Police chief’s actions deemed ‘unprofessional’

By Carrie A. Mizell

The findings of a Trenton personnel committee’s six-week investigation into the actions of Police Chief Billy Smith have deemed the city’s chief law enforcement officer as lacking both self-discipline and professionalism.
In a 15-page report released on Monday, personnel committee members Mayor Glen Thigpen and City Manager Taylor Brown detail findings from an investigation that started after former Trenton Police Officer Lonnie Wilkerson presented a petition to remove Billy Smith from his position. The petition, which contained complaints and allegations of wrong-doing, was signed by 306 residents of Trenton.
In compiling information, the personnel committee visited the Trenton Police Department and performed inspections of the offices, evidence room and police cars. The personnel committee also conducted interviews with former and current police officers, administrative staff with the Trenton Police Department, Trenton Police Auxiliary Officers, dispatchers with the Gilchrist County Sheriff’s Office and Chief Billy Smith himself. The committee wrote up a startling report detailing all they learned.

Personnel committee members were surprised by what they found when they
unlocked and opened the door of the police department’s evidence room.

“The city council members have received copies of the report and will hopefully be prepared to take action on the report at the city’s special meeting,” Thigpen said on Monday. “I have been dealing with this for six weeks now and it is my hope that we can get this over and done with as soon as possible.”
At press time, the Trenton City Council was scheduled to hold a special meeting to discuss the Trenton Personnel Committee’s report on Tuesday evening, Oct. 26.
Complaints that were substantiated by evidence include that Chief Smith does not maintain an organized department. In fact, the committee’s report indicated that “the written policies and procedures of the police department are not enforced uniformly, if at all. Chief Smith himself violates many of the department’s written policies.”
Apparently, employees are unsure of what current policy within the Trenton Police Department is since oral instructions from the chief are not always consistent with the department’s Rules and Policies manual, which results in different officers following different procedures.
The report detailed an example of the confusion. Officer Johnny Thomas was reprimanded by Chief Smith for carrying his service firearm outside the Trenton city limits while off duty. Once reprimanded, Officer Thomas then showed Chief Smith the “Firearms and Ammunition” section in the department’s Rules and Policies manual that states, “When outside their jurisdiction, but within the State of Florida, and if the legislature allows, sworn personnel may carry a concealed weapon.” To this Chief Smith rebutted that the policy manual was wrong and that he would see to it that it was changed.
The incident with Officer Thomas occurred four years ago, and the exact same language is still contained within the policy manual today. Chief Smith never amended the policy. In fact, Chief Smith has not made a single modification to the written Rules and Policies manual during his seven-year tenure at Trenton Police Chief.
Even more alarming to the personnel committee was the fact that Chief Smith has apparently told his officers to enforce some unwritten policies, which include only issuing traffic citations to traffic violators who live outside of the local community, while only giving verbal or written warnings to local residents who commit the exact same offenses. Chief Smith also told his officers to not issue speeding tickets to drivers unless the driver is exceeding the posted speed limit by at least 15 mph.
The report also indicates that Chief Smith disciplines his subordinates as though they are children by publicly chastising them for their failure to follow proper protocol.
“Vindictive is a word that has been used repeatedly to describe Chief Smith,” the personnel committee stated in its report. Though there was little to no evidence to support such a claim, the perception still exists.
The report indicated that Chief Smith routinely orders officers not to arrest suspects for drug charges when he believes they may work with the police department to make drug buys. While sometimes such arrangements work out, sometimes they don’t. In cases where the subject later fails to follow thru in working with the police department, the subject escapes both arrest and prosecution for their initial offense. In such cases, Chief Smith then reportedly tells his officers to be sure to arrest the subject next time they are caught breaking the law.
“Though this may be perfectly logical behavior, it is easy to see how Chief Smith could be perceived as being vindictive in such cases,” the personnel committee stated. “Perhaps the more important issues is why Chief Smith would order his officers not to make an arrest in the first place. It would seem that making an appropriate arrest and charging a suspect with the crime that has been committed is the correct action to take. If a subject later agrees to work with the police department, and actually does so, then the police chief, in cooperation with the state attorney’s office, could reduce or drop the original charges, or make some other plea bargain that is legally appropriate.”
In Chief Smith’s 2006 mid-year employee evaluation, then city manager Jered Ottenwess set out in writing his expectation that Chief Smith, “initiate some type of formalized program or initiative to crack down on drug dealing and describe the program in writing as a way to document the efforts you are making.” When the personnel committee questioned Chief Smith about this, he said he did not know what they were talking about, despite being presented with the original copy of the evaluation taken from Chief Smith’s personnel file and bearing his signed initials.
When asked by the personnel committee if he believes his department is doing all that it can to combat drug activity in Trenton, the police chief responded that yes he does believe his department is doing all that it can, “with the resources he’s given.”
