Mary Gingles’ front-door handle was blocked with a 2×4 block of wood so no one could open it from the outside. Nearby, a printed copy of a restraining order against her estranged husband sat on the kitchen table. Upstairs, in the bedroom, she kept a pistol in her purse and ammunition in the dresser.
Her 64-year-old father, David Ponzer, had come from Missouri to stay with her for protection. He was the first person deputies found dead on Feb. 16, shot while drinking coffee on the back patio. Hours later, Mary Gingles, 34, and her neighbor Andrew Ferrin, 36, were found shot to death, too.
All the measures Mary Gingles took did not stop her estranged husband, Nathan Gingles, who has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the three deaths. The military veteran left his cellphone on the counter of his stripped-bare apartment and showed up to Mary Gingles’ home just before 6 a.m. with a gun and suppressor, handcuffs, a utility knife and a Taser, according to incident reports.
There are systems in place — within law enforcement, the court system, and current state laws — to protect domestic violence victims like Mary Gingles from people like Nathan Gingles. But they did not prevent her death.
In the eight months since the triple murders in Tamarac, the Broward Sheriff’s Office has fired or disciplined 19 deputies for failing to prevent the killings. Yet Sheriff Gregory Tony said the myriad failures uncovered by the internal investigation into his deputies’ handling of Mary Gingles’ death and her interactions with law enforcement for months beforehand were not the result of a systemic problem in his agency and would not require policy changes.
Others disagree. Current and former law enforcement officials told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the Tamarac murders are indicative of institutional problems within the Sheriff’s Office — including a need for better training, especially for sergeants, poor leadership decisions and a fear of discipline for insubordination. Domestic violence advocates and grieving family members say state laws regarding restraining orders are too loose and changes are needed to prevent a similar tragedy.
Rather than one glaring problem, a series of failures at every level contributed to the deaths, experts said, and there is no singular, quick solution. It was “just an absolute cascading effect of errors,” said Marshall Jones, an assistant professor at the Florida Institute of Technology and a former law enforcement officer.
Several people, including Tony himself, have compared what happened in Tamarac to the Parkland school shooting, a failure the sheriff was tasked with correcting when Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him in 2019. Like in Parkland, BSO’s Tamarac deputies had received warnings of the shooter’s concerning behavior before the tragedy. And, similar to the school shooting response, the Tamarac deputies staged away from the crime scene while calls about gunshots came in.
Others emphasized that the Tamarac triple murder is distinct from Parkland. The shooting took place in a quiet neighborhood and was tied to domestic violence. Advocates say it is yet another example of ongoing challenges, not just in Broward County but the rest of the state, when it comes to protecting survivors, especially when they leave their abusers.
“This case is probably the best example of a system failure on every level,” said Linda Parker, the CEO of Women in Distress, who has been in touch with the families since the shooting and is currently working on legislation that would strengthen domestic violence injunctions. “And we now know, and everyone agrees that it failed. So what’s next?”
‘Absolutely not’ a systemic failure
At a September news conference, Tony announced the conclusion of BSO’s Internal Affairs investigation. Six deputies were fired and 11 more were disciplined over either their mishandling of the investigation into Mary Gingles’ concerns or their response to the shooting that morning. Two others, including the captain who oversaw the entire district, had already been terminated.
On the morning of the shootings, a sergeant ordered deputies to meet a block away from Mary Gingles’ street, according to the internal affairs report. Multiple deputies had arrived there just before she was shot and killed. In the months leading up to that day, the report said deputies failed to properly investigate when Mary Gingles reported the discovery of a GPS tracker hidden on her car and a backpack Nathan Gingles hid in her garage that was filled with suspicious supplies that she described as a “crazy person kill kit.”
Mary Gingles had called the Sheriff’s Office more than a dozen times, including the day before she was killed.
But BSO’s handling of Tamarac was “absolutely not” an organizational failure, Tony said at the news conference.
“This is not an administrative, organizational failure issue,” he continued. “Nor is it anything that is systemic and that now we have to restructure, change policies, reinvest.”
Some current and retired law enforcement officers disagree, saying that systemic or cultural issues within the Sheriff’s Office likely contributed to the way deputies handled the case.
BSO’s Tamarac District has 98 positions, according to its website, including a district captain, two lieutenants, eight sergeants, and 70 deputies, plus 13 community service aides and four support positions. After the killings, 19 of those employees were fired or disciplined.
“You’re looking at almost a quarter of the personnel of the district that did something to warrant discipline,” said Neal Glassman, who was the Tamarac district’s captain from 2013 to 2019. “That’s a huge problem. That’s not one or two. That’s a systemic problem, a breakdown on every level.”
