Chancellor
Searcy’s policing career had already been controversial by the time
prosecutors charged him this summer with demanding phone numbers from
women to avoid traffic tickets.
Searcy,
who resigned from the Detroit Police Department in July, is facing
misconduct in office charges — and the possibility of never again
wearing a badge in another city. If convicted, he would join the small
number of officers across Michigan to have their law enforcement
licenses revoked.
An investigation by the Free
Press, which has been examining police misconduct issues in an ongoing
series of stories since 2017, showed Michigan is lax compared with other
states when it comes to holding officers accountable for misconduct and
questionable behavior. In Michigan, an officer's license is yanked
when they are convicted of a felony or, in a recent addition to state
law, a handful of misdemeanor charges. Other states are more aggressive.
A
review of meeting minutes for the Michigan Commission on Law
Enforcement Standards found that, as of June, 144 officers have had
their licenses revoked since 2007. In Michigan, where there are about
19,000 officers, it is nearly impossible to determine how many have
committed other types of serious misconduct because no agency collects
that information.
Like other officers the newspaper has reported on around the state, Searcy's most recent problem isn't his first.
Searcy
was charged criminally in 2015, accused of wrongfully seizing money
and, in one case, fabricating the circumstances of an arrest. Searcy was
acquitted, though, and went back to work as a Detroit Police officer.
While
that episode garnered headlines, the Free Press has learned that Searcy
also faced troubles in 2010 after a woman claimed he threatened to
shoot her during a road rage incident. Prosecutors declined to charge
Searcy in that case because there was “insufficient evidence,” but
Detroit’s top cop recently said that Searcy’s past causes him concern.
“Given his history,” Detroit Police Chief James Craig said, “I am pleased that he is no longer a member of this department."
Searcy faces trial on his current case early next year.
Todd
Perkins, his attorney, declined to comment on the pending criminal
case, as well as the 2010 incident, saying he doesn’t know the
circumstances surrounding that case. Perkins also said Searcy would not
make any comments, “on the advice of counsel.”
Craig
said Searcy’s resignation is noted as having been “under charges” —
meaning if he tried to get another policing job, the circumstances of
his departure should be clear to agencies conducting a background check.
In its investigation, the Free Press found previous examples of
officers job-hopping from one town to another, regardless of past
transgressions. Though background checks are routinely conducted, the
newspaper found that some departments decided to overlook histories of problems.
In
2017, legislation was passed in an effort to prevent misconduct from
being hidden by officers' resignations. It, in part, requires that
police departments keep records about the circumstances of an officer's
departure from the agency.
Searcy,
33, who started working for Detroit Police in 2008, found himself under
investigation by internal affairs following an alleged off-duty road
rage incident in 2010.
According to a warrant
request submitted to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and obtained
by the Free Press through a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request,
a woman was driving in Detroit in June 2010 with her three friends and
2-year-old daughter when she saw Searcy standing in the street and
honked her horn to get him out of the way. She said he got into a
vehicle, followed her, then pulled up alongside and said: “I’ll shoot
you (expletives).”
The
woman then drove “at a high rate of speed” to the Highland Park police
station, where she banged on the door and told officers that Searcy, who
was sitting in his vehicle in the parking lot, had threatened to shoot
her and her passengers, according to the request.
Police
saw a handgun between the armrest and driver’s seat in Searcy’s car. As
he was being taken into custody, Searcy initially refused to put his
hands on his head, asking the officers what probable cause they had and
“why are you felonious assaulting me?” according to the warrant request.
Searcy
refused to answer any questions or provide a statement to the Detroit
Police internal affairs sergeant in charge of the investigation, the
request says. The prosecutor’s office declined to charge him.
When
asked recently how the prosecutor's office made its determination, a
spokeswoman wrote that the office “looked at the facts and evidence in
the case and determined that there was insufficient evidence to bring a
criminal charge in the matter.” She did not elaborate.
Detroit
Police officials recommended Searcy serve a 20-day suspension for the
incident — but that recommendation wasn’t made until four years later,
in 2014.
