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South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Porn film role costs police officer his job, part on TV show
Gay Hollywood officer plans to sue department for discrimination
By Steve Rothaus, The Miami Herald
January 25, 2010
Michael
Verdugo's 15 minutes of porn film fame cost him his job as a Hollywood
police officer and his budding career as "Mikey V'' of HGTV's Design Star.
Verdugo is fighting to get back his police job and is preparing to sue the Police Department for discrimination.
Hollywood police fired Verdugo — and Design Star dumped him — after a 1996 video turned up on the Internet showing the
future cop in a 15-minute bondage scene from a gay porn flick called Rope Rituals.
"I don't regret it," Verdugo, 35, said of his one-time appearance at
age 22 in porn, three years before he became a police officer. "It was
a time in my life that I wanted to explore."
Verdugo, billed as Jeremy Wess in Rope Rituals, said he performed nude in the short scene, but didn't engage in
hard-core sex. "It was all role-playing bondage. I was tied. I used
handcuffs later on in my career."
Just after the video turned up in July 2008, Design Star uninvited Mikey V from a reunion episode. Hollywood police put Verdugo
on administrative leave with pay. An investigation followed and the
department fired him in January 2009 for not disclosing on his police
application that he had made the porn film. An arbitrator recently
upheld the termination.
Now, Verdugo has asked his attorney,
Alberto Milian, to file a civil lawsuit against Hollywood police for
wrongful termination and discrimination.
"When you're a gay cop
in a paramilitary organization like law enforcement, a lot of
discrimination exists," said Milian, a Coral Gables criminal defense
attorney who also specializes in labor law for police officers and
firefighters. "He was a damn good cop. This guy was an asset and
there's no doubt his talents were very useful to the people of
Hollywood."
The city denies firing Verdugo, a one-time undercover officer, because he is gay.
"This had nothing to do with Mike Verdugo's sexuality. It had to do
with his honesty. The application process to become a police officer is
very arduous," Hollywood spokeswoman Raelin Storey said.
Hollywood Police Chief Chad Wagner determined Verdugo had not been
honest on his application because he omitted the porn film, Storey
said, and "that was why he was let go."
Verdugo said he never
gave thought to putting the movie on his résumé when he first became a
Lauderhill cop in 1999, or when he applied to the Hollywood department
two years later.
He believes his sexual orientation had plenty
to do with his firing, that if a male police officer appeared nude in a
straight porn film his police buddies would be "high-fiving him in the
hallway."
Verdugo said he was offered a part in a gay porn film in 1996 at the old Copa dance club in Fort Lauderdale. He filmed Rope Rituals in San Francisco, was paid $700 and that was the end of his porn career, he said.
The brawny Verdugo, who grew up in Hialeah, appeared during the 2008 season of Design Star.
He placed fourth that season and was supposed to return for a reunion
episode, but the series dropped him after the porn news broke. He now
owns an interior design company, Verdugo Design Group, and a company
that fixes up vacant homes, Elite Home Staging.
Verdugo said he
always was out in both Lauderhill and Hollywood police departments and
that he even briefly dated a fellow Hollywood police officer.