The internal investigation detailed a range of deficiencies: A sergeant with ongoing leadership issues; a detective with a heavy caseload who took months to investigate the tracker on Mary Gingles’ car; delays and a lack of communication between supervisors and deputies investigating Mary Gingles’ calls, a lack of information that allowed Nathan Gingles to keep his stockpile of guns despite the fact that the Sheriff’s Office had previously confiscated them; no formal process for reviewing cases; and deputies’ differing opinions about whether they were responding to an active shooter call that morning and what procedure they should have followed.
Better policies, training, leadership and culture at the Sheriff’s Office may have mitigated some of those problems, according to the three current and retired law enforcement officers interviewed by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Dan Rakofsky, president of IUPA 6020, the union for BSO sergeants and deputies, is currently representing all six deputies who lost their jobs in arbitration, as well as the 11 disciplined in fighting their punishments. He felt that the agency unfairly placed blame on individual deputies rather than focusing on those issues.
“There’s just so many more systems and processes and best practices that can be looked at,” he said.
The six employees who were terminated are: Sgt. Travis Allen, Deputy Lamar Blackwood, Deputy Eric Klisiak, Detective Brittney King, Deputy Daniel Munoz, and Sgt. Devoune Williams.
The 11 others disciplined are: Deputy Dia Cross, Deputy Eric Baide, Deputy Daimeon Nelson, Deputy La’Toya Isaac, Deputy James Redfearn, Deputy Daniel Lovallo, Deputy Sophie Riggs, Deputy Ilany Ceballos, Sgt. Yausel Pompa, Deputy Raul Ortiz, and Deputy Kyle Schnakenberg.
Two others, Captain Jemeriah Cooper and Stephen Tapia, a trainee, were fired before the internal affairs investigation concluded. Meanwhile, Civil Division Deputy Joseph Sasso and Lt. Michael Paparella were investigated but cleared.
Leadership issues
One cultural issue raised by law enforcement experts was leadership and the selection process for that leadership. Some of the employees most involved in Mary Gingles’ case had past disciplinary issues or struggled in some aspects of their performance, records show, but remained employed or even received promotions.
The head of the entire Tamarac district, Jemeriah Cooper, had been promoted to captain just one day after an investigation began into allegations that he sexually harassed three female deputies, an allegation that was ultimately not sustained but determined by internal affairs to be conduct unbecoming, discipline records show.
Brittney King, the detective charged with investigating Mary Gingles’ tracker case, joined BSO after resigning from Lauderhill Police for unknown reasons during a standard, six-month probation period for new hires. Cooper considered her the “least productive detective that we have in the unit,” according to personnel records previously obtained by the Sun Sentinel and the internal affairs report.
Sgt. Travis Allen had ongoing performance problems, including being “challenged in investigating certain crimes,” that his lieutenant, Michael Paparella, had sought to address, according to the IA report.
In Allen’s most recent evaluation, Paparella wrote that he needed to improve on “identifying the nature of crimes to allocate appropriate resources affectively,” records show. Prior to his promotion to sergeant in Tamarac, Allen worked as a school resource officer in Pompano Beach, where he received largely positive evaluations, though one 2019 evaluation mentioned a principal complaining that he treated a threat from a student with a “lack of urgency.”
Promotions are especially important because supervisors have the most critical role in ensuring investigations don’t fall through the cracks, experts say. Ultimately, the sheriff is the final decision-maker when it comes to promotional decisions.
“You have to look at everything in this case because it was such a complete breakdown,” Glassman, the former Tamarac captain, said. “It wasn’t just training. It was the wrong people being promoted, maybe the wrong people being detectives, the wrong supervision. That’s everything. This is not just a quick fix.”
The Sheriff’s Office declined the Sun Sentinel’s request to interview Tony and spokespeople did not respond to emailed questions. At the September news conference, Tony said that problems “trickle down” from the top if district captains aren’t aware of “deficiencies.” He said all deputies and captains would receive more training starting within a week, using the presentation about what went wrong in Tamarac.
“We set this agency up for success. We set these men and women up for success. And either they were incompetent at the moment or pure cowards and allowed this tragedy to happen,” he said. “So, we will move on. We will saddle back up.”
George David, whose nephew Ferrin was killed, praised Tony for taking accountability.
“I think the sheriff did an unbelievable job,” he said. “I respect him so much for his morality and his sense of duty and knowing what’s right, making the comments that he failed as a sheriff, because of what his subordinates had done.”
The decision to stage
All of the deputies who responded on the day of the shooting had active-shooter training, according to the internal affairs report. But they did not use it, many saying they did not know that the situation required it.
Instead, Sgt. Allen instructed deputies to gather at a staging area a block away rather than go directly to the scene. The first deputies arrived about two minutes before Mary Gingles and Ferrin were shot and continued to arrive there in the minutes following. While driving through the neighborhood to respond to the 911 call, Allen saw Nathan Gingles and his 4-year-old daughter walking by but did not approach them.
