediately comment late Saturday night on the hearing officer’s report.

The hearing officer wrote that Bell’s public statements about lack of protective equipment is “concerted, protected activity at its core” and recommended the Sheriff be ordered to cease and desist from “taking adverse action against any employee because he or she engaged in protected concerted activity.”

The agency can’t “silence the union or its members” engaging in such speech because the agency “believes that making such statements publicly would damage the public’s confidence in the government.”

The officer found “President Bell was fired ... shortly after Sheriff Tony promised that President Bell would be held accountable for his ‘despicable’ acts” and the decision to discipline him “was motivated by, and directly related to, his protected, concerted activity.”

In fact, the officer wrote, “PPE [personal protective equipment]

was not sufficient at the time.”

Bell had claimed he was threatened with disciplinary action by a colonel if he provided inaccurate public statements pertaining to “adequate supplies” for the employees.

He said his comments about the protective equipment “was absolutely protected speech under union activity. This is more of a political maneuver than factual maneuver. It kept me quiet during the election season and we were a very vocal opponent of him.”

He called Friday’s decision, although not yet final, “a giant step in the right direction. It emphasizes the hearing officer ... can easily see through the veil of vindictiveness of the Sheriff ’s Office” when union officials “bring forth to light a problem.”

Tony