However, an examination of the budgetary expenditures by the police department over the past four years revealed that the police department isn’t fully utilizing the funding they do receive. Over the last four years, the police department has received a total of $2,500 for investigations and only spent $860, meaning that the chief has only spent 34 percent of the funds his department received for conducting investigations. During the same four fiscal years, the police department as a whole under spent its total budget allocations by $55,617.79. Therefore the personnel committee stated that it is hard to understand Chief Smith’s claim that he lacks the resources to fulfill his department’s mission when he leaves thousands of dollars unspent and ignores the applications of willing volunteers for months on end.
The personnel committee also investigated complaints that Chief Smith mishandled evidence, which they found to be true. In fact, sensitive evidence like money and drugs are not stored with a designated evidence custodian. More alarming is that Thigpen and Brown found that some evidence is completely forgotten by the police chief and not submitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s lab for testing.
The report goes so far as to say that the police chief’s handling of evidence is “disgraceful.” Officers are apparently assigned a desk drawer where they are to place any evidence they collect during the course of their tour of duty. The desk drawers are equipped with only standard desk drawer locks, nothing very strong, or secure. The police department has a much better equipped evidence room, which only Chief Smith has access to. The intent of the desk drawers is to provide a temporary place for officers to place evidence until Chief Smith can move the evidence into the evidence room.
Officers reported to the committee that evidence has been left in their drawers for months before Chief Smith removes it.
While visiting the police department, the personnel committee saw how the evidence is currently being stored, which included drug paraphernalia, dated from April and May of 2010, inside the Citizen’s Patrol volunteers’ drawers. This evidence, which was collected by former officer Lonnie Wilkerson, has been waiting six months without being placed into the evidence room or sent to FDLE’s lab for testing.
When asked why this evidence was still in the drawer, Chief Smith said he was not aware that the evidence was in the drawer. When Brown and Thigpen asked the police chief to explain his department’s procedures for handling evidence, Chief Smith said that he had no written procedures.
In another desk not intended for evidence, the personnel committee found two firearms taken as evidence two years ago and still sitting in a drawer.
“The evidence room is being kept in an inexcusable condition,” the report indicates, and photographs provide visual evidence that, “folders, boxes, paperwork and other evidence of all kinds are strewn all over the room. There are so many things on the floor of the evidence room that the floor itself is not visible and a person cannot even step into the room. It appears that some items in the evidence room have been literally just thrown into the disorganized room.
When asked why the evidence room is in such a state of disarray, Chief Smith said, “too much stuff in too small a space.”
When asked, Chief Smith told the personnel committee that he does not keep a list of all evidence being held by the police department.
Chief Smith also told the personnel committee that there had one time been a breach of security in the evidence room and 11 handguns had gone missing. Chief Smith said the handguns were all property of another law enforcement agency. When the agency called to retrieve the handguns, Chief Smith said he went to the evidence room to locate them and that’s when he realized they had been removed. The police chief could not say when the handguns went missing or who committed the crime only that the case is still under investigation.
The report also confirms that Chief Smith knowingly allowed officer Michael Herko to sleep in his car while on duty despite numerous reports that the officer was asleep on the job. Chief Smith only gave him verbal warnings.
While his officers work the night and weekend shifts, the report indicates that Chief Smith works somewhat questionable hours. He reports to work between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., taking a 45-minute to one-hour lunch break and then leaving for the day around 4 p.m. His questionable work hours have also led the chief to call out another officer to finish up a case he was working so that he might go home for the day.
According to the report, Chief Smith’s working hours have been in question for years. As far back as his 2004 annual evaluation, then city manager Michael Lamar called the police chief’s attendance, “Okay” saying, “Billy needs to improve his public communication skills and more broadly his overall drive to work. He also needs to realize being the chief in a small town comes with responsibilities beyond your standard 8 to 5 (or 9 to 3:30) job.”
Six years later, Chief Smith is still described as keeping similar hours, despite his annual salary of $42,500.
The police department’s Rules and Regulations manual defines the work week for police officers as: “A total of 40 hours of work in any seven day period consisting of 8 or 10 hour shifts, excluding emergencies.”
Complaints as to what exactly the police chief is doing while on duty were also investigated by the committee, specifically complaints that the chief spends a lot of time on eBay searching for race car parts. When the personnel committee attempted to review the Internet browsing history of one of the two computers frequently used by Chief Smith, they found that the computer, which is set to have its Internet browsing history saved for 14 days and then erased automatically, had been manually erased and therefore didn’t show a single Internet site visited.
The personnel committee did not have access to the computer located in Chief Smith’s private office because he was on vacation at the time of their visit and therefore the office was locked.
While the report indicated that it might be an exaggeration to say that Chief Smith is totally ineffectual in the performance of his duties, his discipline and professionalism have certainly been brought into question throughout the investigation.
Also, since the investigation began, the personnel committee received word that the police chief was visiting the homes of people who signed Wilkerson’s petition and asking why they signed it. When asked if he had made these visits and badgered residents, Chief Smith, with his attorney Ray Earl Thomas by his side, paused for several moments before answering that, “He did not believe he had.”