OK. I’ve made allusions to it in past posts. I haven’t felt comfortable talking about it until it was settled legally. Having finally received the paperwork that says I’m done with everything associated with this case, I can post this now.
If you’ve followed this ‘blog, all two of you, then you know that I lost my job and my career in law enforcement in the spring of 2010. What I haven’t talked about is how all that came about. I’ve had a lot of people ask me about it (I’ve had contact with a fair percentage of law enforcement in NE Georgia as an instructor), and I’ve heard a lot of rumors about it (including that I falsified a C-12 POST form on orders from the Sheriff, which is a load of crap). I get tired of telling the story, so here it is, as something I can refer people to. If they doubt it, they can check with the other people involved. It’s as accurate as it can be from my side of the story.
In 2009, the chief deputy for Barrow County Sheriff’s Office lost his bid for election and his opponent took office; a man who didn’t appreciate folks who didn’t support him (among other people who supported the chief deputy instead of this guy, me). Murray, the former Chief Deputy who lost the election, went to work as the Chief Deputy for Stephens County and offered me a position as the training coordinator there. So, I ended up at Stephens County.
Stephens County, as I’ve posted on the ‘blog, was a mess. Seriously outdated policies and procedures, worn out equipment and uniforms, a brand new jail that no one knew how to run. Supervisors couldn’t manage their people or their divisions. A whole lot of problems and the only people capable of fixing them were me, Murray, and the head of Investigations. So, in addition to creating and running a training program from scratch, I got to be the IT manager, help write a new policy and procedure manual, run the hiring and recruitment process, apply for grant funds, assist Murray with the budget, and run quartermaster- bidding on, purchasing, and disbursing everything from uniforms to bullets. That’s about three full-time and several part-time jobs right there. However, at least the Sheriff did recognize my contributions and promoted me to Lieutenant with a small pay raise. Not sure it was worth the stress level, though.
Stephens County also had a new District Attorney in 2009. One of the platforms both he and the Sheriff ran on was combatting drug crime. When he took office, he formed a multi-jurisdictional drug task force that took officers from each of the local law enforcement agencies in his three-county district. The officers were hired and paid by their parent agencies, but worked for and reported to the DA. Stephens didn’t have a candidate for the task force at the beginning of the year, but the DA had a suggestion for someone for us to hire. The Sheriff gave me his application and I did his background. He’s a good officer, had left his previous agency to go work for Dyncorp, one of the companies that sent contractors to Iraq and Afghanistan, for a year. However, when he left his last agency, he hadn’t gotten his 20 hours of annual training or annual qualification/use of deadly force class.
(In Georgia, all law enforcement officers have to get 20 hours of additional training each year, as well as pass an annual qualification with their handgun and take a use of deadly force class. If they don’t get this training, on midnight of Dec. 31 of that year, they lose their powers of arrest. However, if they make up the training and send in a waiver form, their power of arrest will be reinstated. This isn’t unusual- a lot of cops leave thinking they’ll never get back into law enforcement and have to do a waiver when they do return. When I started at Stephens and did a training audit, I found 15 people in the agency who needed a waiver.)
So, I passed on my findings to the Sheriff, including the fact that he’d need to make up training and do a waiver, and he was hired straight into the task force. This was in the summer of 2009. After that, I never saw him again until October; he was get all of his training through the task force and the DA’s office.
All well and good, until September 2009. Two people from the task force, including this officer, Billy Shane, were following a confidential informant (CI) who was supposed to be meeting a dealer in a motel to buy cocaine. They watched her get into a car with a white male they didn’t recognize, saw him drive her to a convenience store across from the motel, get out and go to an ATM; then saw him give her some money and she left. Well, needless to say, they wanted to know who he was, so they approached the car he was driving. The officers were in plain clothes but had badges around their necks. Billy Shane went to the passenger side while his partner stayed behind the car and held his badge up to the window, and told the guy he was with the drug task force and they wanted to talk to him. The guy looked at Billy Shane, looked at the badge, looked back at Billy Shane, then threw the car in reverse and backed into the officer behind him. Billy Shane saw his partner disappear behind the car, and the driver put it in drive and headed towards Billy Shane. Billy fired two shots, striking the driver in the side. The driver made it about a block before hitting a telephone pole, and died in the hospital.
Well, the GBI investigated and ruled it a justified shooting, which it was. Billy Shane thought his partner had been run over and he was next. (Turns out the partner was just knocked over, not run over, and was fine, but Billy Shane didn’t know that.) Unfortunately, this unknown white male driver was a preacher from a nearby city, who had been seeing the CI (a prostitute) for the past year, and had been paying her for sex; which was what they money they saw him give her was for. None of that mattered, of course; all anyone heard was “Cops kill unarmed preacher”. Needless to say, the press was overwhelming. None of this helped the Sheriff or DA’s moods, both of whom are first-termers worried about re-election.
