In the most riveting porn star courtroom episode that didn’t involve a murder, Michael Verdugo — the former Hollywood, Florida, cop ousted after his bosses found out about his little Rope Rituals gay bondage flick — has lost his unlawful discrimination argument. Which means a court won’t be forcing the police department to take him back.
Verdugo, who has been running his own real estate/home staging business since 2006 (according to his Facebook page), retains his certification, which means he could be hired as a cop elsewhere. Which he thinks will happen: “It doesn’t have to be Hollywood, but that was my home for a long time, there’s a lot of great cops there, family there, so I wanted to go back there.” And so ends a nine-year career with the Hollywood PD, because once upon a time he got flogged in front of a camera.
Rick Gold
Hey Mike!
Move to Denver, CO and live with me!
Plenty of gay cops here and DPD is hiring!
DR
Well, at least he gets to keep his certification. That’s a major win. As long as he’s honest when he applies for jobs, hopefully he’ll get hired elsewhere if that’s what he really wants. I hope his record as an officer speaks better than his youthful past to other agencies.
Jaroslaw
Dr – please tell me why it is the police dept’s business that he made a “porn” film on his own time? Porn is legal.
Jaroslaw
In case I wasn’t clear, Dr, when you say “at least he gets to keep his certification” and “I hope his record is better than his youthful past” that sounds like he should apologize for something which is shameful (not) and illegal (not). If that’s not what you meant, please clarify.
DR
@Jaroslaw:
He deliberately withheld this information from the police. If he has nothing to be ashamed of, the Hollywood PD shouldn’t have had to find out about it in the manner in which it did. Lying by omission is still lying, and police do have certain standards. There are moral clauses police have to fulfill when applying. He lied, he got busted, he got fired.
Jaroslaw
Umm, this kind of thing is NONE of their business to be asking about, so I we still disagree. I’m not a fan of morals clauses and a number of other things for the reasons already cited – but worse – it gives management one more tool to use selectively. These types of things are not applied equally.
So from a moral standpoint, who is worse – the guy who screws around on his wife and breaks up his family via divorce or a guy who has no family who makes a bondage video?
DR
@Jaroslaw:
Again, he lied on his app. He got caught, got fired, but at least he can be a cop somewhere else. Now he knows he needs to be honest.
He is not the first person to be burned by a pornographic past; there was a straight boy who appeared in a heterosexual “boys gone wild” vid back in the late 90s, IIRC. He was a student at a university in Arizona (U of AZ, as I recall), got a couple of hundred bucks to appear in a shower scene with a couple of young ladies, and then sued the porn company when he couldn’t get into law school because of the video. And let me repeat, it was a straight boy in a straight video.
Professions have moral clauses, whether we like it or not. Lying about your past makes you look that much less trustworthy. And let’s face it, any good defense attorney would have a field day with this guy; I can see the cross-examination now when he gets raked over the coals for lying about his past on his application as evidence of his propensity to lie. What a nightmare for the Hollywood, Florida PD and the prosecutors who have to work with him.
prohomo
@Jaroslaw: Oh really? You think nothing innappropriate about a public servant appearing in porn?! Wow, mighty morals indeed. Why risk your legitimate career by doing porn when you can just exercise your sexuality in the privacy of your personal life? I don’t get how people can be so casual about performing in porn and how that can be found out.
Justin Russo
There’s going to be a hell of lot more of these kind of cases in the future since everyone and his brother seems to put naked pictures of themselves on the internet.
I predict twenty years from now no one will care, just like now no one cares if twenty years ago someone smoked pot.
Jaroslaw
Prohomo – I’m not saying porn is the best thing ever. But you are buying into the system when you say stuff like you do. Why indeed should his career be compromised over something LEGAL?
Think please about what I’m saying. I’m hardly the biggest liberal on the block, but this is narrowminded nonsense thinking to talk about “morals.” Did you answer the question of who is more moral – the porn star or the cheating husband/wife?
What have our “moral” politicians done? Sold us down the river – we will not have social security, everything we do is by definition – a candybar is pure if it has less than 5 rat hairs in it…. etc. etc. Is it really pure though? There are thousands of things like that. We have had several wars for oil in which thousands of civilians and soldiers have died, spending a billion dollars A DAY. 10’s of thousands more are maimed and crippled – and our veterans are treated terribly and the VA doesn’t have a clue how it is going to pay for it all. What about the FEMA fiasco and the people STILL living in trailers how many years after Katrina?
Porn is positively moral compared to that. (as long as there is no coercion or minors involved) Every single person is sexual and has sexual needs. Don’t they?
Jaroslaw
#7 DR you are really getting on my nerves. HE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO LIE IN THE FIRST PLACE BECAUSE HE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ASKED. What is it that you don’t get about that?
you have never answered the question WHY the police need to know that in the first place, why it is their business what LEGAL activities this guy does on his own time. PERIOD
Answer the questions or you need to stop harping about morals clauses. You know there was a lady working in a cafeteria at a school that happened to have a porn past. She had worked there for years and there were no problems. Don’t you wonder who found out? HOW did they find out? They were LOOKING at PORN and decided to be NASTY and tell.
