Deputy Do-Wrong

Worse yet, in Perry's case, Barrett didn't even conduct a complete phone background check with the Madison PD, where Perry had spent most of his police career. Barrett was told that only the police chief, who was on vacation that week, could answer questions about Perry's performance. Barrett didn't bother to call back, nor did he mention this information gap in his summary report.

In August 1998, Barrett completed a background summary report for Michael Doane, a strong-chinned 24-year-old with dark hair who lived in the Tampa area. Doane had worked for the Polk County Sheriff's Office for two and a half years and left in mid-1997. On his application for a job at BSO, he gave his reason for leaving the deputy's job as "injury and political."

Despite this tantalizing disclosure, Barrett and BSO's human resources didn't seriously dig into Doane's past, and he was hired in late 1998.

In reality, Doane had been repeatedly disciplined during his short tenure with the Polk County Sheriff's Office and ultimately fired. His disciplinary records were readily available from that agency but were never requested. Many of the incidents revealed a young man with a lack of good judgment, but others were serious, a foreshadowing of what was to come in Broward County.

Among the Polk County incidents, Doane was reprimanded for "careless actions" in driving his squad car to the scene of a burglary, an incident that left another deputy injured. On another occasion, he kicked in the door of a home without proper cause.

By July 1997, the agency decided to terminate him for excessive use of force, a case in which he punched a handcuffed suspect four times in the back of the head. The memo informing Doane he was fired noted that he showed "a disregard for authority." Doane refused to sign the memo and submitted his resignation instead.

If BSO had difficulty in discovering what "political" problems caused Doane to leave the Polk County Sheriff's Office, Gary Kollin had no problem at all. A Plantation attorney with a striking resemblance to a young Burl Ives, Kollin looked into BSO's hiring practices a few years ago as part of a lawsuit he filed on behalf of a Jamaican-American man who alleged that Doane had falsely arrested him in a Broward County park. Kollin noticed Doane's 14-month hiatus from law enforcement after leaving Polk County and, suspicions raised, simply requested documents.

In comparison to that straightforward method, he asserts, BSO's telephonic background checks are sadly lacking. "How could you do a background check by just calling someone up on the phone?" Kollin asks, still amazed by the case years later. "How do you know who you're speaking to anyway? It's a flaw in the system — period."

In a deposition, Kollin asked Barrett to explain why he hadn't asked Doane the reason he left the Polk County agency. "I don't think it was my responsibility or duty to ask why someone left for political reasons, because I have been in the sheriff's office for 29 years," Barrett responded. "I know lots of people that left [BSO] for political reasons." Nor did he recall posing that question to a reference listed by Doane, a former sergeant who had retired. Barrett declined to comment for this article.

Another contractor who helped BSO process Doane and other applicants at that time suggested in a deposition that he didn't need to verify the identity of law enforcement officers he called on the telephone as references because cops "are expected to be honest and truthful."

Kollin still sputters at the circular logic. "In that case, why would you ever do a background investigation on anybody ever applying to your agency who'd been a police officer?" he asks.

Doane's short tenure with BSO was consistent with his past behavior. Among several other sustained complaints against him, Doane was suspended for conduct unbecoming an officer after he and 17 other deputies attended a drunken bachelor party at a Holiday Inn in Palm Beach County that ended in public vomiting and a vandalized squad car. Several guests asked for refunds.

On Christmas Eve 1999, Doane ended his career and his life in a reckless race to a crime scene — a drive that easily could have left others dead. Doane had been booking a DUI suspect at the main jail in downtown Fort Lauderdale when a radio dispatcher announced that a deputy had been shot outside a café in Lauderdale Lakes. Although the incident was seven miles north, Doane asked someone to watch his prisoner and sped away. A subsequent BSO investigation estimated he was driving about 80 mph on State Road 7. Breaking BSO policy, he ran red lights without pausing and wasn't wearing a seat belt. As he barreled through a red light, he swerved to miss a car entering the intersection, lost control, and crashed into a concrete pole. He died 12 days later.