The International Union of Police Associations filed to stop representing Broward Sheriff’s Office lieutenants last week, days after the lieutenants’ union president asked to see its financial records, according to a letter to union members from Matt Cowart, the lieutenants’ union president.
IUPA’s attorney said that she was on vacation when Cowart asked to inspect the records. She was also on vacation when she filed the petition to drop the union.
IUPA, headquartered in Sarasota, represents law enforcement officers throughout North America, and has served as the certified bargaining agent for Broward deputies and sergeants for several years before lieutenants voted to have it represent them in January. All unions are required to allow their members to review financial records according to Florida statute, which states that any member of a labor organization “shall be entitled at all reasonable times to inspect the books, records and accounts of such labor organization.” Not doing so is a second-degree misdemeanor.
But Broward Sheriff’s Lt. Cowart said IUPA did not provide those records to him when he requested them on April 18, according to a letter he penned to union members and the Florida Department Law Enforcement. Then, on April 21, the union, through its attorney, Maria Kazouris, filed the petition to drop the lieutenants entirely.
Kazouris told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an email that Cowart “sent me a demand for copies of business records contrary to Florida Statutes which merely entitles union members the right to inspect certain union records during reasonable times (not during a week while I’m on vacation). Immediately upon sending the stated email, Cowart received a copy of my automatic out-of-office email which informed him that I would not return to the office until Monday April 28, 2025.”
However, Kazouris was still on vacation when she filed the petition to drop the union on April 21. She did not respond to questions from the South Florida Sun Sentinel about why she filed the petition in the first place.
By the time she returned to the office, Kazouris wrote, Cowart had resigned from the union, “rendering him ineligible to inspect I.U.P.A. records.”
Cowart declined to comment when reached by the Sun Sentinel beyond what he wrote in his letters.
An ongoing feud
The split between the national and local union is the culmination of an ongoing feud that traces back to the Tamarac triple murder in February, where a man is accused of killing his estranged wife, her father and a neighbor despite the woman’s efforts to protect herself.
The conflict with the lieutenants began when Cowart sent a letter to the Broward Sheriff’s Office about the importance of due process following Sheriff Gregory Tony’s February news conference announcing the suspensions of seven deputies, in which he said “there will be people that will lose their job over this” and that he would “make sure they don’t win a damn arbitration.”
After Cowart sent the Tamarac letter, he wrote that the union attorney retaliated against him, according to the more recent letter.
The lieutenants’ union board voted to terminate the attorney. IUPA “initially refused” to provide a replacement attorney, Cowart’s letter states, then agreed when they were reminded that they had promised the lieutenants’ union an attorney. However, after hiring the new attorney, Cowart wrote they did not pay the attorney the full amount he was owed, basing his pay on 21 members rather than 40. When Cowart confronted Kazouris about this, he said in the April 21 letter that she “attempted to blame BSO.”
“As a result of I.U.P.A. headquarters’ General Counsel Kazouris’s concerning comments about 44% of member dues being unaccounted for and her apparent unwillingness to make General Counsel Gary Celetti whole, I advised her that I am requesting to inspect numerous financial records,” Cowart wrote.
Three days later, Kazouris filed the petition to drop the lieutenants. In a scathing second letter on April 25, Cowart informed IUPA President Sam Cabral that the entire executive board of the lieutenants’ union had resigned.
“IUPA has abandoned this union, sabotaged our ability to have contract negotiations due to the decertification process, refused to have financial transparency, refused to communicate with the Executive Board, refused to pay our General Counsel appropriately, and is now bad mouthing me to my employer,” he wrote.
The lieutenants’ union was supposed to have a negotiation session with BSO on Tuesday, Cowart wrote, but IUPA’s petition to abandon them halted any contract negotiations.
Kazouris added in an emailed statement to the Sun Sentinel that “IUPA acknowledges its fiduciary responsibilities and is audited every year by a registered CPA firm to assure all members and directors of our compliance with policy, law, and accounting principles. The accounting firm stated there were no difficulties in performing and completing the audit. No discrepancies were found. Having said that, we have never refused to comply with any law.”
Past issues, corruption
Tensions were also high in recent months between the BSO deputies and sergeants union and IUPA, according to Greg LaCerra, former vice president of the deputies and sergeants’ union. When the union’s secretary asked headquarters for a breakdown of where union dues were being spent, IUPA was “furious,” he said, and he never got them. Kazouris did not respond to questions about that incident.
In January, LaCerra said IUPA suddenly removed him from his position as vice president after a separate dispute in which he had demanded a meeting several times and did not hear back. He retired from the Sheriff’s Office in March.
“Why did they do that?” LaCerra told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, referring to the union’s petition to drop BSO’s lieutenants. “Why did they cut off communication with me? I was a cop for 24 years, I was pretty good about smelling things out, and something doesn’t smell right here.”
IUPA has previously come under scrutiny over its finances. A 2019 joint investigation between the Center for Public Integrity and the Tampa Bay Times found that only a “sliver” of donations to its Law Enforcement Officers Relief Fund, advertised as helping families of slain police officers, actually went to the families at all; most went to telemarketers paid to solicit more donations. IUPA also has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau due to failing to respond to 97 complaints filed against it, down from a D-minus in 2019.
Cabral, the union president, is paid a salary of close to $300,000.
Past corruption uncovered
One reason both LaCerra and Cowart are now concerned about IUPA’s lack of transparency is because they say they had previously discovered suspicious financial activity involving the local chapter for the deputies and sergeants’ union.
In 2023, the Broward Sheriff’s Office investigated two retired deputies, Jeff Bell and Frank Voudy III, and a retired sergeant, Jason Zehler, over allegations that they had been using union funds to pay themselves bonuses and buy other personal items. Bell was suspected of using union money to purchase a $2,500 security system for his Palm Beach County home, according to a 2024 Broward State Attorney Office closeout memo.
Prosecutors declined to file charges, saying they did not think they could secure a conviction in part due to IUPA’s constitution, which allows the union’s executive boards to set the policies for “all types of direct and indirect compensation paid to any person by the IUPA.”
“There is no question that Bell, Voudy, and Zehler engaged in conduct that offends the concepts of basic morality and criminality,” prosecutors concluded. “The flagrant misconduct and misappropriation of funds is a shameful example of blatant abuse of position and breach of trust by Bell, Voudy, and Zehler. Unfortunately, neither the IUPA International chapter nor the IUPA Local 6020 had the foresight to draft constitutions in such a way that would hold unit members criminally responsible for their actions in circumstances such as these.”
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not respond to questions Tuesday about whether it is investigating IUPA.