It's been a rough 12 months for Knoxville's finest. Here is a recap of their crimes, bad press, and controversial moves.
Feb. 7, 1997: Sgt. David McGoldrick, a 23-year veteran, crashes into a woman's car at Dr. Martin Luther King and Ben Hur avenues. He fled the scene and later tried to cover up the incident by reporting the car stolen. He eventually confessed and retired. A judge sentenced him to probation, with the chance to wipe his record clean this year. His victim, Nakita Hall, settled her civil suit out of court and was awarded $28,000.
June 4: Officer Bobby Maxwell kills 63-year-old James Woodfin with a 12-gauge shotgun while trying to serve a misdemeanor warrant for failing to appear in court on a disorderly conduct charge. Maxwell had kicked in the bathroom door of Woodfin's College Homes apartment. Sitting on the toilet, Woodfin fired his shotgun first, police say. Maxwell and five other officers were later exonerated by Internal Affairs.
Oct. 17: Juan Daniels is shot by police officers Chris Caulpetzer and Bobby Solomon nine times in his basement, after he charged them with a hunting knife. Holding flashlights in the darkened basement, several white officers talked for about an hour with the drunk, suicidal Daniels, trying to convince him to surrender. Daniels, a black man, asked to speak to several people, but was only allowed to talk with his roommate.
Oct. 21: More than 350 people, mostly black residents, angrily voice their concerns about police brutality. Mayor Victor Ashe pledges to improve relations between the police and African Americans. That same day, Police Chief Phil Keith says he is opposed to a citizen's review board.
November: Mayor Ashe appoints a task force, including Chief Keith, to look at ways to improve the police department and get more citizen input.
November: Officers John Kemp Jr. and Michael Sweat resign when faced with charges they lied to Internal Affairs, mishandled evidence and illegally searched a suspect's home.
Dec. 14: Officer John Szczepanowski beats Jack Longmire while he sits handcuffed on the sidewalk. Two other police officers had struggled with and subdued the accused wife-beater prior to Szczepanowski showing up.
December: Tennessee's Police Officer Standards and Training Commission decertifies KPD's training academy for deficiencies in its firing range. POST re-certified the academy Jan. 16.
Jan. 9, 1998: Andre Stenson dies after fleeing from a traffic stop and struggling with four white police. Police speculate Stenson died from a cocaine-induced heart attack and claim crack was found in his car and near where he struggled with police. The medical examiner later ruled Stenson died of a rare heart condition, triggered by the stress and extreme exertion of the incident.
Jan. 13: Mayor Victor Ashe announces the creation of a commission (headed by attorney Bernard Bernstein), to evaluate all aspects of the police department. That night, 500 residents, the majority of them black, attend the City Council meeting. Several condemn the killing of Stenson, and demand Keith's ouster and a Citizens' Review Board.
Jan. 14: Police announce cocaine was never found in Stenson's car, after claiming it was for four days. Police Spokesman Foster Arnett takes the blame for the misinformation. Arnett says an officer at the scene (whose identity he says he has forgotten) told him a police dog detected drugs in the car. Police say Arnett failed to "clarify" the information. Arnett was given a written reprimand.
Jan. 15: Mayor Ashe and Chief Keith announce they now support a civilian review board.
KPD Task Force disbands early, offering its support to the Bernstein Commission. Members say the KPD suffers from nepotism and officers need sensitivity training. Some recommend moving Internal Affairs out of the department and heading it with a higher ranking officer than sergeant, as it currently is.
Jan. 30: After an Internal Affairs investigation of the Dec. 14 arrest, Szczepanowski is fired. Days later, Sgt. Dick Taylor and his son, officer Robert Taylor, both accused of covering up the incident, are also fired. Sgt. Roger White is demoted and suspended; Sgt. Tom Fox is suspended.
Feb. 11: Former Deputy Chief Rudy Bradley is hired by the department for $200-a-day as a "community liaison." Bradley declines an interview with Metro Pulse.
Feb. 24: Officers Caulpetzer and Solomon are exonerated by Internal Affairs in the killing of Juan Daniels.
