Former Opa-locka police Sgt. German “GB” Bosque — who has been jailed four times and has a longer internal affairs rap sheet than any cop in Florida — is back behind bars.

State investigators arrested Bosque, 49, on Friday evening, charging him with kidnapping, battery and tampering with a witness who had tried to file a complaint against Bosque. He faces life in prison if convicted of the kidnapping charge, a first-degree felony.

On Saturday, Bosque was being held without bond at Miami-Dade County jail. His lawyer, C. Michael Cornely, was trying to get him released, saying that Bosque is being treated differently because he is a police officer.

“It’s a travesty of justice that a police officer is in jail for allegedly holding someone in jail for 14 minutes and that justifies as kidnapping,” Cornely said. “We are eagerly waiting to go in front of our judge to seek justice.”

The arrest stems from an August 2011 domestic call that Bosque and several other Opa-locka officers responded to.

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Bosque punched a man in the face after the man refused to hand over his 14-month-old child to the toddler’s mother.

The man drove to the Opa-locka police station later that day to file a complaint against Bosque. But the sergeant interceded, investigators said, cuffing the man and tossing him in a holding cell for 14 minutes. The man never got to file his complaint, and Bosque didn’t report the incident.

Over the course of a 15-month investigation, police interviewed nine people and reviewed photographs of the victim’s bruised face, finding enough evidence to file charges, Bosque’s arrest report noted. He turned himself in at 5 p.m. Friday and was booked without bond into Miami-Dade jail.

Opa-locka Police suspended Bosque with pay in April 2012, once the department learned that state investigators had launched a criminal probe into his alleged actions. After Bosque was ordered to turn in his city-issued weapons pending the investigation, he left one out: a high-power assault rifle that was in the possession of Bosque’s future father-in-law.

That led to his termination in October — the sixth time Bosque has been dismissed from Opa-locka in his 20-year police career.

“It’s a witch hunt,” Bosque told the Miami Herald at the time.

As he had done the previous five times, Bosque tried to fight the termination. He appeared before an arbitrator last month to appeal the city’s decision. The arbitrator has not made a ruling.

In the previous five instances of him being fired and reinstated — always with back pay — Bosque had been helped by several factors, including city politics, a powerful police union and bungled internal affairs investigations.

Although he no longer is collecting a salary, Bosque is still a certified police officer. The FDLE this month will try to revoke his certification, permanently pulling his badge.

In a city with a history of police corruption and dysfunction, Bosque often has stood out as a poster child for bad behavior.

He has been portrayed in news articles as having the most voluminous disciplinary file of any law enforcement officer in Florida. His internal affairs jacket had a record 45 cases in it as of September. Before landing in Opa-locka, Bosque had been booted from the police academy twice and fired from two other departments.

His arrests prior to Friday’s included charges of driving a stolen truck while in possession of a firearm and a fake police badge, and packing a loaded gun into luggage at an airport. Both of those cases were dismissed. He was found guilty in 1992 of driving with a suspended license in Jacksonville.

Accusations against him over the years include beating up juveniles, bashing the head of a handcuffed suspect, hiding drugs in his patrol car, stealing from suspects, falsifying police reports and calling in sick to take a Mexican vacation.

“I love being a policeman,” he told the Herald last year. “I love looking in the mirror and the person I see.”

The local police union, which has successfully defended Bosque throughout his career, noted that his six commendations in two decades of service make him the most-decorated officer in Opa-locka’s history.

“The idea that he’s the poster boy is only because the city has conducted lousy-upon-lousy investigations,” Andrew Axelrad, attorney for the Miami-Dade Police Benevolent Association, said last month. “There is a reason he has had his job awarded back to him.”

From The Miami Herald Herald