A Question of Justice… the unraveling of a Police Department
In previous articles, we’ve explored what justice is, how the lack of it affects a Community, the history of law enforcement breakdown, and the backgrounds of two determined police officers who set out to make things right.Note: This is the last of a series of articles which I began writing in July 2008.
All of the information presented has been verified by at least two sources and we believe is absolutely factual.
Bear with us as NIK finishes presenting this troubling story...
Now, we’ll look at what happened next…
As we’ve briefly mentioned earlier, a fire occurred at Crossroads Community Church Oakford Campus on January 22, 2008.
The building had served as a place of worship and gathering for many years, and was then utilized for administrative offices and several of the many satellite programs Crossroads' Congregation sponsors.
Oakford Campus suffered serious damage in a blaze that required the skills and manpower from 5 different fire departments to extinguish.
Long-time Pastor Jeff Harlow stood in the cold winter night watching... dazed and crestfallen. Harlow has been the Pastor at Crossroads for over 30 years... starting when he was only 19 years young and guiding a flock that’s grown from 50 to several thousand in three decades.
Obviously, Harlow wanted to know what happened. How did this fire start, and why? Standard investigations by the State Fire Marshall and A.T.F. resulted in a tentative ruling that electrical issues were its cause.
As the Pastor meditated on this, he continued to question the means of his Church's devastation.
Maybe it was the witnesses who claimed seeing a suspicious figure lurking near the buildings’ northwest side minutes before the fire was reported. Maybe it was the origination of the blaze in the office of Administrative Pastor Kevin Smith (a man who had been no stranger to controversy concerning the renewal of a liquor license for an establishment near his home). Maybe it was the scorch marks on the floor of Smith’s office indicating the fire had started on a carpet that had been water-soaked from a flood just a day or two earlier.
In any event, Pastor Harlow felt deep in his heart that the fire in his Church needed further investigation.
Harlow, like many Church leaders, maintains close contact with his parishioners. He knows about their families, their health, their homes, and their jobs.
In early February, he had the opportunity of fellowship with Jeff Kirk, a Church member and long-time Kokomo Police officer with experience in a wide variety of law enforcement investigation. Harlow asked Lt. Kirk what he thought about the fire.
Even though Kirk has studied quite a lot in his field, he knew little about the topic at hand. He agreed to help Pastor Harlow find some peace.
In the days that followed, Kirk visited the fire scene and came away with more questions than answers. He knew he needed the knowledge of someone with expertise in this area. One morning, he saw a Kokomo Fire investigator at the Police Department and took the opportunity to learn more….
The investigator was helpful, and near the end of the lesson asked Lt. Kirk why he was interested in such things.
When he explained, the investigator, now very serious, told Kirk of other fires and widening concerns about their origin. As the Policeman and the Firefighter compared notes, it became apparent that many of the same people had connections to three suspicious blazes in the Kokomo area.
Fire Department investigators had developed information that seemingly connected several individuals. At least one of these had close connections within the KPD, and the Fire Department was concerned about details of their knowledge being widely distributed. If Kokomo Police officers were involved, the Fire Department felt it prudent to protect the information they had….
Nonetheless, K.F.D. investigators took Lt. Kirk into their confidence and detailed more about what they knew. At the same time, a Sheriff’s Department Deputy had been trying to develop his own information that might connect individuals of interest in KFD’s fire investigation to other, more prolific criminal activity.
The Deputy was also concerned about sharing details of his work, primarily because he too was well aware some KPD officers were associates of suspected individuals.
Kirk apparently saw a real quandary here: this collection of information looked a lot like criminal conspiracy that needed some serious investigation. However, that investigation couldn’t be performed by his agency due to reasonable concern that several KPD officers were ‘cordial’ with certain suspects.
Additionally, Kirk knew his direct supervisor had personal friendships with some of these same police officers.
Kirk brought his problem to (then) Major Greg Davis, the officer responsible for KPD’s investigations section. Davis apparently agreed the matter needed further inquiry, and acknowledged the K.P.D. was not in any position to conduct its own investigation.
·It should be noted that the whole purpose of requesting outside assistance is a matter of proper police procedure and nothing more. Law enforcement agencies routinely do this when it becomes apparent officers within their ranks might be even remotely connected to individuals or organizations which are the focus of interest in a criminal investigation.
Davis must have notified Chief of Police Rob Baker of his concerns, and of his desire to seek outside help. Apparently, Baker agreed. After all, everyone knows the F.B.I. is usually reluctant to initiate action in any jurisdiction without the official approval of local departments.
Other Police Departments have rigid policies in place that prohibit political appointees (like a Chief) from any involvement during independent investigations of this type. Kokomo, it seems, does not. More on that later….