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Is a Citizen's Review Board the answer to
KPD's problems?
by Joe Tarr
At 7:30 in the morning March 13, 1997, David Burnette woke to a pounding on the front door of his Cedar Lane home.
The 51-year-old jumped out of bed and saw a Knoxville Police Department officer holding a gun against the window. "You better open the goddamn door now," the cop bellowed.
Burnette slipped on his sweat pants and went to the front door. When he opened it, another policeman pointed a handgun at his face. This cop yelled at him to raise his hands and back away.
Without a search warrant or an invitation, the two policemen walked into Burnette's home. They had an arrest warrant for his son, and they wanted to know where he was.
Burnette told the cops his son wasn't there and that they had no right to barge into his home.
"I can do any goddamn thing I want to. Your son tried to kill three people, and I'm going to take care of it," one of the officers told him. The officer called Burnette a poor father and a damn liar and said he had no business questioning them.
The other officer searched Burnette's home. The two left when they couldn't find his son.
Could this story Burnette told to the KPD's Internal Affair's unit be true? Are police officers, saddled with the stress of their job and the mandate to nab more crooks, violating Constitutional rights? Are they brutalizing people they perceive as enemies to be defeated?
The questions aren't new ones, in Knoxville or any other city. But the scrutiny here has been intensified after a seven-month period in which three black men died while white officers tried to arrest them. Critics say the deaths are the symptom of much deeper problems. They see an institution that permits violent abuse and harassment of the people police are supposed to serve.
"We've seen three deaths recently. Imagine how many incidents occurred that didn't result in deaths, just stitches and mild concussions and a few broken ribs. This is just the tip of the iceberg," says Harry Wiersema, a criminal defense lawyer.
Who watches the police? Who should hold them accountable when they cross the line from keeping peace to trampling civil rights? As a committee appointed by Mayor Victor Ashe ponders those questions, Knoxville police officers and their critics alike say the answer starts with understanding the realities of street-level policing—what goes on when no one's watching.
The Accusations
The problem is not strictly a racial one, but it is particularly evident in poor black communities, which have less power to hold police accountable.
Dewey Roberts, president of Knoxville's NAACP, says there is a culture allowing and encouraging police to harass, intimidate, and abuse black and poor people.
"I don't want to paint all officers, but there is a pattern of officers going to the inner-city community trying to entice young African Americans so they can arrest them," Roberts says. "They are intimidated, so they in turn try to intimidate and get the upper hand. It's almost like it's warfare between the police and the inner city."
When Jamesena White's son Jim shot himself two years ago, she grabbed the phone, dialed 911, and screamed, "My son has shot himself, I need an ambulance."
Instead, a police car was sent to her home in Western Heights. The officers stepped over her son's body and threw her younger son against the wall. "They thought he did it," White says.
Whatever faith White had left in the police was wiped out last June when officers killed her father, James Woodfin. Entering his apartment on a misdemeanor warrant, police shot Woodfin as he sat on the toilet with a shotgun. He fired at them when they kicked in the bathroom door, police say. White is disgusted because she believes police should have waited her father out and called in negotiators.
"Blacks have always had problems with police beating them, but they're through beating. They kill now," she says.
But police abuse starts with and usually takes much subtler, lesser forms, like rough-housing, harassment, stealing money out of their wallets, or just plain rudeness, critics say.
"What is excessive force? If I give someone a speeding ticket and I let that escalate to an arrest, that's excessive force," says A. James Andrews, a
former Washington, D.C. beat cop and criminal justice professor who now practices law in Knoxville.
Rather than charging someone with disorderly conduct, Andrews contends it's better to let them cuss and swear, give them their ticket, and let them go. "I'm still intact as a person. I didn't act as judge and jury," he says.
Wiersema remembers watching a female Knoxville officer frisk down an older drunk man at the police station. A large number of other cops were watching, and Wiersema says he was perceived as another KPD employee.
"She was being verbally and physically abusive to him," he says. "The white male police officers were standing around laughing about it...She was proving herself. Prove you're mean enough to handle a drunk male."
Internal Affairs
If you have a complaint against the police, the easiest place to go is the department's Internal Affairs. Located in the police department, the office answers directly to police Chief Phil Keith.
