City Commissioner Tom Oosterhoudt this week asked Police Chief Buz Dillon for a response to allegations that a Police Dept. internal affairs investigator declared perjury charges against Police Lt. Al Flowers "unfounded" without conducting an investigation.
"I want to know what is going on with Internal Affairs seeming to cover up for Al Flowers lying on the witness stand," Oosterhoudt told Dillon in a memo dated June 5. "I would like to see proof that this investigation was carried out and that IA did not cover up perjury by a Key West police officer."
Oosterhoudt met with both Dillon and Inspector Bob Christensen Wednesday. Both officials reportedly told Oosterhoudt that standard departmental procedures had been followed in the investigation of the complaint.
Last week, a Key West The Newspaper reporter looked at the file at the police station and found no evidence that any investigation had been conducted— other than asking Flowers if he had done it. When KWTN questioned Inspector Christensen about this, he refused comment.
Christensen heads Internal Affairs and was responsible for investigating the allegations against Flowers. But when KWTN asked Christensen, "You didn't investigate those allegations at all, did you?", Christensen responded: "No comment."
A source close to the police department said this week that Christensen may not have been able to comment because the investigation has been reopened. At press time, however, KWPD officials had not responded to a request to confirm or deny this report.
Christensen not only closed the file without conducting an investigation, he threatened the citizen who filed the complaint with legal action if he continued to complain.
"It would be wise for you to remember that Lt. Al Flowers has rights too and is free to exercise those rights if he should choose to do so," Christensen wrote to Shahdaroba Rodd in March 2000.
But Rodd had already complained to the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement (FDLE). When the FDLE started asking questions, Christensen reiterated, in writing, that he had found the allegations of perjury against Flowers "unfounded"— but he did not tell the FDLE that he had made that judgment without investigating the allegation.
Key West The Newspaper broke this story last month in an article headlined "State Attorney Reviewing Allegation That Lt. Flowers Lied in Court."
Since that time, Chief Investigator Kirby Owen has determined that the statute of limitations on perjury charges is three years and, therefore, the State Attorney's Office has closed the file on that investigation.
The allegation that Christensen had declared the perjury allegation unfounded without conducting an investigation broke here last week.
Here's a recap:
Back on Oct. 29, 1996, Lt. Flowers stopped Rod Macdonald (who has since legally changed his name to Shahdaroba Rodd) and ticketed him for riding a bicycle at night without a light. He also charged Macdonald with failing to notify the Florida Dept. of Safety and Motor Vehicles (DMV) of a change of address on his drivers license.
In Judge Wayne Miller's traffic court on Jan. 28, 1997— according to a partial transcript of the hearing provided by the State Attorney's Office— Flowers testified under oath that Macdonald had handed him a drivers license with the address 5415 Little Acre Road, Ebro, Florida, on it.
"That simply wasn't true," said Macdonald. "I didn't give Flowers my drivers license that night because I didn't have it with me. But when I tried to protest in court, I was told to shut up.
"What I showed Flowers was a state-issued ID card," Macdonald said. "But even if I had showed him my license that night, the address he would have seen would have been Star Route 7, Ebro, Florida. My permanent address is Ebro."
Macdonald produced documents last month showing that on Jan. 2, 1997, he requested the DMV to change the address on his license from the Star Route address to the Little Acre Road address— two months after Flowers had stopped him— but several weeks before the trial. He also produced a copy of a letter from the DMV confirming that the change had been processed.
"Therefore, it would have been impossible for Flowers to have seen a license in October that had the Little Acre Road address on it," Macdonald said. "What we can assume happened is that Flowers, preparing for the Jan. 28, 1997, hearing a day or so in advance, checked the DMV for my Ebro address, came up with the Little Acre Road address, wrote it down and, then, went into court and testified under oath that he had seen this address on my drivers license in October 1996.
"He flat out lied."
Despite Flowers' testimony, Judge Miller dismissed the DMV notification charge against Macdonald.
Commissioner Oosterhoudt told KWTN Wednesday that neither Chief Dillon nor Inspector Christensen showed him any evidence that the DMV had been contacted as part of an investigation to determine the truthfulness of Flowers' testimony about the address he may or may not have seen on Macdonald's drivers license on Oct. 29, 1996— although this was at the heart of Macdonald's complaint.
"Christensen and others in the Police Dept. may see Flowers' lying in court about an address as no big deal," Macdonald said. "But he was using that lie to try to persuade the judge that I was guilty. That might not be important to the cops— but it was important to me.
"A question here is how long have Flowers and other cops been doing this— and how long have Christensen and others been protecting them?"
This is not the first instance of alleged perjury by a Key West police officer that has gone uninvestigated.
In March 1997, Officer Ken Stinson arrested two men in the same vehicle on charges of driving while intoxicated. One of those arrested was Key West Civil Service Board member Gene Peary— who argued that he was a passenger, not a driver.
For a number of months before his arrest, Peary said he had been harassed by members of the police union for stands he had taken in support of former Police Chief Ray Peterson, as well as for voting to promote Officer Ken Hock following a testing fiasco. At the arrest scene, Peary said he overheard Lt. Al Flowers say, "We've finally got that little faggot."
Since that time, Flowers has been reprimanded by the department for calling a female police officer a "bull dyke" and the gay community "sodomites."
At Peary's trial, Stinson testified under oath that he had seen Peary and the other man change seats— which, he said, justified the double arrest. But the trial ended with a hung jury.
At the second trial, Stinson— also testifying under oath— changed his story, admitting that he had neither seen Peary get out of the drivers side of the vehicle nor change seats with the other man.
Peary was acquitted. But, to date, the KWPD has refused to conduct an investigation.