The former head of the Broward Sheriff’s Office Tamarac unit has been fired following his demotion over a triple murder in February, according to a notice of termination released to the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday.
Jemeriah Cooper was a captain serving at the helm of the unit when Mary Gingles, her father and a neighbor were shot and killed, deputies say, by her husband, Nathan, in her Tamarac neighborhood. In the weeks following the murders, Cooper was demoted to deputy, serving in the Port Everglades division. He was also placed on probation.
On Friday, Cooper’s termination was issued and his pay discontinued for “failure to meet probationary standards,” according to the notice. The termination was finalized on Tuesday.
On a Sunday morning in February, Nathan Gingles, 43, had shot and killed his father-in-law, David Ponzer, then took the couple’s 4-year-old daughter as he chased his wife through the neighborhood before killing her as well as Andrew Ferrin, 36, a stranger whose home she had run into to try to escape, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Cooper was among several BSO employees either demoted or placed on leave after the murders. Mary Gingles had frequently notified the Sheriff’s Office of Nathan’s threats to her life — including providing information about a backpack full of suspicious supplies and a tracker on her car — but he was never arrested or detained. A judge had ordered his guns surrendered under a domestic violence injunction, but Sheriff’s Office personnel never took them, including the gun he used to commit the murders.
Prior to his promotion to the Tamarac district, Cooper had faced allegations of sexually harassing four deputies, according to internal affairs records. Investigators sustained a “conduct unbecoming” finding in his case, but not a finding of sexual harassment.
Cooper declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday.
Eight other deputies, many of them in the Tamarac district, were placed on administrative leave with pay after the murders. One of them, Detective Brittney King, also had a change in her status this month. On May 1, internal affairs notified her that she had been placed on administrative investigative leave without pay, according to a notice obtained by the Sun Sentinel.
King is under investigation in relation to the following charges: “Discretion,” “Breach of Confidence,” “Meeting BSO Standards; to-wit: Criminal lnvestigations and Detective Duties and Responsibilities,” “Meeting BSO Standards; to-wit: Domestic Violence/Dating Violence case Procedure,” “Neglect of Duty,” “Evidence and Property,” “Case File Maintenance System,” “Body Worn Cameras (BWG),” and “Risk Protection Order (RPO),” according to the notice.
King was heavily involved in the investigation into a tracker that Gingles said her husband had placed on her car, according to emails obtained by the Sun Sentinel, an investigation that could have resulted in her husband’s arrest.
The detective had authored an application for a search warrant of the GPS tracker in support of a domestic violence stalking charge on Jan. 16, a month before the murder, records show. The warrant would have allowed BSO to identify the person who bought the tracker and make an arrest. The application for the warrant said the owner of the tracker was “unknown.”
It is unclear whether the application for the warrant was ever presented to a judge, or if BSO did present it to a judge and the judge did not approve it.
Meanwhile, another of the deputies under investigation, Lieutenant Michael Paparella, returned to full duty on April 28, according to records.
“We are very disappointed that the decision was made to move Detective Brittney King to ‘no-pay status,’” Dan Rakofsky, the president of IUPA 6020, the BSO deputies’ union, said in an email. “This decision was obviously made without the due process that must accompany any investigation into the performance of a law enforcement officer. We adamantly oppose this action and will fight for our members when the case is properly concluded. Detective King is obviously the first of the scapegoats that the Sheriff promised the public.”
Cooper also became a member of the union after his demotion to deputy.
“On Friday, he was informed that he failed to meet probationary standards, but we are unaware of any reason for his termination,” Rakofsky said.
Requests for the job status of the remaining deputies were not available as of Tuesday afternoon.
Staff writer Angie DiMichele contributed to this report.
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