Trooper Down! (30 page)

During a routine investigation into the incident, the State Bureau of Investigation and the highway patrol learned of certain “discrepancies” in the trooper's story. In fact, they found there was no van, nor had there been any assailants.

Plagued by personal problems and explaining that the pressures of the job had gotten to him, the trooper admitted he had made up the whole story. The shooting was a hoax.

After voluntarily resigning from the patrol, he cried wolf again, claiming two men had come to his house and fired a bullet at him through the back door. It was another false lead and a sad ending to the officer's career in the highway patrol.

One trooper had such a fear of stopping cars that he wrote “ghost” tickets, using names from the headstones of a local cemetery. After a name he had submitted turned up on an insurance company's computer as a live person who did
not 
get a ticket, the trooper was caught.

Still another officer was suspected of stealing personal property during the automobile accidents he investigated. Nothing could be proved, however, and the accusations never got beyond the stage of disturbing rumors.

Throughout the North Carolina Highway Patrol's fifty-nine-year history, there have been few documented cases of serious misconduct on the job. As a rule, the patrol's careful screening process and insistence on high standards tend to weed out those individuals who, deliberately or otherwise, might betray the organization.

But, as in every other profession, it happens.

One of the more sensational cases of misconduct on the patrol involved a trooper who, in 1986, was arrested and tried on charges of fondling a ten-year-old girl he had placed in his patrol car after stopping her on the road. Patrol policy prohibits officers from putting women and children into their cars unless conditions and circumstances warrant it necessary.

Acquitted by a jury, the trooper was nonetheless fired from the highway patrol, which had conducted its own internal investigation.

Two years earlier, a sixteen-year veteran of the patrol was dismissed after reports surfaced that he had engaged in sex with a woman he stopped for speeding. He was also accused of making suggestive remarks to another female, telling her she was “too pretty not to have a man.”

And in 1979, two troopers were charged with rape, kidnapping, and crimes against nature when they allegedly abducted a nineteen-year-old married woman, drove her to a wooded area, and forced her to perform sexual acts. A judge found no probable cause in the case, but the officers were relieved of their duties following an internal investigation by the highway patrol and the SBI.

Sometimes greed rather than sex is the motivating factor in a trooper's downfall.

In 1977, an ex-highway patrolman pleaded guilty to twenty different crimes, including soliciting to commit murder, obstruction of justice, and grand larceny. According to the charges filed, the former trooper was accused of hiring someone to murder the man who held the mortgage on a motel that he owned. Another charge was later filed against the officer for trying to hire a second individual to kill the would-be assassin. As it turned out, no one was killed, but the ex-trooper received a fifteen-year sentence for his role in the solicitations, being an accessory to thirteen counts of breaking into homes (from which he had received stolen goods), and offering money to one of the hired killers if he would agree not to testify at a preliminary hearing.

Lesser charges have also been brought against highway patrolmen for drunk driving, “fixing” tickets to reduce traffic violations in exchange for favors, failure to report accidents, misuse of state-owned equipment (one off-duty trooper drove his patrol car all the way to New York City to see an automobile race), and use of excessive force.

Crooked cops—like corrupt employees in all walks of life—can be found anywhere. In 1982, for example, a seventeen-year veteran of the Massachusetts State Police was charged with smuggling $1.5 million worth of marijuana from the basement of a local police barracks.

“Out of a thousand people in any segment of society, you're going to get a few who will pull things like that,” said a North Carolina Highway Patrol supervisor. “For the most part, troopers are honest and decent.”

“It's not the individual, it's the job, the profession,” a police official
was quoted as saying in a
Boston Magazine 
article (July 1982). “There are real temptations out there. And the reason is simple; they can get away with it. They don't have to rob a bank or drive a getaway truck. All they've gotta do is
not 
do their job.”

Some say there's a thin line between cop and criminal, for they tend to share the same temptations, the same attitudes, and the same understanding of the criminal justice system—which they both know how to beat.

Because of the stresses inherent in their work, police officers can also easily fall prey to alcoholism. One study estimates that 25 percent of all law enforcement officers have a serious alcohol dependency problem. Even worse, a 1979 report found that 67 percent of the police officers questioned in its sample study admitted to drinking
on duty.

Before 1973, commanding officers in the North Carolina Highway Patrol were responsible for policing their troops and themselves. The trouble was, captains from one region to another held differing views about what constituted a transgression. As a result, the organization had no real guidelines or uniformity for meting out discipline. Nor did the punishment always fit the crime.

“At that time,” said a highway patrol major, “one of the worst things you could do was to separate from your wife. You could be fired or transferred over that. Now we realize that society and the family unit has changed and we've had to adjust our standards.”

By the mid-1970s the patrol saw the need for a more formalized system of disciplinary action as well as a more organized approach to conducting administrative inspections.

That's when the Internal Affairs division was established.

All complaints, whether of a serious or minor nature, come through Internal Affairs at highway patrol headquarters in Raleigh. Headed by Major William Ethridge, a down-to-earth officer who has a reputation among the troopers for being fair and reasonable, the department is staffed by two lieutenants, a first sergeant, and a clerk-stenographer.

It is the role of Internal Affairs to classify each complaint, determine if a serious offense is involved, and if necessary, send team members into the field to investigate allegations against a trooper.

Complaints are categorized into five “types,” from Type Five, the most minor, to Type One, involving serious misconduct on the job.

