Indiana Police Chief Promoting As Many Bad Cops As He Can To Supervisory Positions
from the Welcome-to-Zero-Accountability,-Indiana dept
Why is routine police misconduct a problem police departments can't seem to solve? It's a mystery, says Elkhart, Indiana law enforcement.
Twenty-eight of the Elkhart Police Department’s 34 supervisors, from chief down to sergeant, have disciplinary records. The reasons range from carelessness to incompetence to serious, even criminal, misconduct.
Fifteen of them have served suspensions, including [Police Chief Ed] Windbigler himself, who was once suspended for three days and ordered to pay punitive damages in a federal lawsuit alleging excessive force.
Change starts at the stop... unless it's stagnation you're really looking for. Then all you have to do is put someone as questionable as the officers he oversees in charge of the whole mess.
This report -- put together by ProPublica and the South Bend Tribune -- compiles information from public records and court documents to paint a disturbing picture of the Elkhart police force. Making bad cops supervisors ensures misconduct by officers will never be fully addressed.
One promoted officer fired his weapon in three fatal shootings in the span of four years. Sergeant Dan Jones has been promoted twice, despite being found at fault in at least four accidents. He's also Parent of the Year.
Jones was once disciplined for how he picked his child up from elementary school, according to his personnel file. In his squad car, Jones entered a drive marked “wrong way,” cut into line, failed to properly secure his child and then, at a pedestrian crossing, failed to stop for a student holding up her stop sign.
Despite seven reprimands, a suspension, a demotion, and a finding of neglect of duty, Todd Thayer was promoted from corporal to assistant chief in 2016 by Chief Windbigler shortly after he took over the top spot in the department. His suspension involved officers taking suggestive photos of a woman waiting for a ride at the police station.
Another promoted officer shot and killed an unarmed man while serving a search warrant, and tasered a student at a local high school while acting as a school resource officer. Other members of the PD's supervisory team have used data terminals to "talk about white power," repeatedly switched recording devices off, threw away property seized from people they've stopped, slept on the job, filed incomplete paperwork, and been involved in large number of auto accidents and on-the-job shootings.
With these promotions, Chief Windbigler has made it clear he won't hold his officers accountable for their misdeeds. He's been in office for less than two years, but he's already shown he's not willing to mete out discipline.
This month, the city said two Elkhart police officers would be charged with misdemeanor battery after the Tribune requested video that showed them repeatedly punching a handcuffed man in the face. Windbigler had previously opted to limit the two officers’ discipline to reprimands. He told the oversight board they “just went a little overboard when they took him to the ground,” while making no mention of the punches thrown.
There's another level of oversight that may rein some of the worst cops in, but Chief Windbigler is actively avoiding its scrutiny. The Public Safety Board is supposed to be the disciplinary body handling misconduct cases, but Chief Windbigler isn't giving it anything to work with. As the article notes, previous police chiefs brought 20 cases a year to the PSB. Windbigler brought zero cases to the board during his first full year as chief. Since then, he has only brought eight. For all of this accountability-dodging, his officers voted the chief "Officer of the Year," despite the fact the honor is supposed to go to actual officers, not top PD brass.
The news only gets worse for Elkhart residents, who will be paying bad cops to oversee possibly worse cops. The mayor, Tim Neese, has decided to reform the Public Safety Board. Neese, whose son is an Elkhart police officer, will be dropping his two appointees and replacing them with more cops.
He said the board would be made up of five people — and all five would be police officers, including an assistant chief, a captain and an internal affairs lieutenant.
The mayor and police chief don't appear to care how much long-term damage they're doing to community relations and the police department itself. The Elkhart PD spent much of the early 90s defending itself in a long string of civil rights lawsuits that culminated in a study commissioned by the city that showed the department had a "reputation for brutality" and almost zero internal accountability. With these recent brass installations, it's the 90s all over again.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: ed windbigler, elkhart, elkhart police department, indiana, police
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
That's got to be the easiest job ever. He (definitely not "she" in that department) sits around playing solitaire all day and still gets paid for it. Hell, that'll earn him a promotion.
