‘AWFUL’

Veteran Tampa Cop Used Homophobic Slurs During Walmart Arrest, Review Finds

The former Tampa Police Department officer repeated the slur multiple times during the arrest.

An officer who had served with the Tampa Police Department for more than two decades abruptly resigned after spewing homophobic slurs during a 2020 arrest, an internal investigation found. The results of the probe were made public at a Tuesday night meeting of the city’s Citizen Review Board, according to local outlet CL Tampa Bay. “What the officer said was awful,” board member Lincoln Tamayo said at the meeting. The 22-year veteran officer, Bryan Perry, used the slur multiple times during the Dec. 2020 arrest of an alleged shoplifter at a Walmart, at least once affixing it to the word “ass,” according to board members. Perry resigned the next month, amid an internal affairs probe sparked after another officer reported his rhetoric. The probe found that Perry had been complicit in discriminatory conduct, among other charges that were sustained following his departure from the department. The Tampa Police Department told CL Tampa Bay in a statement that Perry would have been fired had he not resigned in the midst of the investigation.