
Problem cops: A systemic failure
BY RON MENCHACA AND GLENN SMITH
Of The Post and Courier Staff
March 5, 2005
Port of Charleston police officer Patrick O'Neal leveled his pistol at
the stunned crowd of dockworkers, barking orders as he straddled a
longshoreman who lay handcuffed and bleeding at his feet.
Moments before, dockworker Richard Brown made the mistake of walking
away from O'Neal during an argument over a parking ticket. O'Neal
jammed his gun into Brown's neck and slammed the burly longshoreman to
the ground, witnesses said.
Brown lay flat on his stomach, struggling to see, his eyes burning from
a close-range blast of the officer's pepper spray.
"He was crazy," Brown said of the June 19, 2004, incident. "I've never
seen nobody like that."
Others had.
O'Neal's explosive temper had surfaced earlier in his law enforcement
career, but State Ports Authority officials didn't know this when they
hired him to guard one of the nation's busiest ports.
In fact, a North Charleston police official who once ran the port's
police force helped line up O'Neal for the job. Port officials say they
were not told O'Neal had twice been investigated by his former
employer, the North Charleston Police Department, for his role in
off-duty fights. He had been arrested, reprimanded and forced out the
door.
On paper he seemed to be the ideal job candidate. That's because the
system designed to alert police agencies to problem officers broke down
at every level, leaving O'Neal with an unblemished record.
His case is not unique.
An investigation by The Post and Courier uncovered endemic failures in
the state's system for tracking police officers that allow problem cops
to keep their badges despite histories of misconduct and even criminal
behavior.Among the newspaper's findings:
-- Discipline and recruiting standards vary widely among municipal and
county law enforcement agencies.
-- The state agency responsible for enforcing professional standards
among the state's 14,000 officers lacks basic resources such as field
investigators and a disciplinary board.
-- Cash-strapped police agencies sometimes overlook an officer's past
problems to fill their ranks because they can't compete with the police
salaries in larger cities.
-- Some police officers with criminal records remain in law enforcement
through court programs that wipe charges off their records.
-- Sloppy record-keeping, fear of lawsuits and the code of silence
within law enforcement make it difficult for hiring departments to
adequately investigate an officer's past.
Other states are not immune to the problem, and many have adopted new
laws aimed specifically at weeding troubled cops out of the profession.
But South Carolina is slow to change or acknowledge that its system is
broken.
SYSTEM RIDDLED WITH HOLES
Until three years ago, the state turned a blind eye toward misconduct,
allowing police departments to hire virtually whomever they wanted.
Being charged with serious crimes such as manslaughter, kidnapping and
criminal domestic violence didn't stop some cops from finding law
enforcement work in South Carolina.
All the state did was collect reports on misconduct, firings and
resignations from the state's nearly 300 police departments.
In 2002, the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy began taking an
active role in departments' hiring practices. Since then, it has
flagged some 167 officers for possible misconduct and character
problems. It barred 43 of them from returning to law enforcement.
Nobody knows how many problem officers slipped by before the state
started paying attention.
The extent of the problem is difficult to gauge because the state's
records are in such bad shape. They are only partially reliable back to
1997. But those records give an idea of the size of the problem. Since
that time, nearly 800 officers have been fired for misconduct. Another
2,000 received "undesirable separations" in which they were fired or
forced to resign.
Even with the state's stepped up enforcement since 2002, the discipline
system is so riddled with flaws and cooperation among police agencies
so deficient that cops with past problems move from department to
department with relative ease.
Consider the case of Roudro Gourdine. He was hired as a Berkeley County
sheriff's deputy last year despite two allegations that he used
excessive force on suspects in his custody at other departments.
The former Charleston police officer killed a man with his bare hands
inside the department's downtown booking area in 1987. After he was
acquitted of manslaughter charges, he went to work for police in
Andrews, where he was sued for breaking a suspect's collarbone in a
jail cell confrontation four years ago. No charges were filed against
Gourdine, but the suspect sued the town and Gourdine for negligence and
violation of civil rights. The town settled for $15,000.
