PORN STAR POLICEMAN TO SUE

A Hollywood policeman has vowed to sue his department to get his job back after he was fired for appearing in a gay porn video made before he became an officer.

Michael Verdugo was suspended pending an investigation in July 2008 after it came to light that he had appeared in the explicit 1996 S&M video Rope Rituals when he was 22 years old.

“I don’t regret it. It was a time in my life that I wanted to explore,” Verdugo told the Miami Herald’s Steve Rothaus.

Verdugo – who also appeared in the US television reality show Design Star – was formally fired from the Hollywood Police department in January 2009 – ostensibly because he had lied in his job application by not disclosing that he had made the film.

Now, the 35 year old, who said that it never occurred to him to include the once-off film on his résumé, has filed a discrimination lawsuit against his former employers claiming that the real reason he was fired was because he is gay.

Verdugo told Rothaus that if a male cop appeared nude in a straight porn film his police buddies would be “high-fiving him in the hallway.”

The police department insists that the real issue was Verdugo’s lack of honesty. “The application process to become a police officer is very arduous,” a spokesperson said.