Key West Police Chief Buz Dillon now has 31 days to respond to the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement (FDLE) about allegations that KWPD Internal Affairs investigator Bob Christensen declared a citizen complaint against Lt. Al Flowers "unfounded' without conducting an investigation. The complaint alleged that Flowers lied in court in 1997.
In a letter dated June 7, 2001, Rod Casswell, the head of the FDLE Professional Standards Dept., gave Dillon 45 days to respond. The FDLE got involved at the request of Key West The Newspaper after KWPD officials refused to answer questions about either the perjury allegation or Internal Affairs' apparent failure to investigate that charge.
KWTN has learned that investigators from the FDLE's criminal investigation division are also looking at these allegations.
What will Dillon tell the FDLE?
If those allegations are true— as our independent investigation strongly suggests— Dillon should simply report that he has conducted his own probe, found that those allegations are true, show that he has disciplined the officers involved, and promise that it won't happen again. Case closed.
If his investigation finds that Flowers did not commit perjury and that Christensen did fully investigate that charge, he should fully document and disclose those findings.
In other words, he should tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. There is no good reason for him to participate in what appears to be a coverup. After all, this scandal didn't even happen on Dillon's watch. It happened while Capt. David Lariz was Acting Chief— after former Chief Ray Peterson had been pushed out and before Dillon was hired away from the Alparetta, Georgia, Police Dept.
But, unfortunately, what this whole story is about is police officers apparently lying and covering it up for no good reason! We have a situation here in which an officer apparently lied in court— for no good reason! Then, we have an Internal Affairs investigator who, apparently, refused to investigate, but said he did— and, then, declared the allegation unfounded! For no good reason!
Before we go on, we need to cite the standard disclaimer that most cops are hard-working and honest and would never lie in court, blah, blah, blah. But having said that, our theory is that some cops here are simply accustomed to lying and getting away with it.
Some may do it so routinely that they may no longer even realize that it's wrong. They lie to justify handing out questionable tickets and to justify questionable arrests. And they lie to cover for other officers who hand out questionable tickets and make questionable arrests.
This may have been going on for years. And when they're confronted about it, their standard comment is a testy "no comment." The Blue Wall of Silence goes up and they go into their "how-dare-you-sully-the-good-name-of-the-department posture.
But the real reason it continues is that Police Chief Dillon and City Manager Julio Avael and the City Commission allow it to happen over and over and over again!
Of course, we already know— and we have reported it to you— that both Dillon and Avael are no strangers to coverup. You may recall that they promoted an officer to captain who had once been forced to resign from the Sheriff's Office after an investigation determined that the man had once had an affair with a 17-year-old boy. Then, when he applied for a job with the KWPD, he failed to disclose why he had to leave the Sheriff's Dept. During the promotional selection process, Avael and Dillon sort of forgot to disclose the officer's background to the City Commission or the citizenry.
When somebody from the Dept. of Children & Families (DCF) leaked information to Chief Dillon that Key West The Newspaper was researching a story about one of his officers, he called us and asked us to kill the story— but he refused to reveal his "deep throat" at the DCF. When the DCF regional director conducted an investigation, everybody in the office reportedly denied leaking the information.
But one of the employees in that office is Mrs. Julio Avael. If the leak came from Mrs. Avael, we really can't blame Dillon for protecting that source. Julio is his boss. If Mrs. Avael was the leak, that gives Dillon the unique advantage of "having something" on Avael. It's usually the other way around.
You may or may not recall a story we broke back in 1999, reporting that Avael was mad at Dillon and that he might be building a "Blue Book" of charges against his relatively new Chief of Police. If you were in town in 1997, you will remember that Avael had attempted to justify his efforts to fire Chief Peterson by building a Blue Book of bogus charges. When Avael was finally able to force Peterson to retire, however, all of those charges were declared "unfounded."
In 1999, Avael wanted Dillon to hire the son of a former police officer and Dillon was dragging his feet. Of course, Dillon knew that the kid had been in trouble with the law earlier in the year for allegedly flashing his Law Enforcement Explorers Cadet badge to try to pick up a 19-year-old girl. State Attorney Kirk Zuelch had dropped charges of impersonating an officer. And Internal Affairs had declared a complaint by the girl's boyfriend to be unfounded (Duh?).
On October 27, 1999, an irritated Avael fired off a scathing memo to Dillon: "I am now seriously concerned that your department does not have the ability to fill vacancies expeditiously . . . Leaving a vacant position three-plus months when we have a qualified candidate is poor management and an apparent lack of organization in the hiring process of your department."
Avael, who had also used "poor management" as a major charge against Peterson, threatened to take police hiring decisions away from Dillon.
On that same day, Avael also wrote another memo to Dillon, scolding him because the clocks in the police communications center were reportedly wrong. We're not making this up.
But ever since Dillon agreed to keep his leak at the DCF a secret, Avael has not only stopped writing him scathing memos, we predict that he will reward Dillon with a lucrative new contract.
Can you stomach another example of a police coverup? Both Dillon and Avael know that Officer Ken Stinson may have committed perjury in court in the Gene Peary case a couple of years ago. Yet, to this day, they refuse to investigate.
In case you haven't been paying attention: In March 1997, Officer 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 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 Chief Peterson, as well as for voting to promote Officer Ken Hock following a testing fiasco. At the arrest scene, Peary said he overheard Lt. 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 switch seats— which justified the double arrest. That 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 driver's side of the vehicle nor change seats with the driver. Peary was acquitted.
