An attorney for a fired San Antonio police officer who allegedly tried to feed dog excrement to a homeless person has said he’s “confident that in arbitration” the former officer would win back his job.

That might happen. Fired officers who appeal to outside arbitrators often win back their jobs. In the past seven years in San Antonio, five of 13 rulings were reduced or overturned by arbitrators on appeal — and all five were initially terminations.

But Matthew Luckhurst, the fired officer, bears another self-inflicted wound that should seal his fate as an ex-cop. Shortly after the dog-excrement incident, he pulled another sick, scatalogical prank, according to a police source.

In June, Luckhurst smeared tapioca pudding on a toilet in the women’s restroom of the downtown bike-patrol office — a gag that so disgusted a pregnant female officer she became ill, the source said.

Sgt. Jesse Salame, a police spokesman, would not confirm any additional allegations.

“Everything is pending,” Salame said. “There’s nothing that’s releasable until (Luckhurst) is served and has had an opportunity to meet with the chief (William McManus).”

Luckhurst did not return a message seeking comment Monday. Ben Sifuentes, his attorney, would not comment on the tapioca allegation.

“I haven’t seen any of that,” Sifuentes told me.

Later, Sifuentes emailed further comments.

“I respect the First Amendment and your right to have anonymous sources,” he wrote. “Having said that, I find it most unusual that you have access to this alleged information.”

More unusual are the allegations against Luckhurst, a five-year SAPD veteran assigned to the department’s bike-patrol unit.

In May, he allegedly sandwiched dog feces in bread and left it next to a homeless man. Luckhurst told other bike officers, who immediately told him to throw away the sandwich, according to the source.

Luckhurst later bragged about his antics to other officers, who reported them to the department’s Internal Affairs division in July, prompting an investigation.

“Firing this officer was the right thing to do,” Mayor Ivy Taylor said in a statement to the San Antonio Express-News on Friday. “His actions were a betrayal of every value we have in our community, and he is not representative of our great police force.”

Sifuentes told Express-News Staff Writer Josh Baugh that the incident “didn’t happen.”

“I’m confident that in arbitration, we will prevail,” he said.

If you think no arbitrator would reinstate an officer accused of such depraved behavior, consider the troubling case of Michael Garza.

In 2012, while on duty, Garza was drinking alcohol and driving his girlfriend in a city-owned vehicle from a bar to her apartment when her ex-boyfriend, Alfredo Aragon, began shooting at them, according to an internal police investigation.

Garza chased Aragon to his Northwest Side home. As the father of four tried to run inside, the officer fatally shot him in the back.

McManus fired Garza from the force and personally filed murder charges against him. (A grand jury declined to indict.)

Relying on the police union’s collective bargaining agreement with the city, Garza appealed his termination, triggering arbitration that proceeded like a trial. In June 2015, swayed by the union’s arguments, an arbitrator reduced Garza’s punishment to a 15-day suspension, returning him to the force.

A 2011 paper, “Police Discipline: A Case for Change,” described the problems with such arbitration.

“The disciplinary appeal processes often weaken the purpose of discipline,” stated the paper, published by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “Police executives’ disciplinary decisions are frequently overturned or reduced by review boards and arbitrators, undermining the impact of the discipline.”

The paper cited a study in Cincinnati that found that “when fired officers appeal to an outside arbitrator, they get their jobs back every time.”

With his alleged pudding prank, however, Luckhurst has only strengthened the city’s argument that he should not be a cop.

bchasnoff@express-news.net