Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon
Florida Today
BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Bert Gamin, the president of the Brevard County Fraternal Order of Police, has been suspended with pay from his position with the Brevard Sheriff’s Office pending an internal affairs investigation of a Facebook post recruiting officers charged in violent incidents elsewhere in the country, Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced Tuesday.
“Yesterday afternoon, I authorized an internal investigation into (Lt. Gamin’s) actions, he has been suspended pending the outcome,” Ivey said at a news conference to which FLORIDA TODAY was not invited. Ivey called Gamin’s Facebook post “despicable” and “disgusting.”
Gamin, a 26-year veteran and lieutenant with the Brevard sheriff’s office, faced several days of public outrage and attacks on social media for several posts made from the Facebook page of a local lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police. The FOP is a national police union organization representing over 300,000 law enforcement officers across thousands of local “lodges.”
One post, made on June 6 at 1:21 a.m., called on officers connected to two violent incidents between police and protesters in Buffalo, New York, and Atlanta, Georgia, to apply for jobs in Florida. That along with a second post recruiting Minneapolis police officers was deleted on Monday. On Monday afternoon Gamin posted an apology to the page, but on Monday night that too was removed.
Ivey denied having any role in any of the posts or their subsequent deletions.
By Tuesday afternoon the entire Brevard County F.O.P. Facebook page was removed.
Ivey said that as Gamin had not been charged with a crime, he could not be suspended without pay as a matter of policy. Further action against Gamin would depend on the outcome of the internal investigation for policy violations related to professional conduct.
State Representative Randy Fine (R—Palm Bay) said he appreciated the Sheriff’s move to open an investigation. He said he’d been contacted by a half a dozen colleagues in the legislature from both parties about Gamin’s post and was concerned about Brevard County’s reputation. Fine said several instances, not limited to law enforcement, considered alongside Gamin’s post, concerned him.
“I certainly see a pattern,” he said.
In a statement released on Tuesday the Brevard chapter of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers had called for an internal investigation of Gamin by the BCSO among other demands for police reform.
“We call upon our local county commissioners to publicly denounce this behavior and join us in calling for investigations, citizen oversight, and transparency within the Sheriff’s Office and all law enforcement agencies in Brevard County,” read the statement, signed by the FACDL chapter president, attorney Colleen Adkins DeGraff.
The group further called upon Florida’s agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried to request that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement review Mr. Gamin’s conduct “and consider rescinding his certification.”
“The residents of Brevard County do not want their towns and cities policed by men and women who protect, glorify, and recruit officers who brutalize fellow citizens.”