How One Attorney Forces Police Chiefs to Rehire The Officers They Fire

November 25th, 2017

Awake Goy

In 2013, homicide detectives in Miami were finally closing in on suspects in the robbery and killing of a manager at a cellphone store six years earlier. A break in the case had led them to a colleague: police officer Adrian Rodriguez.

Rodriguez had been employed at the cellphone store before joining the Miami Police Department and was working there the night the manager was ambushed and shot to death. Investigators had come to suspect that the crime was an inside job, possibly involving Rodriguez, his brother and his father.

When Rodriguez refused to cooperate with detectives, the police chief fired him. Rodriguez then did what many other South Florida police officers have done to get their jobs back — he turned to Fort Lauderdale labor attorney Gene Gibbons.

Gibbons, who represents officers in job appeals on behalf of police unions across Florida, has over the past eight years won reinstatement for more than 22 fired officers, often returning them to work over the objections of police chiefs who say they are unfit for duty.

A former cop, Gibbons has prevailed by finding the weak point in a department’s case, no matter how severe the alleged misconduct. He frequently capitalizes on the mistakes of police officials, attacking sloppy investigations and hammering departments over missed deadlines.

“The city gives me ammunition to win,” Gibbons, 47, said of his strategy.

In May, Gibbons won again — persuading an arbitrator to order Rodriguez’s return to the Miami police force.

“He’s not fit to be a cop,” said Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes of Rodriguez. “How could we face the victim’s family if we didn’t fire him?”

Llanes claims Gibbons’s success is undermining his effort to hold his officers accountable. Gibbons’s efforts have forced Miami to reinstate six of the 12 officers the chief has fired since 2014.

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