When citizens feel that they may have been treated badly by the Key West Police Dept., they have the right to file a complaint. And once that complaint is filed, the assumption is that it will be investigated by Internal Affairs.
And whether that investigation results in a conclusion of "sustained" or "unfounded", all citizens want to assume that the investigation has been objective and complete.
But Key West The Newspaper has learned that this is not always the case. In one case KWTN investigated, Inspector Bob Christensen reported that allegations of perjury against Lt. Al Flowers were "unfounded"— yet, according to the information in the official file, the only investigation that Christensen conducted was to ask Flowers if he did it.
Flowers denied the allegations— and Christensen closed the file. And he even threatened the citizen who complained with possible legal action if he continued to complain.
But the citizen had already complained to the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement (FDLE), which put Christensen in the position of having to report the findings of his investigation to that agency. He told the FDLE that he had found the allegations "unfounded"— but he didn't mention that he hadn't really conducted any investigation.
This week, a KWTN reporter went to Christensen's office and reviewed the file on this case— then asked Christensen, "You didn't investigate the perjury allegation at all, did you?"
Christensen: "No comment."
"The significance of this revelation is this," said a local attorney. "How can citizens ever again trust the results when cops investigate themselves? How can citizens ever again assume that Internal Affairs investigations are objective and complete?"
Here's a recap— and an update— of the original story that appeared in KWTN on May 11.
Back on Oct. 29, 1996, Lt. Flowers stopped Rod Macdonald 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, who has since legally changed his name to Shahdaroba Rodd. "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.
This week, KWTN asked Inspector Christensen: "Did you at least contact the DMV to see what address was on Macdonald's license on Oct. 29, 1996? That would seem to be at the very heart of the perjury allegation that you were supposed to be investigating."
Christensen: "No comment."
KWTN found no indication in the file that Christensen or anyone else in the Key West Police Dept. had contacted the DMV during the time the case was supposedly under investigation.
"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?"
Earlier this year, Macdonald asked State Attorney Mark Kohl to get involved in this case and Chief Investigator Kirby Owen did open a file. But last week, Owen informed Macdonald that the statute of limitations for a perjury charge, a third degree felony, is three years— and, in this case, that time limitation has expired.
But Flowers' questionable testimony may no longer be the story here. The story may now be Inspector Bob Christensen finding the allegations against Flowers "unfounded" without even conducting an investigation— and then telling the FDLE that he did.
Question: Is this case an aberration, or do Internal Affairs investigators routinely "make up" findings without conducting investigations? Asked to explain his apparent failure to conduct an investigation before coming to a conclusion in the Macdonald case, Inspector Christensen said, "No comment."
Stay tuned.