Early last month, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) ordered Key West Police Chief Buz Dillon to investigate a complaint from Key West The Newspaper that Lt. Al Flowers may have lied in court in 1997 and that internal affairs investigator Bob Christensen may have covered it up. Our request for FDLE involvement came after two investigative articles appeared in KWTN:
May 11, 2001. We published a relatively minor story about Lt. Flowers ticketing Rod Macdonald for allegedly riding his bicycle at night without a light— and then piling on another charge of failing to have his current address on his drivers license. Flowers noted on the ticket that Macdonald's current address was "General Delivery, Key West (streets)". Macdonald's permanent address in Ebro, Florida, was on his license— but, Flowers said, Macdonald had broken the law because he had not contacted the DMV to change his official address to "General Delivery, Key West (streets)".
When Macdonald protested that ticket, he said Flowers lied in court about the address he said he saw on the license.
June 1, 2001. We published a followup story reporting that Macdonald had filed a complaint about Flowers' alleged perjury with Police Internal Affairs. And we revealed that Christensen, who was responsible for investigating the complaint, didn't really conduct an investigation— but declared the complaint "unfounded" anyway.
And when Macdonald complained to the FDLE, Christensen represented to that agency that he had fully investigated the complaint.
We asked Dillon to investigate. He refused. So we went to the FDLE ourselves. An out-of-the-ordinary act for a newspaper? You betcha! But we saw a wrong that needed to be righted. And neither the Police Chief nor the City Manager nor any member of the City Commission seemed concerned enough to even recommend any action. It seemed to us that somebody had to do something. So we did it. What's the point of running a newspaper if you're not going to try to make a difference?
When the FDLE ordered Dillon to investigate, we reported that. And, unless you've been living on the moon, you know what happened next. Dillon swore out a warrant for my arrest for "leaking information about a confidential investigation." We're not making this up. He arrested me for reporting that he was being forced by the State to investigate my complaint— an investigation that he had previously refused to launch!
I guess we pissed him off by forcing him to do his job.
His charges were bogus, of course. The statute he used to get the warrant had been declared unconstitutional in federal court a decade ago— and it only took State Attorney Mark Kohl a few days to throw those charges down the stairs and out into the street.
Dillon was left with lots of egg on his face. His bizarre behavior made the news all over the world. He was ridiculed on national television by no less than Dennis Miller and Bill O'Reilly.
Last Friday, Buz' long-awaited report was sent to the FDLE. Here are the highlights. They should not be surprising.
1. Flowers did fib in court— but not "knowingly".
2. Inspector Christensen did fib to the FDLE— but not "knowingly".
3. Christensen did not investigate Macdonald's complaint "to the degree possible." But he did, according to Dillon's report to the FDLE, investigate "to the degree he felt was needed." According to the report, the degree of investigation that Christensen felt was "needed" was simply to ask Flowers if he did it. When Flowers told him "no", that was the end of the investigation.
After reporting to the FDLE that both Flowers and Christensen "unknowingly" lied, Chief Dillon declared the case closed and announced that no further action would be taken.
At the heart of this story is Flowers' under-oath testimony in Judge Wayne Miller's courtroom in January 1997. A few minutes before the hearing, Flowers realized that he was going to be asked to defend that ticket about the address on Macdonald's drivers license. But, curses, on the night he had stopped Macdonald, he had not even written down the address that was on his license!
Even Dillon's report to the FDLE noted: "Perhaps more thorough documentation on the citation and better court preparation could have avoided some of the confusion." Duh!
But this was really no problem for Al Flowers. He simply checked the DMV records— to "refresh his memory", according to Dillon's report to the FDLE— and found that Macdonald's address was listed as 5414 Little Acre Road in Ebro. So, he went to court and testified, under oath ". . . he handed me a drivers license . . . it had an address on it of 5415 Little Acre Road . . ."
What Flowers didn't know, of course, was that Macdonald had contacted the DMV a couple of weeks before the hearing and changed his address. The Little Acre Road address was a new address!
In an effort to try to make his "pile on" charge stick, Flowers testified under oath that he had seen an address on Macdonald's drivers license that he couldn't have seen!
But that's okay, Chief Dillon told the FDLE. Flowers did lie— but not "knowingly."
As part of our investigation here at KWTN, we contacted the DMV and asked about Macdonald's address on the night that Flowers ticketed him and on the date of the hearing. We were able to easily confirm that Flowers had fibbed.
And by using the state public records act to access Christensen's closed investigation files, we were able to confirm that Christensen, as part of his "investigation", had not even bothered to check the DMV records.
According to Dillon's report to the FDLE, Christensen— other than asking Flowers if he lied in court— "could not recall with certainty what other measures, if any, he took to determine the address." Imagine that. A cop with memory loss.
Dillon's report also notes: "Inspector Christensen did not thoroughly document what measures he took to document the complaint." Double duh!
It should be noted here that Christensen has been transferred out of Internal Affairs.
So . . . what are we left with here?
1. It is, apparently, okay with Chief Dillon if an officer lies in court— as long as it's just a little lie and if it can be easily covered up with a bogus internal investigation. We guess it would have been completely out of the question for Flowers to go into court and tell the judge that he had not written down the address on Macdonald's drivers license that night and, therefore, he really couldn't testify under oath as to what address was on that license.
As it turned out, Judge Miller dismissed that charge against Macdonald anyway— in spite of Flowers' questionable effort to get him convicted.
2. It is apparently okay with Chief Dillon if an internal affairs investigator finds a citizen complaint "unfounded" without even conducting an investigation. Now that we have exposed his policy, why would any citizen ever again have any confidence in the finding of any internal affairs investigation under Dillon?
Maybe it's time to start thinking about a Civilian Review Board.
3. We are also left with a puzzling question. Why won't Chief Dillon, when he gets a question from the press, just answer it? Full disclosure. Minimum delay. What is he trying to hide? After all, he slops at the public trough. He gets paid with our money. He is accountable to us, the citizens of Key West. We pay the bill. If he can't figure that out, maybe he needs to head on back up to Alpharetta, Georgia.
Will we here at KWTN go the FDLE again if we see wrongdoing within the Police Department? Absolutely— if Dillon refuses to investigate. We have already put Dillon— and the City Commission— on notice that we plan to go to the FDLE at the end of this month if Dillon continues to refuse to investigate the Gene Peary case.
You may remember this case. Two men in the same vehicle were arrested for drunk driving. One of the men was Gene Peary, an elected member of the Key West Civil Service Board. He had been under fire by some members of the police union. Lt. Flowers was involved in that arrest, too. He was reportedly overheard at the scene saying, "We've finally got that little faggot!"
Peary said he had not been driving. But at his trial, Officer Ken Stinson testified, under oath, that he had seen the two men change seats. The trial ended with a hung jury.
At Peary's second trial, Stinson changed his story. He testified, also under oath, that he had not seen the two men change seats. Peary was acquitted, but the ordeal left him devastated, both financially and emotionally.
We want to know at which trial Stinson was telling the truth. And we have called for an investigation— or at least an explanation. Dillon refuses to respond.
We have told him that if the FDLE orders a investigation into this matter, we will report it. He has been bragging around town that if we do that, he'll arrest me again. We're going to test that brag.
Stay tuned.