Deputy Do-Wrong

Despite Doane's life-endangering recklessness, Jenne declared him a hero, orchestrating a funeral held at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, attended by 3,000 cops. The ceremony even included an eight-helicopter flyover in "missing man" formation.

Ultimately, though, BSO paid Kollin's client $19,000 in June 2003 in order to settle the lawsuit, but the case still makes Kollin's blood boil. "How many Doanes are in BSO?" he asks. Pondering the Lewis Perry case, he adds, "We have history repeating itself, a person improperly hired."

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Germán Gomez made a newcomer's mistake on the evening he was shot. In a complex of look-alike façades, he and his cousin wandered into the wrong doorway. As the two fiddled with a key that didn't fit, an anxious neighbor noticed the men and called 911 about a possible burglary. Unfortunately for Gomez, Perry responded to that call.

Gomez's memory about that evening is shifty and unreliable because of his head wound. His cousin, Javier Dominguez, who's not living in South Florida now, told Kubiliun that the pair had their hands raised when Perry and Richard Mosca stopped them at the entrance of the apartment complex. As Mosca was cuffing Dominguez, they both heard a gunshot but didn't see what happened.

Two weeks after the shooting, Perry gave a statement to BSO investigators in which he claimed that his gun went off accidentally after Gomez bumped his arm. Perhaps only Perry knows what really happened. Judging from his statement, however, Perry's actions were consistent with his past.

When he arrived on the scene, Perry told investigators, he stepped out of his squad car, stood behind the door, and ordered them to stop. They kept walking toward his direction, so he drew his semi-automatic Glock handgun — despite having no reason to believe they were armed.

Perry told investigators that the scene was well-lighted and that he could see their hands. The investigator asked Perry if he could see if they were carrying anything. "I couldn't see if there's anything in their hands," Perry replied.

Moments later, the investigator asked, "OK, did they have any weapons in their hands that you could see?"

This time, Perry responded, "I did not see any weapons in their hands."

At the scene, Perry didn't communicate with Mosca, who'd arrived shortly after him. Mosca told investigators that he'd unfastened his holster but never drew his gun. He refastened the holster because he didn't want the suspects to get hold of the gun in the event of a struggle.

Perry wasn't so cautious. He told investigators he walked up behind Gomez, aiming his gun at him but keeping his finger outside the trigger guard. He shoved Gomez with his left hand. Gomez then turned around, and his arm hit Perry's right arm, and the gun went off, Perry claims.

"The first thing I remember going through my head is like, holy fuck, my gun just went off, you know, and then I looked and he was still standing for a second, so, like, you know, thank God I didn't hit him," Perry said. "And then I noticed he fell down on the ground."

Asked why he and Mosca didn't talk and coordinate the takedown, Perry said: "You know, Monday morning quarterback, there probably should have been more of that, but in the heat of the moment with everything going on and to tally everything up that I was facing, it's just the way it went down."

The critical factor, Perry claimed, was Gomez's swinging around and hitting his arm with such force that the gun went off.

If that happened, asked the investigators, why didn't Perry tell anybody that night that Gomez had hit his arm? Perry responded that he was told "by basically from lieutenant colonels to sergeants that showed at the scene to keep my mouth shut and say nothing until my attorney got there."

Although too late for Gomez, BSO fired Perry in February 2005 for, among other violations, interfering with an investigation and untruthfulness. In the fall of 2004, Perry had pulled into the parking lot of the Booby Trap, a Pompano Beach strip club. From the driver's seat of his squad car, Perry had asked a stripper to take two pictures of her vagina using a cell phone camera, which he then carried away. The stripper told investigators that Perry had told her during the course of the internal affairs probe that she should answer no questions about the incident.

Even after Perry no longer worked for BSO, however, his transgressions revisited the agency. He now stands charged with official misconduct and perjury in a case that involved several other deputies and a cover-up of a collision of his cruiser in November 2003.

Investigators asked Perry why he didn't call in to dispatch immediately after the crash, as policy requires. Perry replied: "I, I, I just froze up. I was shocked that I was hit. I was angry. I had tunnel vision." The statement, it later turned out, was a complete fabrication.