Nathan Gingles wasn’t arrested until hours later in a Walmart parking lot in North Lauderdale, after an Amber alert for his daughter was issued across the state. His daughter was with him and unhurt.
Sgt. Larry Akers, who oversees the active killer training for all of BSO, told investigators that the deputies should have defied Allen’s order because they are trained to respond directly to the scene. At one point during the news conference announcing the conclusion of the internal investigation, Tony referred to Allen as a “coward.”
Glassman, the former captain of BSO’s Tamarac district, said staging was the agency’s most critical mistake, but that the same mistake happened before in Tamarac.
In 2020, Tamarac deputies staged 500 yards away from a disabled veteran’s home as a random man tried to break in despite he and neighbors calling 911 for almost 15 minutes. The homeowner considered shooting the intruder during the delay, but the suspect eventually walked over to deputies and surrendered.
BSO deputies are often instructed to stage in response to certain calls, said Rakofsky, who defended deputies’ decision to stage in the Gingles case because he felt the call was not clearly about an active shooter.
John David, another of Ferrin’s uncles, lived with Ferrin and was asleep in his bedroom when his nephew and Mary Gingles were shot to death. He said he thinks their lives could have been saved had deputies arrived on the street with lights and sirens.
“Sheriff Tony got it right in firing those guys who decided to stage,” he said, but it doesn’t ease his loss. “I understand that they went back and tried to rectify their errors on this particular incident, but is it gonna change things going forward? I don’t know.”
Rakofsky, the union president, said one of his biggest concerns at the Sheriff’s Office prior to Tamarac had been poor training for sergeants, including no formal training when it comes to handling “high stress, rapidly evolving critical incidents.” Limited firearm training in recent years could also make deputies less confident when responding to scenes.
BSO has since instituted more formalized training for sergeants, he said, though there could still be more.
Fear of discipline
In addition to supervisors, several deputies were fired or disciplined because they did not defy Allen’s orders and respond to the shooting directly. During the internal affairs investigation, many explained that they were simply doing what they were told. Deputy Klisiak, who was fired, told investigators he wished he would have defied Allen’s orders, but pointed to a previous incident in which he was criticized by his supervisor for responding directly to a domestic disturbance call without waiting for backup.
“They’re scared to do their jobs for whatever reason,” Glassman said. “The fact that a couple are saying that, that they were afraid they were going to get disciplined for responding to a shooting call, that’s a problem.”
Rakofsky disagreed with deputies’ punishments for failing to defy Allen’s orders, given BSO’s emphasis on following them. Deputies are frequently disciplined for much smaller instances of insubordination, he said.
That fear of discipline could point to a serious cultural issue within the Sheriff’s Office, making deputies afraid of acting or questioning their supervisors, according to Jones, the Florida Tech professor who studies organizational behavior within agencies.
“In a good leader-follower relationship, you want someone to speak up and say ‘Hey sergeant, hey lieutenant, what about that?’” he said. “That’s where the positive aspects of accountability come into play.”
The BSO investigation also revealed flawed communication between supervisors and employees when it came to how investigations were assigned, managed and reviewed.
Mary Gingles had called 911 in January asking about the status of the car tracker and the suspicious backpack cases, both assigned to King. They remained open just three days before the murders, email records previously obtained by the Sun Sentinel show. Prior to Feb. 16, the Tamarac district had no formal process for reviewing cases, where detectives and their sergeant discuss their progress and next steps. As of Feb. 13, King had 68 open cases, more than the 30 or 40 Cooper considered manageable, according to the IA report and email records. Without regular reviews, King’s sergeant didn’t know where her open cases stood, the IA report said.
Since, the Tamarac District has instituted a “formalized” process for reviewing cases, spokesperson Veda Coleman-Wright said in an email in response to the Sun Sentinel’s request to interview Tony.
Failure to confiscate guns
One failure that points to a systemic problem on both a local and statewide level was the fact that Nathan Gingles still had a stockpile of guns over a month after he was ordered to surrender them, experts say.
Before a deputy served Nathan Gingles with a restraining order on Jan. 6, the two spoke over the phone.
“Before I come over there, I need to ask you, do you have any weapons, ammunition, or permit?” said Joseph Sasso, a deputy in BSO’s Civil Division, according to the IA report.
“I have none of that,” Nathan Gingles replied, according to the report.
But after the deaths, deputies found 15 guns, six suppressors and box after box of ammo locked inside Nathan Gingles’ Boca Raton storage unit, all of which BSO had confiscated before while enforcing a previous restraining order, and then returned after the injunction expired, according to 150 pages of incident reports recently obtained by the Sun Sentinel. The gun Gingles allegedly used in the murders, a Sig Sauer P320, had been listed in BSO property receipt records. It was found during the murder investigation with a suppressor attached 7-feet deep in a lake just around the block from Mary Gingles’ home, according to incident reports.
