FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - The ousted Fort Lauderdale Police Chief is speaking out days after he was fired from the force.
Larry Scirotto held a media conference at the NAACP building, located along Northwest Sixth Street, Monday morning.
He said he was fired for doing the very thing he was brought in to do.
“If promoting diversity and inclusion in the FLPD is the hill I die on, I will sleep well tonight knowing that I did the right and just thing for this profession, the FLPD and this community,” said the former police chief.
Scirotto was fired by City Manager Chris Lagerbloom on Thursday after six months on the job.
He is now saying he’s not going away without a fight and that all legal actions are on the table.
Scirotto said he was hired to make the police department more inclusive and diverse and was fired for doing just that.
“The city manager warned me that the changes that I would need to make would meet great resistance, and that is ever true today, but he also promised that he would support me all along the way, and I guess that was true until the actual changes started to happen,” said Scirotto.
Scriotto was accused of promoting the officers based on their race, with complaints and investigations referring to the pictures on the walls.
The reports said that Scriotto made a comment saying that “the wall is too white, and I’m gonna change that.” He has said it was taken out of context.
“The conversation was just about how the first organization looks when the entire wall is all white, not it’s too white. There’s no such thing as ‘too;’ that it is all white, and that we’re telling our community that were building a diverse and inclusive organization, and the wall doesn’t represent that,” said Scriotto.
The report also said Scriotto made a statement saying: “This is between Cecil and Eddie. Which one is blacker?”
“That wasn’t why he was promoted. He was promoted because he is educated with a Master’s degree,” said Scriotto.
For now, he is out of a job, willing to sue just to get it back.
He was the fifth police chief for Fort Lauderdale since 2020.
City officials will not comment following Scirotto’s media conference due to possible pending litigation.
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