I wish there were similar studies done for all police departments so we at least know where we stand. As of right now I have to assume my local PD is at least as bad as Elkhart's.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Systemic corruption, top to bottom
At this point if they started an official protection racket it wouldn't surprise me in the least, given they've made it crystal clear that they have no interest in serving anyone but themselves, just like any good crime syndicate, with the only real difference being that criminals without badges can but dream of the power and legal protection these thugs enjoy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Systemic corruption, top to bottom
started? dont they already have unions that get them off the hook and immunity from almost every offense? Even video evidence is not enough to secure guilt. And when a lawsuit is successful, its the taxpayer footing the bill. Oh, they have a racket already.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Is that a Freudian slip there?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Can't fix this from the inside
This cannot stand, and it cannot be resolved "through the system" when they've long owned and corrupted it; leaving nothing more than a way by which they strike at dissent or quiet their victims.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Can't fix this from the inside
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Can't fix this from the inside
There needs to be a process. The corrupt and the bosses that allowed the corrupt must be expunged, no question. But there are some apples, not yet rotted, that might be allowed to flourish. The management level, however is a different story. The best manager is not necessarily the best employee. One could be a good employee, and a lousy manager. Managers (or supervisors, etc.) need to be chosen for their supervisory or managerial skills. They must have knowledge (experiential or otherwise, though experiential will create a better bond) of the underlying activities, and empathy for those activities, or they will get no consensus from their employees. And that is what we actually want.
Then they can go about teaching them the laws that they are supposed to be enforcing and disciplining them when they fail to follow procedure or go outside of bounds, rather than protecting them, and your own ass.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Can't fix this from the inside
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Can't fix this from the inside
Well let's see:
Soap Box: Didn't we just have a story about Corporate Censorship? Oh, yeah. We did. The next one plays into this as well....
Ballot Box: Republicans that chose to strip power from the seats they lost.Wisconsin and Michigan being the most recent examples. Widespread gerrymandering, and accusations of election fraud in more than one state.
Given all of the crap going on, I'd say the first three boxes are thoroughly compromised. Given that we are supposed to use them in order, what box comes next? Because it would seem that there is some group that's hellbent on making sure that the next box gets used.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Can't fix this from the inside
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Can't fix this from the inside
You'll have to work issue by issue with a variety of groups until you see some change. You might have to vote tactically to get someone else into office as a Congressman or Senator, even if it's someone you don't agree with on ideology; once you've got that person in you can address the changes you need to make for now, and work towards changes you want to see down the line.
Pressure works, but campaign fatigue kicks in sooner or later so you need a large pool of people to work with and you need to keep at it.
Divisive, nihilistic attitudes will see you out on your own, easily picked off if you do decide to go all Bundy or something.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If NO, Can a supervisor be fired?
If YES, you have your answer of why.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Those cops need to be policed
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bad cops get promoted
At least in some departments.
It wouldn't be surprising if aggressive types get rewarded and promoted in today's quasi-military police departments.
Esp. since, unlike a real military, police never actually face an enemy on equal terms.
The need to win wars (or at least avoid losing them) tends to keeps hotheads out of senior positions in real militaries.
Pretend-military police lack that discipline.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Bad cops get promoted
Unlike the military, police never actually face an enemy at all.
They face the citizenry they are employed to protect and serve. One who breaks a law is not an enemy but a citizen who needs to be reined in, even if that person is waving a weapon around.
Until citizen militias form and declare war on the police departments there are no enemies of the police. Apart from themselves, perhaps.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Bad cops get promoted
Yeah, like that recent case where some cops beat up another undercover cop. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/30/its-still-blast-beating-people-st-louis-police -indicted-assault-undercover-officer-posing-protester/?utm_term=.ddae72595aa9
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
LEO Malpractice Insurance
This article reinforces the idea of requiring law enforcement to have professional liability insurance, in my mind.
Doctors, who also have stressful occupations and make life and death decisions, are required to have malpractice insurance, why not cops?
As long as this insurance was paid from the officer's pocket, it would create a win-win situation. If the insurance company (insurance companies are pretty good at risk management) deemed an officer to be high-risk, his insurance premium would increase until he couldn't afford it and he would become unemployable. It would also reduce the huge liability currently being placed on municipalities for officer misconduct.
The one drawback I see is the risk that policing will become dictated by the insurance companies (like health insurance is). We would have to put in measures at the ground level to prevent that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: LEO Malpractice Insurance
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: LEO Malpractice Insurance
Trump has nothing to do with this.
Your trolling is obvious, Sergei.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: LEO Malpractice Insurance
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: LEO Malpractice Insurance
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: LEO Malpractice Insurance
And then... they'll cry that it's soooo expensive to be a cop they need a pay raise, which they'll get by the usual methods (standing down and not patrolling "expensive" neighborhoods), so it'll end up coming out of taxpayer pockets instead of their own.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: LEO Malpractice Insurance
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
up to the.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]