About the same time-frame, Sheriff Deputy Matt Roberson (assigned to the Kokomo-Howard County Drug Task Force) shared tape recordings obtained from an informant who seems acquainted with quite a few Kokomo Police Officers, as well as other subjects of interest in the now F.B.I.-directed criminal conspiracy investigation.
Many of you have already read partial transcripts of these tapes, which implicate various law enforcement personnel up-to-and-including the Chief of Police. There is quite a lot of controversy here, but the base facts are a sworn officer told an informant not to talk with investigators (obstruction of justice) and further advised this informant KPD Chief Baker destroyed evidence in a criminal investigation (absolute obstruction of justice).
It seems, at this point, Kirk and Davis became the target of Chief Baker and the Goodnight administration.
Note the time line here:
For obvious reasons, Baker and professional standards investigator Dave Mitchell were excluded from further discussions with the F.B.I.
- Pastor Harlow talks to Lt. Kirk.
- Kirk discusses things with a fire investigator.
- Kirk contacts Major Davis.
- Davis meets with the Chief of Police.
- A very short time later, Officer Mark Miller appears at the door of an informant he hasn’t seen in months, fretting about a now two-year-old ‘file’. The informant apparently thought this odd, which is why she saw fit to record the whole encounter
After all, now Baker was also linked to this ‘conspiracy’… and Mitchell is well known as a lackluster, unskilled investigator who mostly enjoys doing his boss’s bidding.
Baker, and Mitchell, and the Mayor… were furious. The officer caught on tape was discussed thoroughly. “What do we do with Mark Miller?”, a protege of many of the officers in this investigation and the man who unwittingly provided taped evidence that might bring down the Chief of Police, other officers, and the Mayors own relative Officer James Lushin.
Baker originally wanted to ask Miller to resign, and thus wash his hands of this dirty laundry. The only problem was… the media had the scent of a unfolding ‘conspiracy’.
The Kokomo Perspective and the Kokomo Tribune heard about the ‘tape’.
No one knows how, but a majority of speculation points to Mayor Goodnight giving it to reporters.
That speculation is based on the fact the city administration seems quite adamant about providing information to the media that presents their actions in the best light. News articles totaling over 22,000 words can be directly attributed to the Mayor, the Chief, or other administration officials… all while Kirk and Davis remained virtually silent.
We’ve pointedly asked the Perspective (who eventually published tape transcripts) where they got their information…. asked them to confirm or deny that material came from Greg Goodnight or the City Attorney’s office. So far, they have done neither.
So… we have the two original questioners (Kirk and Davis) now locked out of their offices and threatened with their jobs and pensions. We have sensitive investigation documents leaked to local news outlets. We have police officers that should be enduring real, in-depth professional standards investigations that are instead free to continue their careers. We have preliminary evidence of a criminal conspiracy that everyone in Kokomo continues to ignore.
More troubling, we have the Chief of Police publicly admitting he took evidence in a criminal investigation home and locked it in a personal safe. We have a ‘professional standards’ investigator who freely gave confidential files to the Chief in violation of Department policy and virtually any police department’s ethical rules.
Why would these men feel it necessary to ignore K.P.D. policy and many long established canons of police procedure? They claim the files weren’t safe in their respective offices. Those claims ring hollow. If files aren’t safe behind locked office doors in a police station… the department is in worse trouble than we have imagined.
Mayor Goodnight stepped in once again. He, Chief Baker and sometime-investigator Mitchell demanded to see the Fire Department evidence.
Baker, interestingly, has exhibited unusual concern in these fires from their onset. We’re told the former Major of Support Services inexplicably arrived, in the middle of the night, at the fireground of two suspicious blazes.
The Mayor and the Chief of Police were refused access to K.F.D.’s investigation… until Goodnight threatened to replace Fire Chief Scott Kern if he didn't get what he wanted. Kern folded, and Goodnight was given the files.
Sources claim the original informant (not the one in the now-famous tapes) who provided the Fire Department with DVD-recorded statements (which Goodnight received) began to be harassed by various individuals connected with ‘persons of interest’ very soon after Mayor Goodnight had these articles in his possession.
Because of this, it’s also reported the informant has refused further cooperation with any law enforcement agency.
In the aftermath, the Kokomo Police Department continues to crumble. Cops, probably the most cynical folks among us, have no trouble seeing a dysfunctional Police Department when it’s apparent to them.
Brent Wines, one of the officers mentioned in the now famous Perspective article, demanded a full-and-complete investigation to clear his name. So far, that hasn’t happened, probably because it would open a Pandora’s box of issues no one wants to consider.
Still, this needs fixed. It is obvious the Mayor, the Chief of Police, Investigator Mitchell, Officer Miller, and countless others made serious mistakes here.
Attacking Greg Davis and Jeff Kirk won’t fix that…. a complete re-vamp of the Kokomo Police Department, finally free from political influence… will. The City Council needs to address this issue before it becomes a fiery dragon nothing will tame.