Did Stinson tell the truth at the first trial and lie at the second one? Or did he lie at the first one and tell the truth at the second trial? After the second trial, we asked Chief Dillon about that. He sent us a written response: "There is no reason to believe that Officer Stinson didn't tell the truth."
We faxed back another question: "Which time, Buz?"
His response was no response.
Now, there may be some plausible reason why Stinson might tell two different under-oath stories about the same arrest at two different times, although we can't imagine what that reason might be— other than to try to wrongly convict a man of a bogus charge. And the fact that Dillon refuses to explain it only tends to verify our theory that neither Chief Dillon nor City Manager Avael nor any member of the City Commission (other than Tom Oosterhoudt) seem to care if our cops lie.
Now, back to the report Chief Dillon is being forced to compile for the FDLE. If he chooses not to take the "full disclosure" route that we outlined earlier in this piece, we may all get to see just how creative he can be. We will all get to read it because it will eventually become public record and we will publish it for you. And, of course, we'll also critique it.
If he chooses to try to defend Lt. Flowers and Inspector Christensen, he will have to explain the following:
On October 29, 1996, Lt. Flowers stopped Rod Macdonald and ticketed him on a bicycle light violation. He also issued a second ticket to Macdonald for allegedly failing to notify the State Dept. of Motor Vehicles (DMV) of an address change.
Last week, KWTN spoke to Debra Baxley, a spokesperson for the DMV. She told us that, on the night of October 29, 1996, the address on Macdonald's drivers license was Star Route Box 7, Ebro, Florida. Macdonald said that was his permanent address. But maybe Flowers thought that Macdonald should have contacted the DMV and changed his address to the address he wrote on the ticket: General Delivery (streets), Key West.
On January 2, 1997, Macdonald— probably reacting to Flowers' scolding— mailed a note to the DMV requesting a change of address that reflected a street address. The new address: 5415 Little Acre Road in Ebro. According to the DMV's Baxley, that new address became official in the DMV computer on January 22, 1997.
However, at Mac-donald's hearing before Judge Wayne Miller on January 28, 1997, Flowers testified under oath that, on the night of October 29, 1996, Macdonald had handed him a drivers license with the Little Acre Road address on it— which, of course, according to the DMV, would have been an impossibility, since that address did not become official in the DMV records until January 22, 1997, just a few days before the hearing.
In other words, Flowers apparently lied in court, under oath— for no good reason— other than to try to get Macdonald convicted on a bogus charge!
First of all, the DMV notification charge was a "pile on" charge. Flowers had stopped Macdonald for a bicycle light infraction. The purpose of the extra ticket was to further "punish" a man who Flowers considered to be a "dirtbag." But in his wildest dreams, Flowers would have never imagined that Macdonald would contest the ticket and force him to justify the charge in court!
Macdonald says he didn't show Flowers his drivers license that night. "I didn't have it with me," he told KWTN. "I showed him a state-issued ID."
But if Flowers actually saw a license that night (as he testified under oath that he did), he apparently didn't write down the address. So when he was notified that he had to show up in court and defend the DMV notification ticket, he— rather than telling the judge the truth, that he didn't have sufficient evidence to show that Macdonald was guilty of failing to change his address with the DMV— he apparently decided to "create" some evidence.
What we think may have happened is this: On the day of the trial, or a day or so earlier, Flowers checked with the DMV to get Macdonald's Ebro address. He gets the Little Acre Road address and, without a clue that this is brand new address in the DMV computer, writes it down and goes into court and testifies, under oath, that this was the address he saw on Macdonald's license three months earlier— when, of course, he saw no such thing! He told a lie in court. For no good reason.
Question: Is it okay for a cop to lie in court as long as it's just a small lie? If so, Dillon should explain this to the FDLE— and to the citizens of Key West.
Incidentally, Judge Miller threw the DMV notification charge out of court.
As often happens when people start telling fibs and then trying to cover them up, this story has evolved from a relatively minor story about a cop telling a "small" fib in court to a more significant story about an Internal Affairs investigator who supposedly investigated the perjury allegation but, in reality, never did. We know that because we used the state public records law to gain access to Inspector Christensen's investigation file. And there's no evidence in that file that he ever contacted the DMV to check out Macdonald's allegation that Flowers lied in court. But he declared the complaint "unfounded" anyway.
After we looked at the file in Christensen's office, we asked him: "You didn't check with the DMV a all, did you?"
His response: "No comment."
"Well, we'll check it out for you," we told him."
"Have at it," he said.
So we did. We simply called the DMV. It took about two days to confirm that Flowers, even if he did see Macdonald's drivers license on the night of October 29, 1996, could not have seen the Little Acre Road on it— even though he testified under oath in a court of law that this was the address he had seen!
By declaring Macdonald's complaint "unfounded" without even checking with the DMV— as we did— Christensen, in essence, also lied. And for no good reason!
Christensen now says that Macdonald's allegation that Flowers committed perjury had been previously checked out by other investigators and declared "unfounded." But we found no evidence in any of the investigation files we were shown that anybody at the KWPD ever checked with the DMV. Does this suggest that the other investigators may have fibbed a bit, too?
How will Chief Dillon explain this to the FDLE? Stay tuned.
The State Attorney briefly looked at the allegations that Flowers had committed perjury. That investigation was terminated when it was determined that the three-year statute of limitations on perjury charges had expired. But that happened because Christensen refused to investigate the charge. Convenient, huh?