DR
@Jaroslaw:
I don’t care if I’m getting on your nerves or not, Jaroslaw. Certain professions expect more of their employees than others. This isn’t about the porn, it’s about the lie, and if you can’t grasp how lying on a job application to become a police officer is a bad thing, that’s not my problem.
If a profession chooses to have a morals clause which a prospective employee deliberately and willfully disregards by failing to disclose something, then said employee has to face the consequences. If you don’t want to disclose your past, then go work at McDonald’s.
B
Re No 11, it isn’t even clear if he was really lying. According to QUEERTY’s original article http://www.queerty.com/was-michael-verdugo-fired-from-his-cop-job-for-being-gay-or-for-starring-in-fetish-porn-20100126/ Verdugo was paid $700 for appearing in this film. It probably took a day or two to make it, and he was probably an independent contractor, not an employee. Not remembering it would be similar to not remembering that, as a child, you made a few dollars by mowing some Mafia boss’s lawn because the kid you usually did that was on vacation.
BTW, he made it in 1996 at the age of 22. Most likely at the
time, it did not occur to him that someone could download the
video over the Internet – if he had an Internet connection, it
was probably via a 56 kilobit/sec link that would have been
far too slow for video.
I think firing him because “he didn’t fill out his application
accurately” is just an excuse – the real reason is that he was
in a porn video and the higher-ups find that embarrassing.
Jaroslaw
#11 Thanks for some sanity in the discussion B.
Dr, of course you don’t care if you’re getting on my nerves, because you don’t want to discuss the issues.
As B said, we really don’t even know what was on the application and I think just because someone is hiring you, they should not be able to ask anything they want. He may have not even deliberately lied – I didn’t realize he was 22 when he did this.
AGAIN, he did LEGAL things on his own time; for this THIRD time, why is is the police’s right to ask such things or why do they need to ask such things?
Better still and again unanswered WHO in this great “Morals” universe let the cat out of the bag BUT someone who was LOOKING at porn? Imagine me being against casino gambling and saying I saw YOU in the Casino? What was I doing there? POt calling the kettle black.
So, on the next job application, can we ask if you ever cheated on your spouse, or your taxes? Have you ever speeded? Any tickets that are now officially off your records, but the hiring authority can ask anyhow? If you know they’re not on the record, if you say they’re not, you’re still lying right? Have you ever been fired from a job? Have you ever had VD? There is a host of things they should not ask and that YOU would not want to be asked.
Jaroslaw
#12 DR – I’m sure you don’t care if you’re getting on my nerves since you don’t want to address the issues.
Why do we need morals clauses for this type of thing? He didn’t rob a bank. Why should he have been asked at all?
And in this great “Morals” universe, it really should matter WHO told. How did they find out unless they were browsing porn themselves? isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?
I don’t happen to think just because someone is hiring me they can ask anything they want, you do. The litmus test for questions should only be IS IT RELEVANT to the job? Please answer why this man should have to explain why he did something LEGAL on his own time.
T.
@Jaroslaw: They really don’t have a good reason but they do have the right because they were the ones hiring him and expected him to be honest. If being gay was no big deal then he shouldn’t have lied. The reason how and why they found out may be that they were going on the internet to track kiddy porn and ran into his video by accident. The police do many types of things and searching for kiddy porn sites to shut down is one of them. He seems like a good guy but he should have thought ahead.
Jaroslaw
T – I appreciate your tempered response – I’m really tired of the BUT HE LIED FOLKS here. Thank you for not continuing the drumbeat… But the laws DO restrict what can be asked at hiring. Just not this particular thing apparently and I keep asking what relevance him being in (ONLY one apparently) porn flick has to do with his job? I was on another site and a former straight porn lady was working in the kitchen at a school and when the parents found out, they wanted to fire her. I don’t know if she was asked or not on her job application and I don’t care, don’t you see? If our society has so many moral qualms (while at the same time everyone is looking at porn – hypocrites!!!) then put these people on welfare otherwise let them make a living. It is a well known fact that often the people that squawk the loudest are guilty themselves. I also think morals clauses are just another tool to punish certain people. It is like any other rule – selectively enforced but it shouldn’t be there in the first place.
As to who told, isn’t searching for kiddie porn a stretch? I don’t think he used his real name. And to expect all 22 year olds to “think ahead” is unrealistic. You get to make mistakes when you are young. I don’t know his situation in life at that time. He may have desperately needed the money.
and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE for the last time – what he did was legal – so he should NOT have been asked about it at all under ANY circumstances.
Jaroslaw
I just had another thought- when I speak about ‘power & control’ remember this is over the little person. When congressmen do things often very much ILLEGAL (the opposite of what Verdugo did) they go in front of an ethics board and get “censured.” Now some may say I’m changing the topic, and sort of maybe I am, but in another way no. The rules should apply to everyone equally and at all times and they never will. That is why I could NEVER ever vote as a jury member to allow anyone to lose their job so unfairly. FRankly, this guy seems to be doing very well at his real estate job so I think it was the city’s loss.
Joey Hart
Hey Michael! Come be my private body guard!