The investigation into the murder of popular
hairstylists Barron “Mr. Fresh” Rice and girlfriend
Lakisha Criss hit a snag last week when the lead detective on the
case was put on paid administrative leave. Springfield Police Detective Paul Carpenter
had handled the case since the two were found shot to death in
their East Lawrence Street home on May 25, the victims of an
apparent home invasion and robbery. Carpenter surrendered his
badge and gun Oct. 4, pending the outcome of an unrelated
internal investigation, according to several SPD sources who spoke
on the condition of anonymity.
At the same time, Carpenter’s longtime
partner, Detective Jim Graham, was transferred out of SPD’s
major-case unit and assigned to general investigations. Chief Don Kliment declined to comment, citing
the department’s longstanding policy of not discussing
personnel matters. However, SPD spokesman Sgt. Kevin Keen
confirmed that Carpenter’s caseload has been transferred to
another officer. “Detective Rick Dhabalt has been given all
the cases previously assigned to Carpenter and is now working those
cases,” he said. The involuntary moves for these two
detectives, unrelated to the Rice-Criss investigation, come at a
time when officers believed that they were close to solving the
case, according to SPD sources. “It couldn’t have
happened at a worse time,” one officer says. Carpenter and Graham had worked together in
the major-case unit since at least 1999. Last spring, Carpenter
sought and received a transfer to general investigations. But when
Rice and Criss were killed, Carpenter’s well-established rapport with
residents on the east side of town earned him the assignment to the
case. Steve Weinhoeft, first assistant state’s
attorney, says that losing Carpenter won’t derail the job of
finding the couple’s killer or killers.
“This matter is not going to affect that
case — it’s going to continue to be aggressively
investigated,” he says. “I recently met with
half-a-dozen officers for an update on that case. We meet regularly
to discuss the progress of the investigation.”
Bob Markovic, president of Police Benevolent
and Protective Agency Unit 5, refused to confirm or comment on
Carpenter’s current status but said that administrative leave
doesn’t necessarily indicate that an officer is facing
discipline. “It does sound worse than it is,”
Markovic said.
Administrative leave may foreshadow
termination, or it may be a precautionary removal of an
officer’s police powers during the fact-finding phase of an
investigation. Sometimes administrative leave is simply a courtesy
extended to an officer who has been involved in a traumatic
incident. Markovic said that “a handful” of
officers have been put on administrative leave under the administration of Kliment, who became chief in
June 2003. Carpenter and Graham recently came under
scrutiny after an investigator, an attorney, and a parolee filed
separate complaints with SPD’s office of professional
standards accusing the officers of misconduct. In February, private
investigator Bill Clutter accused Graham of perjury and both
Carpenter and Graham of concealing reports and intimidating a
mentally handicapped witness during the November 2004 trial of
Anthony Grimm, charged with the 1994 murder of Tonia Smith [see
“Credibility question” Feb. 24]. After reading about
Clutter’s complaints in Illinois
Times, defense attorney Bruce Locher
renewed a complaint he had filed in 2001 against Carpenter, Graham,
and another SPD detective, Steve Welsh [see “Fast
track” April 21]. Locher’s complaint encompassed three
cases in which misconduct by the detectives resulted in the
dismissal of felony charges. In May, parolee Thomas Munoz filed a complaint
after Carpenter, Graham, and Dhabalt arrested him in Divernon for
the alleged attempted burglary of a church in Rochester [see
“To tell the truth,” May 5]. Rochester’s police
chief, Bill Marass, told Illinois
Times that he had no evidence of a
crime, and no SPD official explained why Springfield detectives
made an arrest in Divernon. Charges against Munoz were dropped, but, Munoz
said, the arrest cost him his job.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2005.
