A Fort Lauderdale police officer accused of hurling racial slurs at Black men, instigating a fight, and then lying about how he was injured in that fight is being recommended by the police chief for firing.
Several NAACP-Broward members Friday joined the county’s public defender to call on the city to follow that recommendation and dismiss 16-year veteran John Giga.
Giga was off duty, unarmed and out of uniform when he was found bleeding profusely in a bar parking lot around 4:20 a.m. on the morning after Thanksgiving 2023, claiming someone with a bottle struck him after he tried to break up a fight, according to his department’s internal affairs investigation.
But video and witnesses told another story to internal investigators – that Giga was the aggressor, yelling racial slurs at black men in that parking lot, banging on a car window and following them around the corner where, one of those men said, he felt threatened by Giga.
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Unaware Giga was an off-duty officer out of uniform, the driver of that car said, he and two others reacted to Giga taking what investigators called “a fighting stance” and struck him in the head, then hit and kicked him for about 20 more seconds, causing what Giga’s attorney told NBC6 were serious injuries.
That attorney, Eugene Gibbons, said Giga now wants the men prosecuted, but a police investigator reported, as of last month, Giga did not sign a sworn statement as a victim that would’ve allowed them to investigate further.
NBC6 has not been able to reach the men involved.
Local
Five hours before the parking lot incident at Capones, on SW 2nd Street, surveillance video shows Giga was at Hunters Beach Bar just off Las Olas Boulevard and Seabreeze Boulevard.
Just as his shift ended at 11 p.m.Thanksgiving night, Giga left his uniform shirt and firearm in his marked unit, walked to Hunters and over several hours had five alcoholic drinks, investigators alleged based on surveillance video.
In an interview with investigators, Giga denied drinking alcohol.
Video shows him leaving Hunters Beach Bar and driving away in his marked patrol car around 2:40 a.m., when he said he drove home and then, after a shower, drove to Capones nightclub to see a woman who worked there and was not answering his texts that night.
According to the investigation, one of those texts, which the woman said she did not see because her phone battery had died, read: “Bout to show up and f--- everyone up”.
When he walked into Capones, the woman told police she heard his “angry” voice and froze, ducked beneath the outside perimeter of the bar and scurried to hide in a cooler until he left.
Within minutes he did leave, walked into the parking lot and, according to three witnesses in addition to the driver of the car who would later strike him, began hurling racial slurs at them.
As the men tried to leave in their car, the video shows Giga walking beside them, pounding his chest, and hitting a car window with a closed fist, investigators recounted.
At a news conference with the NAACP Friday, Broward public defender Gordon Weekes laid out his take on what the internal affairs investigation showed.
“He's out there using the N-word profusely, slinging around like it's bad weather,” Weekes said. “He's looking to turn this into a fight. And he confronts people that are leaving the parking lot. He punches one of their windows. He not satisfied with that. He then follows the car, and he tries to confront the car and punches the window again. The gentleman gets out of their car and they confront him, but he doesn't back away. He narrows the distance between them. He takes a fighting stance. But he doesn't get the best of it. He gets the worst of that situation.”
Giga denied using racial slurs, telling IA investigators, in part, “That’s not a part of who I am…There’s no reason that I would use that kind of language.” When asked about his previous statement that he was trying to break up a fight when he was attacked, he responded, “I don’t recall anything I was said, but given the nature of my head injuries that night, I could have said I was Jesus.”
His attorney also denied Giga ever claimed he was injured while trying to break up a fight, though two police investigators reported he did, in fact, make that claim.
As for Giga now seeking prosecution of the men he encountered, Weekes said Giga’s credibility as a witness or victim would be badly damaged.
“Lie number one from the very beginning. He was lying to his fellow officers about what his intention was, because we see from the video he was never breaking up a fight,” Weekes said. “He was instigating a fight. He was starting a fight with anyone he could find.”
Retired Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes reviewed the report for the NAACP, of which she is a lifetime member, and she agreed with Weekes that the prospects for prosecuting the men who struck Giga are slim.
“He just started calling them the N-word and telling them to leave the parking lot, a place where they had a right to be,” she said at the news conference.
“And so they decided to leave. They decided, you know, hey, look, let's deal with this. We don't know who this guy is. He's following us, assaulting us. Doing criminal mischief against our cars.”
The department sustained four policy violations against Giga, including conduct unbecoming related to the events at the bars, and neglect of duty, for allegedly not properly responding to a burglary while his car was parked, idling for hours, on a beachside street. Two other policies involved alleged improper use of his police vehicle.
While the chief signed off on the firing last month, the decision falls to the city manager’s office.
Acting City Manager Susan Grant said she is “reviewing the findings and the chief’s recommendation and will continue to follow the established disciplinary appeal process. Officer Giga remains on administrative leave with pay during this process.”
Giga has been reprimanded five times and suspended four times, according to records provided by the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. Several of them related to his use of police vehicles.
But, department records state, he was reprimanded in 2022 after a social media video showed him touching the rear end of a woman while in uniform outside a nightclub. He was also reprimanded in 2020 after a former girlfriend reported and he admitted using restricted databases to access her personal information. He received a letter of reprimand.
Citing that disciplinary history, NAACP-Broward President Marsha Ellison said, “You know, we know where there's smoke, there's fire …They have some very good officers in the city of Fort Lauderdale. Unfortunately, Officer Giga is not one of those people.”
Gibbons, Giga’s attorney, said his client “has demonstrated resilience and remains committed to returning to his police officer duties,” adding he “is hoping to get a fair opportunity to address the alleged administrative violations before the city manager or, if necessary, an independent fact finder.”
