A Texas police officer has been fired for allegedly giving a sandwich filled with feces to a homeless man.
Matthew Luckhurst lost his job for what the San Antonio police chief, William McManus, described as a “vile and disgusting act”.
The incident is said to have taken place in May. According to a police statement, Luckhurst “bragged to a fellow officer that he had picked up some feces, placed it in a slice of bread, and put it in a Styrofoam container next to the unknown homeless male”.
The other officer said he told Luckhurst to go back and throw the container away and assumed that he did. Luckhurst is a five-year veteran of the department who had been working downtown on bike patrol for a year.
Police said that an internal affairs investigation was launched in July after an officer reported Luckhurst to his supervisor, and the case was presented to police and civilian review boards in October. Both recommended an indefinite suspension that was upheld after McManus met with Luckhurst last week. Police said they have been unable to locate the homeless man.
McManus said in a statement: “This was a vile and disgusting act that violates our guiding principles of ‘treating all with integrity, compassion, fairness and respect’. The fact that his fellow officers were so disgusted with his actions that they reported him to Internal Affairs demonstrates that this type of behavior will never be tolerated. The action of this one former officer in no way reflects the actions of all the other good men and women who respectfully serve this community.”
Luckhurst’s attorney, Ben Sifuentes, did not immediately return a request for comment. He told the San Antonio Express-News, which first reported the story, that his client will appeal the decision and that the incident “didn’t happen” and was a “joke” that was never carried out and spiraled out of control.
San Antonio’s treatment of the homeless has been held up as a national model thanks to the Haven For Hope centre, a large campus near downtown that cost $101m to build, opened in 2010 and offers shelter and a wide range of social services.
Still, authorities have introduced hardline measures in recent years. The San Antonio Current reported in 2014 that city police issued more than 12,000 citations in 22 months for violations related to homelessness, such as camping in a public place and panhandling in prohibited locations, often leading to fines piling up for individuals who cannot afford to pay.
In 2014, McManus proposed creating an ordinance that would make it a crime to give money and food to panhandlers on the street. The idea was dropped after a public backlash.
The following year, a San Antonio woman who provides meals for homeless people using a not-for-profit food truck was given a citation with a potential fine of $2,000 for giving out food from a personal vehicle instead of the truck. The citation was later dismissed.
According to Haven For Hope, there are almost 3,000 homeless people in the city, 42% of them lacking shelter.