To get to IA, you must get a plastic visitors badge from the front desk at the police station. An IA investigator will come lead you past a locked door, around an L-shaped hallway to a narrow suite of offices.
The front office is a crowded, bland little room, where an amicable middle-aged secretary works at her computer. One row is devoted to several filing cabinets, which hold the completed investigations of past complaints—which are open to the public. The department is staffed by three sergeants and a police officer.
When someone complains about an officer, their statement is tape-recorded (and later transcribed). The complaints are read or played to the officer in question, who is then interviewed by IA investigators. The officers face disciplinary actions if they don't talk to IA, but their statements can't be used as evidence against them in any criminal proceedings.
Sgt. Gordon Catlett, a 30-year KPD veteran who heads IA, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in testimony this week to the Bernstein Commission, appointed by Ashe to study the KPD and offer improvements, Catlett said his department investigates 50 to 60 complaints a year, the majority of them for abusive language or excessive force. It also investigates other serious complaints, including sexual harassment, falsifying records and stealing. Minor complaints are usually referred to the officer's supervisor.
Many allegations boil down to the complainant's word against the officer's. Catlett says IA can force the officers to take a lie detector test, but not complainants. About half of complainants are willing to take such a test, he says. Sometimes the polygraphs show both the cop and the citizen are telling the truth.
Margaret Held, an attorney working for Citizens for Police Review, a group pushing for a police review board, has a problem with the way IA handles many of its complaints. Held and others have been going through case files from the past few years. Of the 50 or so excessive force complaints from 1996 and 1997, IA found none of them valid, Held says. That makes her skeptical, particularly since in some cases officers never offer an explanation for their actions.
She points to one incident where a car was stopped at Davenport and Sevier Avenue at 3 a.m. in February 1997. The driver was given a sobriety test. One passenger turned out to be wanted on a warrant for auto theft. Another passenger, Timothy Allen Cody, was cuffed and put on the ground.
Cody, who could not be reached for comment for this story, later complained that he was injured by police. The 31-year-old man eventually dropped his complaint; and IA got several conflicting reports from the three passengers about what happened. But Held says the officer's own testimony shows he did something wrong.
"Passenger number three had no warrant, no record. The officer does not say he resisted in any way, but he cuffed him and put him on the ground so much that he chipped his tooth, got a concussion, and had to go to the hospital," Held says. "I've got a real problem with that."
There are at least a few IA investigations that seem mere formality.
For instance, on March 31, 1997, investigator Edd Stair was at the Kroger grocery store in the Broadway Shopping Center. When a woman tried to pass a fake prescription, Stair and two other off-duty cops went into the parking lot to apprehend her accomplice. Stair tried to turn the man's car off but was unsuccessful. The policeman was pulled backward several feet by the suspect's car as he backed up. "I got loose, and I fired one round at him and the vehicle. And he was still in the process of backing up when I did that, and he took off," Stair told IA.
Stair seems to have violated department policy on the use of deadly force, which is acceptable only when an officer's life or someone else's life is in danger. And police are not supposed to shoot at moving cars except when "the member feels that their life or the life of innocent citizens would be in imminent danger if the suspect is not immediately halted."
But Stair was never asked by IA what mortal threat a fleeing prescription fraud suspect posed, or why shooting in a crowded parking lot was the best option. Stair was exonerated.
IA doesn't seem to be looking really hard for answers in some of the cases, Held says.
"Our focus is on the complaint process. We believe there are significant flaws within the complaint process. We're not out there to get the cops," she says.
Working the Beat
Chris Bell has been a police officer since December 1994. He has spent much of that time working in the housing developments, including Western Heights, his current beat.
"When you work in the housing developments, it's a high-crime area. There's a lot of drug activity, a lot of shootings, so it's a lot more dangerous," Bell says. "I'm a high-profile officer. My name is well known."
Consequently, a lot of people will complain about him. "When I arrest somebody that's family to them, I can understand them being angry about it."
The idea that he or other officers are pummeling whomever crosses them is ludicrous, Bell says. He's never had to use deadly force, and he's never shot anyone. He's only punched one suspect ever—a drunken wife-beater who tried to fight him, he says. Bell says he's often apprehended violent criminals without incident.
