The union representing police officers in Davie, Florida, has filed a complaint with town officials alleging that Chief Dale Engle ranted that a deputy died of COVID-19 because he was gay. Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Shannon Bennett died of coronavirus in early April after being infected in the line of the duty, officials have said. But when Davie police officers expressed concern that they could be exposed on the job, Engle allegedly used Bennett’s sexual orientation to brush off their worries, the Miami Herald reported. “Chief Engle allegedly yelled about a ‘backstory’ which proclaimed that Deputy Bennett contracted and died from the virus because he was a ‘homosexual who attended homosexual sexual events,’” the complaint letter reads. “He intimated that it was because of the homosexual lifestyle that Deputy Bennett first contracted a serious underlying disease which aggravated the COVID-19 virus and lead to his death.” Engle has been placed on administrative leave while the town investigates.
Read it at Miami Herald
