Springfield Police Department Chief Don
Kliment will be named as the defendant in a lawsuit from the
unlikeliest of sources — next-door neighbor and fellow union
activist Ron Vose. Vose, who served more than 27 years on the
department and won numerous awards for his work in undercover
narcotics investigations, resigned Jan. 19, citing fear of
retaliation for complaints he had filed against detectives in
SPD’s major-case unit. Those complaints, contained in a
20-page memo he submitted to Kliment in March, form the basis of an
ongoing Illinois State Police investigation that has already
resulted in two SPD detectives’ being put on administrative
leave: Detective Paul Carpenter was placed on leave Oct. 4, and
Detective Jim Graham was placed on leave Jan. 17. So far, the
detectives have not been officially charged with any wrongdoing,
nor are they mentioned by name in Vose’s lawsuit. Deputy Chief William Rouse, who supervises
SPD’s criminal-investigations division, will be named as a
co-defendant in the complaint. Rouse could not be reached, and
Kliment declined to comment on Vose’s lawsuit, which is set
to be filed this week. But the litigation comes as no surprise; in
his resignation letter, Vose mentioned that he had hired a lawyer. According to an 18-page draft of the lawsuit
obtained by Illinois Times, Vose alleges that Kliment and Rouse violated his
First Amendment right to freedom of speech by retaliating against
him for exposing the detectives’ alleged misconduct. This
retaliation came in the form of a “forced” transfer
from the narcotics unit he had supervised for three years to street
patrol. Vose claims that this transfer constituted a demotion and
served to isolate and embarrass him, damaging his personal and professional
reputation to the extent that he felt he had no choice but resign. “The treatment which Vose received by
and the actions taken against him by Defendant Kliment and
Defendant Rouse, culminating in Vose’s demotion from a
supervisory position in a criminal investigation unit to the patrol
division, communicated to Vose that he had no credibility to his
superior officers and made it intolerable for Vose to continue to
work as a police officer with the City of Springfield,” the
complaint states. Vose will seek $300,000 in compensatory
damages and $100,000 in punitive damages from each defendant. The complaint does not include Vose’s
20-page memo, but it does shed light on the controversy that has
plagued the police department over the past two years. Vose alleges in the complaint that problems
with the major-case detectives surfaced around summer 2004, when he
learned that they were obtaining search warrants on the basis of
narcotics evidence found in “trash rips.” Officers
would sift through a suspect’s garbage and use any indication
of drugs (a baggie with marijuana stems and seeds, for example) to
persuade a judge to grant a search warrant for the suspect’s residence. For major-case detectives, such
searches could provide a means of entry to look for weapons, bloody
clothing, or other evidence of nonnarcotic crimes. Vose’s
complaint characterizes the major-case unit’s use of narcotics
searches as “pretextual” and “not always based upon
probable cause.” According to his complaint, Vose’s
initial concern was the lack of coordination between the major-case
unit and the narcotics unit, specifically that the major-case
unit’s searches could compromise the narcotics unit’s
investigations. But once he reviewed an unspecified number of
search-warrant applications and subsequent warrants, Vose found
other problems with the major-case detectives’ techniques,
according to his complaint. The detectives had obtained some search
warrants using information from “confidential sources”
or paid informants who had not been properly documented by SPD and
some by filing “factually inaccurate, misleading or false
affidavits,” the complaint states. Vose claims that he shared this information
with Rouse and Kliment and talked about his concerns during
department meetings but that no one addressed the issues. Tensions increased in November 2004, during
the murder trial of Anthony Grimm — a 10-year-old
“cold” case that Graham and Carpenter had resurrected
when they found DNA evidence related to Grimm. In a move that has
been repeatedly cited by police sources as inappropriate, Vose
attended the Grimm trial as a spectator. During a break, he and
Graham had a brief argument. In his complaint, Vose claims he attended the
trial only because he had received information that “there may be a problem”
with the detectives’ planned testimony. He had suggested that
Rouse attend the trial, but Rouse did not have time and authorized Vose
to attend. The confrontation with Graham occurred when Graham accused
Vose of “working for the defense,” the complaint states.
The detective and his supervisor subsequently filed an internal-affairs
complaint against Vose, and he received a letter of reprimand for the
incident. Graham had problems of his own at the trial.
Having initially testified that he had not made a report of an
interview with Grimm’s roommate, he reversed himself minutes
later after finding that report — along with another
unproduced document — in his “personal folder.”
Private investigator Bill Clutter, who was hired by Grimm’s
defense team, later filed internal-affairs complaints against both
Graham and Carpenter, alleging that the detectives intimidated a
defense witness and withheld exculpatory interview reports. In December 2004, shortly after the Grimm
trial, Rouse ordered Vose to report in writing any alleged
incidents of misconduct by detectives — the document that has
become known as “the 20-page memo.” By the time Vose
completed it, in March 2005, he had decided to deliver it only to
Kliment and not to Rouse because “Vose was aware that his
memorandum would document the failure of Defendant Rouse to act on
Vose’s prior complaints against the detectives,” the
lawsuit states. About the same time, Kliment and Rouse
assigned a second sergeant to the narcotics unit to handle
administrative matters (e.g., payroll and scheduling) with the
understanding that Vose would concentrate on operational issues.
Unbeknownst to Vose, this second sergeant, Kurt Banks, participated
in at least two drug searches — one based on a questionable
warrant obtained by major-case-unit detectives, according to the
lawsuit. On April 12, in an apparent effort to resolve
problems between the major case and narcotics units, Kliment met
with Rouse, Banks, Lt. Rickey Davis, and Vose. According to the
lawsuit, the meeting ended with Kliment’s telling Vose to “either
get along with the detectives and supervisors” or transfer to
patrol. On April 27, Kliment transferred Vose to patrol.
This article appears in Feb 2-8, 2006.