When there are scuffles, "after you're cuffed, it's over. I don't take it any further."
"I go up against a lot of people who are bigger and badder than me. They're not scared. And they don't have rules," Bell says. "A bad guy gets you down and starts winning; he's not going to stop when you quit. He's going to continue to hurt you. That's the way he feels. I'm not talking about a jaywalker, I'm talking about real hard-core criminals."
Despite the danger, Bell says he continues to do the job because he's good at it and he cares. There was an incident recently in Western Heights when gang members opened fire on each other. It was broad daylight and afterwards, children were bawling on the sidewalk from what they'd seen. "I would never say everyone in the projects is a criminal. There are a lot of fine people who live there. I'm there to protect them.
"What would you think if one of your family members got shot? You would want me to go out there and catch who did it," Bell says. "You would want a lot of bad things to happen to that person. The only thing we can do is catch them and send them to jail. A lot of people get mad that we didn't beat them half to death. But my personal thoughts can't enter into it."
On the case of David Burnette and his son cited earlier, Bell's version of the story is significantly different than that set out in Burnette's complaint.
Bell had had a few run-ins with Burnette's son, Dean, an alleged drug dealer who was believed to carry a gun. Late Friday, March 7, Bell says he chased Burnette for 15 miles, from Mississippi Street to Raccoon Valley Road in Powell. During the car chase, Bell says, Burnette tried to ram his car three or four times and tried to run his squad car into a tractor-trailer. Burnette eventually abandoned the car and fled on foot. The following Monday, Bell put out three warrants on Burnette. The officer had four days off, but he kept checking the county jail to see if Burnette had been caught.
When he went back on duty, Thursday, March 13, the first order of business was tracking Burnette down.
"My intent was to catch him, because he's gonna kill somebody in a vehicle," Bell told IA investigators.
After roll call, he enlisted the help of officers James Hellinger and Felix Vess. Vess went around back of the house, in case anyone tried to flee. Hellinger and Bell went to the front.
Because they believed Dean Burnette was a dangerous man, their guns were drawn but not pointed at anyone, Bell told IA. Bell and Hellinger both say they never cursed the elder Burnette or harassed him. They made a quick glance through the house. They say Burnette was the one cussing and screaming. When he told the officers his son turned himself in the night before, they left. "The only hateful thing I advised him was I said, 'Sir, the reason we're here is because your son tried to kill three people the other night, including me,'" Bell told IA. "Your son doesn't understand what he's doing, he's running a vehicle, he is going to kill somebody. I don't know how you raised your son, but your son is dangerous."
IA investigators interviewed all three officers, along with Burnette. Bell was found guilty of trying to serve a warrant on someone who had already turned himself in. A written reprimand was placed in his file, alongside a number of commendations.
Bell admits he made a mistake in trying to serve the warrants but says he has learned from it. "My life was almost snuffed out," he says, referring to the car chase. "I took that a little personal. It was a mistake."
The complaints about gun-pointing and verbal abuse were not sustained, since it was Burnette's word against the cops.
Burnette would not talk about the incident other than to say, "I feel terribly wronged."
He's hired an attorney to consider other options. But the case illustrates the way the tensions in police work can escalate, and the way perspective changes depending on which side of the badge you're on.
Citizens' Review
There are other agencies capable of investigating the police, including the FBI, the TBI, the Justice Department, the Civil Rights Commission, and the District Attorney General. The City Council and mayor also have oversight power. None of these groups work well as police checks, says UT law professor Neil Cohen. "Politics gets involved and they have so many other responsibilities. The bottom line is a lot slips through the cracks," he says.
The answer, many say, is a citizens' review board. Of the nation's 50 largest cities, 75 percent have review boards.
There are many different types. Some, like Atlanta's, merely review the findings of Internal Affairs departments. (Atlanta's board has yet to disagree with that agency's IA, says spokeswoman Bonnie Ware.) Other boards act only as an appeal mechanism, if complainants aren't happy with how IA handled a situation. Still others are more autonomous, hiring their own investigators to look into complaints.
