Village of Palmyra police chief fired over handling of cases

The village of Palmyra's police chief has been fired after village officials determined he handled several cases improperly.
Among the cases, according to officials: He parked his personal truck loaded with 89 confiscated marijuana plants on high school grounds; he refused to prosecute a volunteer suspected of exposing himself to third-grade boys several times; and he mishandled a drug case.
The Palmyra Police Department Committee voted 2-1 last week in favor of firing Chief Charles Warren after determining he performed his job unsatisfactorily. In doing so, the committee acted against the recommendations of the village's hearing examiner, attorney John Fuchs, who concluded after a hearing in November that Warren showed "room for improvement" but no misconduct.
Warren's attorney, Paul Bucher, called the dismissal "racially motivated" and said he plans to sue. Warren is black. He has been with the department for five years.
It was Palmyra resident and retired Milwaukee police detective Gary Byers who brought three cases to the attention of the Police Department Committee in a complaint, saying Warren didn't follow policy. In hearings Nov. 21-22, Byers outlined the cases.

Child enticement case

According to village records:
A third-grader told his teacher in October 2009 that he and four other special-needs children had played "truth or dare, be naked" at the home of a volunteer with the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization. The student said the man also exposed himself several times and showered where the boys could see him. School officials reported the case to police.
Warren called in former village Police Chief Scott Neubauer to help him because he had expertise in child abuse. The two determined no sexual assault had occurred. But Neubauer said he believed that the man was a "seductive pedophile" - someone who's likely to commit a sexual assault in a matter of time - so he recommended a search of the man's apartment and a referral of the case to the Jefferson County district attorney's office.
Warren disagreed, saying he thought there was insufficient evidence "that a crime had yet been committed."
"He (Warren) felt no charges would issue, but detrimental embarrassment of the adult would result," Fuchs' summary of the case said.
No one brought the case to the district attorney's attention.

Marijuana case

In another case, the chief had used hunting cameras to survey an area on the border of the village where marijuana plants were growing. He was unable to figure out who was growing or harvesting them. On Aug. 31, 2010, he knew a student activity was coming up and ordered two officers to tear up the plants.
While the officers harvested the plants, the chief coached football at Palmyra-Eagle High School. The officers realized the plants didn't fit in their police car. Having no truck in the department, they called the chief, who owns a truck. He left the football session and had the officers load the plants into his truck. He then drove back to the high school to help finish practice, parking the truck on school grounds.
A woman walking by noticed the odor of marijuana and the roots of the plants sticking out of the truck and helped herself to some. The chief noticed this and sent an officer, who gave her a ticket. Warren later advocated for dismissal of the ticket because he thought the embarrassment that the woman's innocent son would have experienced from media coverage was enough punishment.
The village did not have an evidence room big enough to store the marijuana plants, so the chief didn't inventory the marijuana for use as evidence but took it home. More than a month later, he borrowed a chipper, shredded the plants and buried them in his yard.
"The marijuana never grew and was never illegally used," Fuchs' document states. "Many days passed by the time the chief did this, but he had no shredder."
Byers argued that the marijuana is evidence of criminal behavior. Fuchs countered that the plants were not being used as evidence because there was no suspect. Besides, he said, the chief could not be punished for not following policies on handling evidence because the Police Department has no such policies.

Drug case

In a third case, involving the 2009 death of a 34-year-old woman, the Jefferson County coroner made a preliminary finding that she died of an accidental drug overdose. Before the Milwaukee County medical examiner - a doctor - issued his final ruling and toxicology report, the woman's mother called the police, saying the confiscated drugs were hers and she needed to get them back. She had a prescription for the drugs that her daughter had stolen.
Warren told her to contact her doctor, but when she said the doctor was unavailable, Warren agreed to release the drugs, fearing the department would be liable for damages if something happened to the woman. He did not wait for the medical examiner's report to determine whether foul play was a factor in the death of the woman.
Fuchs concluded that the drug overdose case and the marijuana case did not rise to the level of cause for suspension or removal. But he called the child enticement case "a disturbing situation."
"There seems something wrong here," he wrote in his recommendation.
Yet, because Warren didn't ignore the case, there wasn't cause for suspension or termination, Fuchs said.
He concluded: "I do not see misconduct. I do not see incompetence. I find merely room for improvement."

Committee's vote

The committee disagreed. It had the choice of suspending Warren with pay or firing him, committee member Cindy Bontempo said in an interview Sunday. The committee voted 2-1 in favor of termination for "unsatisfactory performance demonstrated by the failure, or either unwillingness or inability to perform assigned tasks, failure to perform work standards established for the officer's rank . . . failure to take appropriate action on the occasion of a crime, disorder or other conduct deserving police attention," Village Attorney Val Anderson explained after the vote.
Bontempo said that the chief is "a great guy" who's loved by a lot of people in the community, but that he has a hard time balancing those relationships with doing his job. Taken individually, she said, the three cases may have been addressed with discipline but cumulatively constituted a reason for dismissal.
"A lot of it felt sloppy. Somebody's going to get hurt on it," she said. "He's worried about what's going to happen to these people. I think he's torn between making sure that everything's covered or he doesn't embarrass somebody for the wrong reasons. . . . I think he has a hard time balancing that."
Warren's attorney, Bucher, said a committee member had made racial comments against Warren, one of very few black men in the village.
"The information we have is, at least one of the members had made a statement she didn't like the chief because he was black. That will be pursued. It's an outrageous decision," he said in an interview. "This is clearly, without a doubt, a racial issue. And we're going to respond in kind. There was no just cause to terminate. I don't think there's any court in the land that will look at this and find just cause."
Bontempo said she doesn't know of any racial comments anybody made.
Bucher said he planned to seek a temporary injunction to prevent the firing from taking effect and planned to sue the village.