After more than a year of controversy, media scrutiny, and speculation, the Springfield Police Department has apparently moved to terminate the employment of two officers who were once stars of the detective bureau. On Tuesday, officers Paul Carpenter and Jim Graham were fired, police sources say.
There are signs that Graham anticipated a shift in his career prospects. In June, he took the sergeant’s examination, apparently optimistic about his future with the SPD despite the fact that he was already on paid administrative leave and under investigation by the Illinois State Police. But last week Graham listed his new 2,550-square-foot home for sale, initially asking $249,000.
Carpenter, on leave for a year, seemed to try to win leniency by providing investigators with damaging information about his former associates. A summary of the ISP investigation shows that he reported to SPD’s internal-affairs office several salacious allegations about his former partner, Graham, and about Sangamon County first assistant state’s attorney Steve Weinhoeft. He also offered city officials information that Lt. Rickey Davis — his former supervisor and the plaintiff in two race-discrimination lawsuits against the city of Springfield — had had an extramarital affair.
The investigation originated with the complaint filed by former narcotics supervisor Ron Vose, who in February 2005 sent SPD Chief Don Kliment a 20-page memo claiming that the detectives had consistently failed to properly document informants; filed “factually inaccurate, misleading or false affidavits”; and obtained search warrants through the use of questionable “trash rips.”
Kliment handed the memo over to the ISP’s Division of Internal Investigation, which concluded its probe in June. However, both the U.S. attorney’s office and the Office of the State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor initially declined to file criminal charges after reviewing the ISP findings.
Last month, Illinois Times reported that a summary of the ISP investigation substantiated many of Vose’s allegations. Other media outlets obtained a redacted version of the summary last week, and, in the midst of the ensuing publicity, OSAP special prosecutor Charles Zalar announced that he would file criminal charges against Carpenter. On Wednesday, Carpenter was arrested and charged with official misconduct and wire fraud for faxing a false community-service time card to officials in another state on behalf of a probationer [see “Something doesn’t add up,” March 2].
Alan “A.J.” Jones, president of the police union, says that both detectives were known in the department as aggressive crime-fighters but that he has no knowledge of specific allegations against them.
“I think there was a lot of politics involved in the whole thing,” he says. “It strikes me as kind of odd that in June there’s no criminal charges, and here we are in October and there are criminal charges and terminations.”
He also says that both officers have suffered over the past year. “I think they’ve both had a very, very rough go of this,” he said. “To oversimplify it, it’s like the father telling the child, ‘Go up to your room — you’re gonna get a spanking,’ and they’ve had to sit there and wait for it.
“They went from being at the top of the game to being very restricted and wondering what’s going to happen next.”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Oct 19-25, 2006.