Yet Sasso had no way to know about the weapons stockpile when he went to Nathan Gingles’ home alone to serve him the injunction, according to the internal affairs report. He didn’t know BSO had enforced a previous injunction against Gingles or taken numerous guns from him before — the paperwork Sasso served Gingles contained none of that information, he told investigators.
Sasso said he is limited in what authority he has when serving a civil document and could not search the person or their home without a warrant, the report showed.
“It’s basically going on the word of the person,” Civil Division Sgt. Robert Rigolizzo told Internal Affairs investigators. “It’s a civil matter, and we’re asking, you know, we’re informing you. You can’t have firearms. Do you have any firearms? If they say no, unless I see a firearm in your pocket or behind you in your house, I have no reason to believe you have one.”
The investigation cleared Sasso of all allegations.
“The agency recognized he wasn’t the problem and that there’s a systemic problem there,” Rakofsky said. ” … there was no reason to know the answers he got were wrong, and they were false. And yet there could’ve been something in place that would’ve given him an edge on that.”
Instead, that lack of knowledge puts law enforcement officers like Sasso — and the victims — in danger, experts say.
But the shortcomings of injunctions are not isolated to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. Florida law does not outline any steps for law enforcement to ensure guns are surrendered or require that they be tracked, experts say.
“So after the court orders surrender of firearms, what next? How far are we carrying that out? Is law enforcement going back to their home with them? Is law enforcement going to wait a certain number of days, if they haven’t surrendered?” asked Amanda Price, CEO of Florida Partnership to End Domestic violence, whose organization works with the vast majority of domestic violence shelters in the state. “We have to support law enforcement in their ability to ensure that firearms are surrendered while protecting law enforcement because obviously that would be one of the most dangerous points that law enforcement would be at.”
Florida’s current laws allow for guns to be removed from perpetrators of violence, but they leave room for discretion, Price said. Judges can order that guns be surrendered, but the law does not mandate that they do. The gun-surrendering guideline also does not currently apply to injunctions for victims of dating violence, between people in a romantic relationship, or victims of sexual assault violence, she said.
Ultimately, victims of abuse are losing faith that the injunction system will protect them.
“What we’re seeing right now is a real lack of trust in the ‘injunction for protection’ process,” said Parker, the CEO of Women in Distress.
Domestic violence perpetrators must give up guns when ordered. Oftentimes, they don’t.
Pushing for law changes
Some of those close to the Tamarac killings are trying to address the problems with a bill this upcoming legislative session.
The day after his nephew was murdered, George David walked into Ferrin’s home and saw the crime scene. It compelled him to sit down and start drafting a bill proposal in Ferrin’s name, he told the Sun Sentinel.
In part, his proposed bill would make penalties harsher for violating restraining orders and for perpetrators having guns while under an injunction. Parker, the CEO of Women in Distress, is now working with David and Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, to get a bill filed, though they would not discuss the details.
Even if law enforcement arrests someone for violating an injunction, it is only a misdemeanor under Florida law, with a maximum punishment of a year in jail and a fine. The percentage of violators who do get jail time is likely low, experts say.
“Our system provides for automatic consequence, but it doesn’t provide for, in all cases, a consequence that could prohibit a fatality,” Price said.
Other positive developments are currently underway. Women in Distress is working on a pilot project with Lauderhill Police to send domestic violence advocates to the scene along with officers. A law passed in Florida last year in the wake of Gabby Petito‘s murder mandates that law enforcement ask a series of questions to determine whether a victim is in a potentially deadly situation, which Price said has been the most notable law change in recent years.
Florida’s Legislature also routinely contributes money for domestic violence resources in ways other states don’t, Price said. But domestic violence shelters also have an “immense level of accountability for the dollars that they get.” That same level of scrutiny is not applied to law enforcement, she said.
“The onus, at this moment, of showing that there’s an improvement in domestic violence traits is on shelters, which is just wild,” she said. Florida is more focused on intervention and response, rather than prevention; the vast majority of funding is dedicated to after abuse or a death has already happened, she said.
Meanwhile, the situation remains dire. While the Tamarac triple murder received more attention, the same violence — some of which could be prevented — is happening all the time, and possibly getting worse, Parker said.
Without change, some fear the failures on display since the Tamarac shootings may prevent more victims from going to law enforcement for help.
“There might be some woman who is currently undergoing domestic violence who lives in Tamarac, lives in that neighborhood, lives in Broward County and is thinking — look what just happened, if I call, I don’t have any chance,” Glassman said. “You don’t know. How many of those are out there?”
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