So, of course, in the course of the investigation into the shooting, folks want to see Billy Shane’s training records. I don’t have any for him, as he never attended any of my classes. I reminded them that he needed a training waiver when he started. Well, in the end, it’s ruled a justified shooting; but, that winter, the inevitable civil lawsuit is filed by the family of the preacher. Once again, they ask for Billy Shane’s training records; once again, I tell them I don’t have any because he never took training from me.
Then in the spring of 2010, they ask for the serial number for his firearm, which no one had asked me for before. I keep records of serial numbers and results of any visits to the range in a 3-ring binder. Official records of qualification are sent in to the state on a different form (and since he had never been to annual qualification with me, didn’t have one). My normal procedure is that when someone is newly hired, I take them to the range and have them shoot so I can judge their skill level when I issue them their gun. It’s not an official qualification, but just a way for me to know how much trouble I’m going to have getting them qualified every year. I put a notation in this three-ring binder when I do; although most times it’s just scribbled on the corner of a target and stuffed into the binder until I get a chance to make an entry.
When I got down the binder to look up his serial number, I stopped to think. Didn’t I take him to the range the day he got hired? I distinctly remembered taking someone to the range that summer; even pictured it in my head. But there was no entry in the binder. Was it possible I took him to the range and never got it transferred into the book? It’s entirely possible… and we didn’t hire anyone to the road that summer; not until the fall. If I remember taking someone, it must have been him.
Oh, crap. If I took him to the range and didn’t notate it (even though I’m not required to), and only now release that fact, it’s going to look suspicious. Especially in the light of the amount of publicity this case has garnered.
At that point, my mind pretty much went blank. I filled out the binder on the assumption that I was correct and had taken him to the range, and submitted that as part of the discovery paperwork. Well, of course, now the GBI- who did the initial investigation into the shooting- want to know where this came from. And I panicked. I told them I didn’t remember when it was put into the binder. That weekend, after talking to the GBI, I remembered what really happened- I had taken someone to the range at about the same time as Billy Shane got hired; but it was an investigator, not Billy Shane. I had forgotten about his hiring. It was this investigator I remembered taking to the range, not Billy Shane. The entry I made in the binder was wrong.
That was a very long weekend. When I finally went back to the GBI and told them that it wasn’t Billy Shane I took to the range, it was this other guy; and lied about not remembering when I made the entry into the book, they dithered and went to the DA to see what he wanted to do. Of course, what else is a first-term DA worried about re-election and with a public relations disaster going to do? He’s going to put a head on the chopping block, is what. So he charged me with false statements, for lying to the GBI about when the entry was made into the binder.
Needless to say, the Sheriff, in the same panicked-first-termer boat as the DA, fired me. This was in June of 2010. I had to wait until October for a court appearance, where I worked out a plea arrangement. There was no point in fighting it; I did lie to the GBI, and “false statements” clearly covers that. It’s a felony, though; so I agreed to voluntarily surrender my law enforcement certifications (of which I had a lot, built up over the past 14 years) in exchange for two misdemeanor charges of Obstruction and Evidence Tampering (which makes it sound like I peed on evidence or something). I was sentenced to one year of probation for each charge, fined $2000, and prohibited from petitioning to have my certifications reinstated for two years. Plenty of people have done far worse and gotten far less punishment, but I have to be thankful it wasn’t a felony charge. It’s being done under First Offender status, so when I completed probation, it will be expunged from my record.
On the down side, I was now unemployed, owing my lawyer $2500 and the State $2000, and discovering that a lot of employers don’t want to hire someone on probation. Or someone who is 42 and vastly overqualified. Or who may have a lot of experience, but in law enforcement, which isn’t directly related to the job applied for.
In any case, I’ve completed my probation by paying the requisite fines, and have been officially released early, with all of the provisions of First Offender status intact. I can, if I wish, petition the Ga. POST Council to have my law enforcement certifications re-instated. How interested they will be in doing this, I don’t know. In any case, this bout with politics in law enforcement has left me wondering if I want to dive in that pool again. Oh, there’s no doubt I did something wrong; I did lie, and the charge of False Statements is justified in that light… but I still feel like I had the pointy end of a stick jammed someplace the sun doesn’t shine and broken off for the sake of someone else’s political career. Why I did what I did, I cannot say… I was under an enormous amount of stress at the time, with a number of responsibilities I wasn’t prepared for, and paranoid that at any second I would screw something up and fall from this precarious perch I’d carved out for myself. And, of course, I did. That doesn’t excuse the lie; it just serves to illustrate the circumstances around it.
Anyway… I’m now pretty much back where I started in 1988, working as a security guard. What else do you do with 14 years of experience in law enforcement? We’ll see where it goes from here.
