The Key West Police Department is in disarray. The State Attorney has now stepped in. At least six cops face imminent arrest on police brutality and other charges. There is a growing groundswell among citizens for a Civilian Review Board to police the police.
And you know what Harry Truman said: The buck stops at the top. Indeed, that is the case here. Police Chief Buz Dillon must accept responsibility for all the problems in the Key West Police Department. Bullying cops. Excessive-force arrests. Piling on trumped up charges. Coverup of abuses by internal affairs investigators. Officers routinely lying in court. Indiscriminate firing of their weapons. An impotent internal affairs unit.
If you've been here long enough, you will recall that when Dillon was hired in mid-1998, there were few problems in the Police Department. Oh, sure, Mayor Wardlow was mad at Chief Ray Peterson because Peterson had reportedly called in the FBI to investigate corruption in city government here (gasp!)— an investigation that led to Wardlow being indicted and a prominent attorney leaving town in disgrace. Subsequently, City Manager Julio Avael yielded to pressure from Wardlow and others to do what former City Manager Felix Cooper had refused to do— fire one of the most popular police chiefs Key West ever had.
But whatever problems there may have been under Peterson, real or imagined, Dillon's police department makes Peterson's operation seem positively virginal.
Under Ray Peterson, the State Attorney never had to come in and investigate multiple charges of police brutality. And when Ray Peterson was Chief, it never even occurred to anybody to even think about establishing a Civilian Review Board here.
Some apologists for Dillon, probably seeing the writing on the wall, are calling for patience. "Give him a chance to clean up the department," they say.
Our answer is this: He's been here, almost four years, folks— and there are far more problems now than when he took over! Isn't it time for the City Manager and the City Commission to get a clue? Dillon is the problem! He's not making it better— he's making it worse!
We here at Key West The Newspaper were the first to criticize the "Blue Wall of Silence" Dillon built when he came here. Secrecy seems to be an obsession with him. (The editor of another local newspaper suggested that Dillon might be a CIA wannabe.) He has threatened his officers with disciplinary action if they are caught giving the press any information.
He has been known to restrict even the normal flow of information to reporters who have dared to criticize him and his department. He has been publicly critical of the media, calling both KWTN and the Key West Citizen "trash". He much prefers to work with reporters who will lick his boots.
Dillon can't seem to grasp the value of the concept "full disclosure, minimum delay". The media is forced to dig out pieces of even a routine story piece-by-piece, often resulting in mutiple stories and headlines for weeks.
We once asked Dillon to confirm the rumor that the legendary Lt. Al Flowers had been transferred from the night shift to the day shift. He refused. We had to make a formal request under the State Public Records Law to get the information.
Part of that research was to look at Flowers' personnel file. We learned that he had recently been reprimanded for calling a female police officer a bull dyke and the gay community in general "sodomites". (He was reprimanded, incidentally, by a captain who had been forced to resign as a deputy sheriff because he got caught having an affair with a 17-year-old boy; then he lied on his application to get a job with the KWPD. Does Dillon run a class operation, or what!?)
A couple of years ago, Dillon told a KWTN reporter who asked about Flowers' reputation as a cowboy cop: "I wish I had a dozen officers like Al Flowers." Well, now he apparently does.
As a result of Dillon's bizarre public information policy, he and his officers are often perceived by the public as covering up some alleged scandal simply because Dillon resists talking to the press and won't allow any of his officers to talk.
Even when he allows his Public Information Officer to send out a press release, he does not necessarily consider that the "truth" about departmental policy. When a man arrested without a warning at Fantasy Fest for nudity used a police press release as a defense— the release said that those allegedly violating nudity laws would be warned before being arrested— Dillon testified in court that his officers were under no obligation to warn anybody before making an arrest. "It was only a press release," he testified in court under oath.
Judge Richard Payne didn't buy Dillon's strange logic. He threw the case out of court.
Perhaps the classic case of Dillon refusing to answer questions and, therefore, helping to build his reputation as a coverup artist, is the case of former Key West Civil Service Board member Gene Peary. We have cited this example before, but in view of the State Attorney's current investigations, it seems timely to cite it again.
Peary was arrested by Officer Ken Stinson in 1997 for allegedly driving drunk. The problem is that Peary wasn't driving. He was a passenger. No matter. Lt. Flowers reportedly told him at the scene, "Get a good expensive lawyer. That's what the courts are for." In court, Stinson would testify under oath that he saw two men in the vehicle change seats. Both of them were allegedly drunk, so he arrested both of them. But the trial ended with a hung jury.
At Peary's second trial, Stinson testified, again under oath, that he really didn't see Peary get out of the driver's side of the vehicle. Peary was acquitted, of course. But he was broke and disillusioned.
It is obvious that Stinson lied in court, either at the first trial or at the second trial. But Dillon refuses to investigate. Why? We don't know because he refuses to say.
This kind of behavior simply supports our criticism that Dillon often condones wrongdoing by his officers. He condones it by not only refusing to take corrective action but, also, by repeatedly condoning coverups.
Last year, one of Dillon's own officers blew the whistle: "The Chief of Police has used the Internal Affairs section as a means to conceal perjury by serving law enforcement officers instead of correcting the violations of law," Sgt John Hardy wrote in a letter to Mayor Jimmy Weekley, City Manager Julio Avael and State Chief Inspector General.
"Conspiracy is indicated because pther officers have participated with the Chief of Police to conceal perjury and to improperly conduct Internal Affairs investigations," Hardy said.
Needless to say, Dillon is trying to fire that boy.
Last year, we were able to absolutely document that a KWPD officer lied in court and, when the citizen involved filed a complaint, an internal affairs officer declared it "unfounded" without even investigating that complaint. We asked Dillon to investigate. He refused.
So we went to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and asked them to get involved. When the FDLE did, indeed, order an investigation, it made Chief Dillon so mad that he personally wrote up an arrest affidavit and had me thrown in jail.
But, ultimately, he had to admit to the FDLE that the officer did lie in court (but "unknowingly", Buz said) and the internal affairs investigator did cover it up (but "unknowingly", Buz said).
Our sources inside the Police Department say that the current investigation by the State Attorney's Office is looking at only the tip of the corruption-and-incompetence iceberg in the Key West Police Department.
Let's make the point again: Buz Dillon has had almost four years to "clean up" the police department here. (You do recall that Wardlow, Avael and others were telling us all in 1998 how many "problems" there were in the department at that time, don't you?)
But whatever problems there may have been when Dillon took over the department, there are far more now. He has made things worse, not better— as we will all see as the State Attorney continues to peel the onion.
How long are the City Commissioners willing to wait before taking action? Are they willing to wait until the tide of scandal engulfs them, too? Are they willing to wait until the feds get involved again?
Stay tuned. We're on top of this continuing story. And Buz hates that.