By
Kate Jacobson, Sun Sentinel
Before
he was handed a badge and a gun as a police officer for Florida Atlantic
University, Jimmy Dac Ho was no stranger to trouble in South Florida.
Fired
from the Broward Sheriff's Office in 2004 after a violent fight with his wife,
Ho spent two years trying to get another job as a police officer. He was rejected
by at least seven departments because of his history at the Sheriff's Office
before he landed at FAU in 2006.
Once there, he racked up complaints of
excessive force, intimidation and sexual harassment. Many of his problems involved women: Records show he was
reprimanded for sending inappropriate text messages and making lewd comments to
female employees and students.
Despite
14 written complaints, Ho was punished just once, after he forced a student who
spit on a security camera to lick off the spit.
Ho's
law enforcement career ended in 2011 after he killed escort Sheri Carter. Ho
handcuffed her with his police-issue cuffs, shot her twice and left her to die
in her Boynton Beach condo. A judge sentenced him to life in prison in May.
FAU
officials have declined to discuss Ho's hiring or his tenure with the school
police force. With the criminal trial over, the school now faces a wrongful
death lawsuit from Sandi Cooper of Wellington, Sheri Carter's mother.
Cooper
said the school should never have hired Ho.
"I'm
trying to comprehend why FAU allowed this animal on the streets," she
said. "I can't comprehend it."
Troubled
beginnings
Ho's
career in South Florida law enforcement spanned almost 20 years, and his
personnel files from the three departments that employed him since 1995 paint a
picture of a man who couldn't stay out of trouble.
He
began at the Lauderhill Police Department in 1994, and left for the Broward
Sheriff's Office in 2002.
Ho's
first sign of trouble came in 1995. An internal affairs report from the
Lauderhill Police in 1995 shows a woman said Ho touched her breast during a
traffic stop. He then came over to her house several times and harassed her,
she said, telling her she looked like "a streetwalker."
The
report said there wasn't enough evidence to prove whether Ho ever touched the
woman, but then-Deputy Chief Michele Riley said in a report Ho was at fault for
commenting about the woman's appearance.
He
was cited for failing to maintain a "standard of courtesy."
His
tenure at the Lauderhill Police Department shows supervisors complained of
sloppy work and error-riddled police reports, records show. But his annual
reports also show Ho was given high marks for teamwork and for his knowledge of
the job.
He
left Lauderhill in 2002 for the Broward Sheriff's Office. Ho worked for BSO for
two years before he got fired. He lost his job after his then-wife, Wendy Ho,
called police during a domestic dispute at the couple's Pembroke Pines home in
April 2004.
According
to an arrest report, Wendy Ho told officers as she reached in to the
refrigerator for milk, her husband slammed the door on her arm and stared into
her eyes for more than a minute. The couple's two children were in the kitchen
and they ran from the room in tears, according to the report.
In
an interview with a Broward sheriff's investigator, Wendy Ho said her husband
had been verbally and physically abusive in the past. The incident in April
2004 was the last straw because her kids at that time were old enough to
realize what was going on, she said.
Ho's
termination papers note that Pembroke Pines Police had been called to the Ho
residence two times before the refrigerator incident, but responding officers
never filed reports.
The
Sheriff's Office fired him in September 2004. In a memo to then-Sheriff Ken
Jenne, a lieutenant colonel said Ho's conduct was "unbecoming" of an
employee, records show.
Court
documents show Ho entered a plea agreement on the misdemeanor battery charge
and was sentenced to five months of probation.
Hired
again
Records
from FAU show Ho applied to more than 10 law enforcement agencies around the
country between 2004 and 2006. He worked security jobs on and off before
landing an interview with FAU.
More
than half of the agencies he applied to disqualified him for employment because
of his history with BSO, according to hiring documents from FAU. Seven of the
11 agencies disqualified him immediately; the others had made no decision by
the time he applied to FAU.
Within
his first three years at the department, 14 recorded complaints were filed
against him. Between 2007 and 2010, records show Ho made sexual innuendoes
toward a residence hall employee, students and female officers.
Ho's
personnel file indicates that his supervisors specifically addressed only three
complaints and disciplined him for one.
In
October 2009, Ho was suspended for two days without pay after he forced a
drunken student who had spit on a security camera to lick the spit off with his
tongue, records show.