“Anything that hasn't resulted in injury or loss of respect for the highway patrol is classified in the minor category,” explained Ethridge. “For example, someone complains about a citation—they don't think the trooper should have written them a ticket or they disagree with the charges, so they file a complaint against the officer. That's considered a Type Four or Five. These can ultimately be handled through the district captain or another superior, but are sent here first for review. After a course of action is decided, the reports are returned to us to make sure everything was done according to policy.”

Each complaint is then placed in the trooper's permanent file.

“Lying, or any kind of dishonesty on the job, is a Type One offense,” Ethridge said. “If a person complains that he was tried in court and the officer fabricated evidence against him, for instance, we consider that extremely serious. In law enforcement, we must have absolute truthfulness in our people.”

Other kinds of major misconduct include deliberately and without justification causing injury to another person, using drugs, getting caught in a sexual act while on duty, failing to report for duty, drinking on the job, accepting bribes, or engaging in criminal activities.

In between are oflenses that range from a trooper not following proper procedures in making an arrest to failing to keep his hair regulation length.

In serious cases, violations of Type One and Two, a thorough investigation is nearly always carried out.

The first person notified is the accused.

“We give the trooper all the facts,” said Ethridge, “and allow him a chance to prepare his defense. Meanwhile, we contact all the peripheral people involved—the person who made the complaint, the clerk of court, anyone who might have knowledge of the incident.”

The trooper is brought in, presented with the evidence, and allowed an opportunity to make a statement.

“He must answer all questions,” said Ethridge, “and he must tell the truth.” Unless the complaint involves a criminal offense, he cannot plead the Fifth Amendment.

“If they are truthful with us, we'll meet them halfway. Most will admit their guilt. When they do, we don't bust their knuckles. We just explain what the policies are and tell them what we'll have to do. We're up-front with them.”

The colonel of the highway patrol makes the final decision, based on Ethridge's recommendation, whenever the offense is of a serious nature. Even a trooper with a previously clean record can be dismissed or transferred if the findings warrant severe action.

What happens more typically is that over a period of time, a trooper “builds” a case against himself by a series of charges and complaints that go from bad to worse until he is eventually fired.

The exception is a case involving a trooper who breaks the law.

“In those instances, we go to the local law enforcement agency, the district attorney, all the people necessary to conduct the investigation,” said Ethridge, “and tell them we're aware of the charges and have suspended the trooper. Then we pick up his uniform, his patrol car, his identification. He is no longer effectively a highway patrolman.

“After that, we do nothing. He's on his own while the criminal investigation goes through. He may be found not guilty and we may still dismiss him because there could be certain information we have that provides internal grounds for dismissal. We may even use a polygraph test [though they are not admissible in court] to help us decide if he's telling the truth.”

Between 1978 and 1983, 1,962 complaints werre lodged against troopers, but only about 25 percent were ruled valid. Of those, most were in the minor Type Four and Five categories of offenses.

“The public thinks it's liquor and women that get our troopers in trouble, but in reality, those are in the minority. And we seldom ever have instances so serious the trooper is fired. Generally, complaints revolve around citations and work-related duties.”

Even when a trooper has a stackful of complaints within his file, Ethridge doesn't assume he has a bad employee on his hands.

“What you're likely to have instead,” he said, “is a very active trooper. Show me a man who makes a lot of contacts and arrests, and I'll show you a lot of complaints. I don't look at the thickness of a man's file. I look at the quality of the complaints.”

Whenever a trooper gets in trouble or is accused of doing wrong, says Ethridge, Internal Affairs can be the best defense he has.

“If the facts are on his side, we'll work our tails off to prove he's innocent. At that point, we're working for him, not against him.”

But that's not always how the troopers feel:

I'm glad we have the option of policing ourselves, but it still insults the shit out of me when somebody comes in to investigate. It can strike terror in a trooper's heart.

*

I think today's troopers are living on a legend. It used to be if someone bucked up on you, you'd whip his ass and have no more trouble with him.

Now we've got complaints, lawsuits, Internal Affairs.

Our younger troopers are riding on the patrol's old image. They have to in order to protect themselves.

*

Force is justified anytime it's used against me first. I'm big on protecting myself. I'm not going to get hurt if I can help it. They don't pay me enough for that.

*

What I always regretted was this. If I ever get upset enough to take physical action against somebody, it takes me a month to get over it. If anybody irks me the wrong way, I'm gonna slap them in the ditch or take whatever action is necessary.

But I always detested having to manhandle somebody because I didn't know when to stop. When I did it—they always went to the hospital.

*

I play by the rules of how people behave. They are the ones who make the decision about how they'll be treated, not me. If people put themselves in the position of getting hurt, I have no sympathy for them.

*

There are some troopers you can buddy around with and they're the nicest fellas in the world. Then they put on this uniform and they become the biggest horse's ass you can imagine—arrogant, self-centered, no patience with anybody.

*

It's true that something happens when you put on this uniform. You know people expect you to act a certain way. So you take on a macho air. You have the gun, the cuffs, and the authority. And no matter how old you get, it's the same.

I look forward to going to work because I know I'm “the man.”

*

I was chasing a guy one night and he jumped out and ran. I caught up with him and bopped him on the head with my flashlight. I didn't think I had hurt him bad because he was still fighting. So I hit him again. I saw a pool of blood under him and he was hollering and screaming “police brutality.”

There was no way I could take him to the courthouse in his condition, so I took him to the hospital. All the way there, he kept saying he was going to sue me.

I told him to go right ahead.

When we arrived I ordered him out of the car.

“You want me out, you'll have to get me out,” he said.

So it was on again.

I got a sergeant and another trooper to help me. We grabbed him and slung him out of the car. He landed against another car and left a smear of blood across the whole side panel. But he was still kicking and carrying on.