In Knoxville, a group called Citizens for Police Review has been researching and pushing for a review board since last August. The members have drafted a rough proposal, but they want to get public input on their ideas.
The proposal calls for a nine-member board that would have its own investigative powers. It would only investigate complaints of physical abuse, excessive force, threats, harassment, and slander involving race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.
After reviewing each case, the board would make a recommendation to the police chief, and copies would be sent to City Council and the mayor. The chief would have final say on discipline.
Ron Davis of Citizens for Police Review says it's a way of trying to inject citizens into an unresponsive justice system. The District Attorney General's office, the FBI, the TBI, and police officers themselves are all expected to keep an eye on the police. Yet they work together every day, Davis says.
"They're less likely to challenge something a citizen not in the loop would," Davis says.
For a review board to work, Cohen says it must be independent. It needs to have its own investigators, with an office and a budget not attached to the police department. The members must not belong to special interest groups, like police unions, which could influence decisions. And the board should not be confined in what it can review.
Cohen and Citizens for Police Review both see review boards as an extension of "community policing," a buzz phrase that essentially means getting citizens and police to work together at solving crime and other problems.
Although police are habitually suspicious of review boards, Cohen says, in some cities, they come to like them. In fact, the boards almost always side with officers, he says.
"To me there's no reason on earth police should not support this. Their sole function is to be servants to the people. They're entitled to respect, but they ought to be receptive to input from the people," Cohen says. "It is meaningful public input into a public institution."
Supporters say it is only a start, not a panacea. There are a lot of legal and practical questions that need to be considered carefully.
The Bernstein Commission has been charged with finding answers to these questions. The 10-member group is supposed to recommend the best structure for a review board, how it should be appointed, and what powers it should have.
In the meantime, the group has appointed former Park Junior High School Principal Raleigh Wynn, to act as a community ombudsman. In his office on the second floor of the Civic Coliseum Building, Wynn has been getting seven to eight complaints a week since Jan. 29. He forwards these to Internal Affairs and in some cases tries to mediate between the officer and the citizen, Wynn says.
Sgt. Ed Mitchell, a criminal investigator who is president of the Fraternal Order of Police, says there are already adequate checks on police abuse. He says a review board will create an expensive bureaucracy that could disrupt the way cops do their job. Police are worried about how a board will operate, what qualifications appointees will have, what disciplinary powers they will have, how much money they will cost, and how they will interact with the Civil Service.
"We're being told here's this sack. We don't know what's in it, we don't know what it's going to cost, we don't know what it's going to do. But we're being told, 'By God you're going to buy it,'" Mitchell says.
Mitchell says the FOP wants a referendum on a review board.
Andrews, the D.C.-cop-turned-lawyer, doubts a review board will do much good. Part of the problem is cities aren't entirely accountable for their officers. About 15 years ago, the Supreme Court limited the liability of municipalities when their cops disregard constitutional rights, Andrews says. So if officers break the city's rules, the city can cut them loose to face a lawsuit on their own.
"It takes a lot of pressure off public officials. The financial incentive, or disincentive, is removed," he says.
For real change to occur in any police department, the police chief and the mayor must be committed to making it happen, Andrews says. Using their administrators, they must reward the behavior they want and punish the bad.
Mayor Ashe and Chief Keith both say they support a civilian review board and are committed to rectifying whatever problems there may be.
But while he was being questioned by the Bernstein Commission, Keith insisted that despite perceptions, the current system works well. He said he worries a review board would challenge his disciplinary decisions, undermining his authority.
And the chief said he feared a hostile review board might mean officers will simply go by the book.
"If I can't encourage my officers to take risks, and they only do what the law requires them and what's in these manuals, you'll have a withdrawal of police officers from communities and you'll have a problem in that community and you'll have a problem forever in that law enforcement agency," Keith told the commission.
But for critics who say there already are problems at KPD, Keith's defense is less than convincing.
"I don't see how these things could happen without a wink of the eye of the top brass at KPD. People only do what they feel they can get away with," says the NAACP's Roberts. "KPD is in denial that there's a major problem, regardless of what they're saying."
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