Known in law enforcement circles as "gypsy cops," such officers account
for only a fraction of the police throughout the state, but their
misdeeds can taint entire departments, engender distrust in the
communities they serve and endanger the public they are sworn to
protect.
Their names are often well-known in police circles, where their
presence rankles those who believe officers should be held to a higher
standard of conduct. But few are willing to speak out about the
problem, fearing alienation and derision from fellow officers.
North Charleston Police Chief Jon Zumalt said it behooves law
enforcement to police itself.
"If an officer does something wrong, whether it's in California or
South Carolina, it has a direct reflection on every officer in the
United States," he said. "We have to guard the profession."
When no one watches the gate, problems can slip through. Examples
abound across the Palmetto State, from Summerville to Seneca. In two
recent cases:
-- A Santee police officer who was speeding in his cruiser while on an
errand for his chief struck a minivan, killing one motorist and
severely injuring another. He landed a new police job in Bonneau before
his role in the accident triggered an indictment for reckless homicide.
The state attorney general's office is prosecuting the case, but the
academy was unaware of the indictment until The Post and Courier asked
about it.
-- The Summerville Police Department found evidence that one of its
officers fabricated being shot and lied about the episode to
investigators. The department allowed him to quietly resign and did not
disclose the findings of its investigation despite indications that the
officer invented similar stories while working at other area
departments.
The problem is not new
North Charleston police took a chance on Edward Frazier in 1992 after
he was pressured to resign from the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office
for undisclosed reasons.
Less than a year later, Frazier shot and killed a close friend and
fellow officer during a drunken fight over a bag of corn chips at a
police convention in Kentucky.
After his arrest, stories emerged about past recklessness on the job.
Prosecutors say Frazier thought it was funny to reach over to other
officers’ holsters and cock the officers’ 9 mm pistols while they were
wearing them. He also fired his pistol on one occasion during horseplay
in the police station parking lot.
North Charleston police didn’t notify the academy of those incidents,
nor did they tell the state about the fatal shooting. A form the
department submitted nearly two years after the shooting stated only
that Frazier, who was convicted of manslaughter, had been suspended
without pay for misconduct.
Consider the case of Randall Price, who continued to find work as a cop
even though he had been fired from his first three police jobs.
The McCormick County Sheriff’s Office canned Price in 1999 for unsafe
driving.
Wagener police dumped him a year later for insubordination.
The following year, the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office fired him after
he was arrested on a criminal domestic violence charge.
After Price completed a court program that wiped the charge from his
record, the Burnettown Police Department hired him. The department
notified the state that it had checked the officer’s references and
learned he was a ‘very good and dedicated officer.’
Or take the case of Daniel W. Blue III, who continues to find police
departments willing to hire him despite a questionable professional
history.
He was fired from one department; and two others, where he once worked,
told the state they wouldn’t hire him back. He was accused of
repeatedly using excessive force while working for Marion police,
destroying a police computer while a Marion County sheriff’s deputy and
failing to return from a suspension as an Atlantic Beach police officer.
Blue has since jumped to two more departments. His latest employer is
the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, which told the state four years ago
that Blue was not welcome to return there.
Blue declined to discuss the allegations that he used excessive force.
He said the other allegations in his employment file are exaggerations.
Marion County’s newly elected sheriff, Mark Richardson, said he
investigated most of the allegations against Blue and had no
reservations about hiring him.
South Carolina is not alone. The same thing happens all over the
country, from big city police agencies to small-town, one-officer
departments.
States have varying abilities to deal with the problem. Most, including
South Carolina, have the authority to take away a police officer’s
certification, but enforcement varies widely.
National efforts to pool each state’s list of officers who have been
stripped of their badges have been stalled for decades, with only 16
states sharing records.
South Carolina is not one of them.
State officials say they would like to participate eventually, but
right now, they can’t even get some local departments to share
information with them.
Local police agencies rely on the academy’s records to determine if
officers they plan to hire have had problems at other departments. But
those same agencies are often reluctant to tell the academy about their
own troublemakers. It becomes a vicious cycle.
When departments don’t do their jobs, the whole system fails.
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