Craig, who came to the departmentas
chief in 2013, dismissed the case. He said recently that four years is
an “excessive” amount of time to have elapsed. Craig said he has issued a
rule in the department that misconduct investigations typically need to
be adjudicated within one year.
He said the department had lost cases with similarly long delays that ended up in arbitration and that was a concern.
“I
think part of the problem in this case was that it wasn’t adjudicated.
It took four years,” Craig said. When the 20-day suspension was
recommended, “I said, ‘Well the case is four years old, what have we
done with it for four years but just put it in a desk?’ That’s a glaring
example of some of the things we found that was broken in our system
and one of the primary reasons, I think, that the arbitrator was
dismissing these cases.”
That
same year, in 2014, Searcy and his partner in the tactical response
unit were suspended while being investigated for alleged misconduct,
according to a 2015 Free Press article. The officers were accused
of wrongly confiscating money from a man they arrested and
fabricating the circumstances of another arrest.
The
officers were charged criminally in 2015 with several counts, including
misconduct in office, embezzlement, larceny and false report of a
felony. Searcy was also charged in two additional cases, also involving
the seizing of money from people who had been stopped.
The
then-president of the Detroit Police Officers Association told the Free
Press at the time that Searcy and his partner were “two solid police
officers with one goal, and that is to protect our citizens.”
Both officers were acquitted by a jury.
But when Searcy returned to work in 2017, he was given a lower-profile assignment in communications, Craig said.
Then came the latest criminal allegations.
Prosecutors
said that during two separate incidents in summer 2018, Searcy pulled
women over and demanded their phone numbers to avoid a ticket from him.
Both
women testified during Searcy's preliminary examination that
Searcy — wearing a uniform and driving a patrol car — stopped them in
downtown Detroit. They said Searcy told them to provide their phone
numbers, which he had them recite.
A sergeant with
internal affairs testified that Searcy had been doing work at the time
through the Detroit Police Department's secondary employment program,
which allows businesses or organizations to hire off-duty officers.
Perkins, Searcy's attorney, said his client had been working secondary
assignments on the dates of the alleged incidents.
According
to a transcript of the preliminary exam, Detroit Police Sgt. Kenneth
Butler testified that, even while on a secondary assignment, an officer
has the authority to "make arrests, issue tickets, conduct traffic
stops" in uniform and in a police vehicle.
One
woman, pulled over in July 2018, testified that Searcy's instruction to
provide her number felt "like a demand." Afterward, she said Searcy
called and texted, at one point asking in a message whether she had
received a ticket in the mail. The woman testified she then filed a
complaint with the police department, "because I felt like he was trying
to scare me into responding."
The other woman, who
was stopped in August 2018, testified that Searcy told her she made an
illegal turn and said her license had been suspended, though she
disputed both claims and testified she had just renewed her license.
The
woman testified Searcy told her he could take her to jail over the
suspended license, give her a ticket and impound the car. She said
Searcy told her he could "make all of this go away" if she gave him her
number. After she did, the woman testified, Searcy cautioned that he
still her information, saying: "This better be the right number,"
according to the transcript.
Asked
about not giving Searcy a fake number instead, the woman testified: "Of
course I didn't. He's a police officer and he definitely would verify
it and if he wanted to do anything to me, with all my information he
already had, he could have."
She said Searcy called
and texted her, too, but she eventually told him she was uncomfortable
with the contact and reported the issue to a friend, whose brother works
for Detroit Police.
Searcy, the woman testified, later apologized.
Searcy is charged with two counts of misconduct in office. His trial is scheduled to start March 2.
Though Searcy resigned on his own, Craig said he would have been let go anyway.
"He resigned," Craig said, "before I could fire him."
Gina
Kaufman is a member of the Free Press Investigations Team specializing
in criminal justice issues. Contact her at 313-223-4526 or
gkaufman@freepress.com. To read more about police misconduct or other
Free Press investigations, visit www.freep.com/news/investigations.
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