Coral Gables police chief exchanged friendly texts with a suspect: a UM football coach
The police chief of Coral Gables exchanged over a dozen text messages with a University of Miami football coach amid an investigation into allegations that the coach exposed himself to an employee on the school’s cleaning staff in 2022.
The text messages, an unusually close exchange between a police chief and a suspect in a criminal matter, show Police Chief Ed Hudak arranging a private meeting with the coach, who was at the time the suspect in a “lewd and lascivious offense” case, according to a police report.
The texts were revealed in a December report from the Baltimore Sun, which published an investigation into the coach, Joshua Gattis, who joined the University of Maryland football team as an offensive coordinator after he was fired from UM last year.
The messages between the chief and the coach spotlight the cozy, decades-long relationship between Hudak and the university — his alma mater — where he serves as a mentor and security adviser for the Miami Hurricanes, a role that includes traveling with the football team on chartered flights to away games. Hudak said he is not paid for his involvement with the university, which is the largest employer in Coral Gables.
The incident took place in November 2022, with the cleaning staff employee reporting to UM police that a man on campus had exposed himself to her in a restroom after beckoning her inside. Hudak initiated a text message conversation with Gattis, the suspect in the case, after the Coral Gables Police Department took over the investigation. The texts mostly concerned the coordination of phone calls and a meeting between the two.
In a sit-down interview discussing the text messages with the Miami Herald, Hudak said he was coordinating a meeting with Gattis so he could tell the coach to meet with detectives. He said he reassigned the case to the Coral Gables Police Department after learning that UM police had initially filed a suspicious-incident report rather than treating the matter as a sex crime investigation, which would have automatically triggered involvement from Coral Gables police, Hudak said.
The Coral Gables Police Department