By Kevin Deutsch
An outside investigator will probe a complaint involving inappropriate text messages between members of the Margate Police Department, city officials said.
At a special city commission held Tuesday morning, Margate commissioners approved the hiring of a third party to probe the complaint involving city police. The identities of the police department employee or employees named in the complaint were not revealed during the public meeting, but discussion by officials indicated the case may involve Margate’s Chief of Police, Joseph Galaska.
“My office received a formal complaint on Dec. 13 regarding some inappropriate messages, text messages, between a couple members of the Margate Police Department,” Margate City Manager Cale Curtis said during the meeting. “Due to the nature of the position involved and the city charter, this item is being brought before you” for consideration.
“I believe anything associated with the Chief would be handled by the third party. Any another personnel would be referred over to internal affairs,” Curtis said.
Neither Curtis nor any other city officials at the meeting specified the positions held by anyone named in the complaint nor any other details concerning the text messages.
“I’ve spoken to each of you individually and shared with you the information that I have regarding this complaint and offered my advice on how we should proceed,” Curtis said.
Curtis gave commissioners two options: allow him to hire an independent, third-party investigator to investigate the complaint and report back to them or, as they have done in past cases, have the police department’s internal investigations unit probe the complaint.
“In light of the nature of the position, it would be my recommendation that you hire an outside third-party” to investigate, Curtis said.
Margate City Attorney David Tolces told commissioners it was his recommendation, as well as that of the police department’s internal investigations unit, that a third party investigate the complaint.
No details regarding who the city intends to hire for the investigation were made public Tuesday.
The city’s revealing of the complaint involving inappropriate police text messages comes as Margate fights a lawsuit filed by Jonathan Shaw, who served as Margate’s chief of police from Feb. 2019 until Dec. 2021.
Shaw was fired after an internal police department investigation revealed he had sex with a female officer in his assigned vehicle, traded lurid “sexts” and photographs with her, and abandoned his surveillance duties to meet for sex.
The investigation also found Shaw sent sexts and photos of his penis while on duty and used his authority to get out of trouble when a Florida Highway Patrol trooper caught him and a subordinate female officer having sex in the bed of a department truck, investigators found. A female officer also accused him of abusing and being “sexually violent” with her.
The city kept the nature of the complaints against Shaw secret from the public until the report was eventually released. In the Shaw case, the police department’s internal investigations unit, rather than an outside investigator, conducted the probe.
After his firing, Shaw says the city refused to pay him for 444 hours of accrued personal leave time worth $35,895, according to Shaw’s complaint filed in Broward Circuit Court in 2022.
Shaw is also seeking unspecified monetary relief and damages, the records state.
A mediation conference in Shaw’s lawsuit has been scheduled for Jan. 12, court records show.
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