Detective Sought Extra Pay Without Going To Court

MANY DRUG CASES DISMISSED BECAUSE OF FAILURE TO SHOW

More than half of Metro Narcotics Detective Mark Watson's cases in
Jefferson District Court were dismissed last year because he failed to show
up for court.

And in half of those cases, Watson, a Jefferson County officer who has
since been suspended, sought and received court overtime pay, police and
court records show.

Twenty-one of Watson's 41 cases last year were dismissed because of "police
officer not present," according to the records, which also show he was
issued court pay for 10 of those dropped cases. Defendants in 18 of the
dismissed cases were charged with felonies, most of them with trafficking
in cocaine or another controlled substance.

County Police Chief William Carcara said Watson's repeated absences from
court prompted a preliminary review that in turn has triggered a broader
criminal investigation into whether Watson and his partner, Christie D.
Richardson, fabricated information to obtain search warrants, tampered with
drug evidence, made up defendants, took money intended for informants and
forged judges' signatures on warrants.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney's office also are participating in the
investigation, which Carcara said he hopes will be completed in one to two
weeks.

But in the meantime, one offender has asked to be freed from prison on the
grounds that Watson allegedly forged a judge's name on the warrant that
resulted in his conviction for drug trafficking.

Althrough officers occasionally are marked absent in one court because they
are delayed in another courtroom, Doug Hamilton, the former Louisville
police chief who once ran the city's narcotics unit, said it is both
"unusual and unacceptable" for half a detective's cases to be thrown out
because of failure to appear.

If an officer missed that many cases in circuit court, said prosecutor Jeff
Derouen, a spokesman for the commonwealth's attorney's office, "We'd send
somebody out to get them."

Watson collected more court overtime pay than all but one other county
officer from 1998 to 2001 -- a total of $26,139, according to county
records, or about $6,500 a year. His base pay averaged about $35,500 a year
over those four years.

County officers who must appear in court during their off-duty hours are
paid a flat fee of $46 an appearance, and under their union contract they
may collect up to two payments a day, if the appearances are four or more
hours apart.

County Commissioner Russ Maple said failing to show up and still collecting
pay cheats "the taxpayers and the people in this community."

Sgt. Troy Riggs, a county police spokesman, said the investigation will
include a review of Watson's disciplinary record with the Atlanta Police
Department, where he worked from 1989 to 1992. According to records
obtained by The Courier-Journal under Georgia's open-records law, Watson,
as a patrolman in his first year, was selected Police Officer of the Year
and received a half-dozen commendations in his first two years, including
two for making a high number of arrests.

But after he was transferred to the department's elite Red Dog Unit, a
drug-fighting squad, he was accused of misconduct in eight complaints. Two
were sustained, both of them for failing to appear in court.

Jefferson County police didn't know about Watson's disciplinary record in
Atlanta when they hired him in August 1992, although they now check such
information as part of the hiring process, said Officer Stacey Redmon, a
department spokeswoman.

Watson's lawyer did not return phone calls. And in a brief interview
outside his Bullitt County home, Watson said department rules barred him
from commenting.

"I would really like to talk because hearing only one side of the story has
been hard on my family," Watson said. He did say "there are five or six
reasons" why an officer might be listed as absent in court even though he
was in the courthouse. He declined to elaborate.

Richardson's lawyer, Steve Schroering, said his client maintains she did
nothing illegal. Richardson's court pay from 1998 through 2001 totaled
$16,969. That ranked her ninth in the department.

The allegations against the two detectives are reverberating through the
court system, jeopardizing convictions and causing plea bargains to unravel.

Thirteen cases have been put on hold in Jefferson Circuit Court, where one
guilty plea already has been set aside and two other defendants have backed
out of deals to plead guilty. They include University of Louisville
football player Jonta Woodard, who pleaded guilty to marijuana trafficking
and other charges but has been granted a delay in his sentencing.

"Due to the nature of the allegations against the detectives, their
veracity, particularly with regards to drug cases, has come into question,"
Woodard's lawyer, Grant Helman, said in a motion to reopen the case.

The allegations also may figure in a case in which the county is seeking
the forfeiture of $16,200 that Watson and Richardson allegedly seized in
December 1999. It was taken from the home of a lawyer who found it in his
daughter's partially opened safe, assumed it was drug-related and had a
friend call police to take it away.

The money's owner, Matthew Wells, who was a 17-year-old Atherton High
School senior when the money was seized, has testified that he saved it
from his allowance and odd jobs and stashed it at his friend's house. Wells
said he didn't want his parents to know how much he'd accumulated because
they might force him to use it to pay college expenses. He claims in court
papers that there was $18,000 in the safe and that Watson and Richardson
pocketed the missing $1,800. The detectives have denied that.

Wells, who lived in Oxmoor Woods, also has claimed in court papers that
Watson fabricated a claim that the teen-ager told him he stole the money
during a drug deal. The law allows money connected to illegal drug
transactions to be confiscated.

Investigators also are looking into previous allegations of misconduct
against Watson that were discounted at the time.

For instance, in an internal-affairs complaint in 1997, Margo Hazelwood,
who lived in the Portland neighborhood, alleged that when Watson came to
her house to bust her for selling marijuana, he agreed to give her only a
citation if she agreed to give him half her next shipment of pot.

The department said her complaint couldn't be sustained, but Blaine French,
a now-retired Metro Narcotics detective who helped Hazelwood press her
claim, said department officials refused to set up a sting on Watson to see
if he would take a portion of Hazelwood's next delivery. The county plans
to investigate that matter, Redmon said.

French, a city detective who retired in 1999 after 26 years on the force,
said he also found a computer record showing that Watson credited a paid
informant for information he got from Hazelwood to arrest another dealer.
That suggested Watson took money obtained under the guise it would be paid
to an informant, French and Hazelwood said. But Hazelwood said she was
never paid by Watson. County police plan to investigate that allegation and
Hazelwood's complaint, Redmon said.

Meanwhile, the allegations against Watson and Richardson are providing a
second chance for offenders who previously thought they had no choice but
to plead guilty.

"When I saw the first story about them on TV, I thought I'd won the
lottery," said Robert Hardin, 43.

Hardin was arrested and charged with drug trafficking and other offenses in
1998 after Watson and other detectives searched his home on Blue Lick Road
and found a small amount of crack cocaine and some Valium.

To get the warrant, Watson swore that a confidential informant had seen
Hardin smoking crack and marijuana within the previous 48 hours.

But when Hardin suffered chest pains during his arrest and had to be
hospitalized, a drug screen conducted there showed that Hardin was
drug-free, according to records he produced in court. Hardin was
hospitalized on the same day Watson got the warrant.

Hardin and his lawyer, William Yesowitch, moved to suppress the results of
the search, saying that either Watson or his informant must have lied, or
the marijuana and cocaine would have been detected in the hospital drug
test. The active ingredient in marijuana lingers in the body for as long as
four weeks, and cocaine lingers for up to five days, according to medical
encyclopedias.

Watson denied the allegations, and Hardin's motion to suppress evidence was
overruled. While maintaining his innocence, he pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to eight years' probation in a deal that also settled drug
charges he faced in another case.

"I was right all along and nobody would believe me," Hardin said.

Yesowitch filed a motion Wednesday to set aside the conviction. Derouen
said his office is investigating Hardin's case and all the others in which
Watson and Richardson were witnesses.

Watson charged Hardin again in 2000 with drug trafficking, but this time
the charge was dismissed. The reason: Watson failed to appear in court for
a hearing. Though an officer may seek the indictment of defendants whose
felony charges are dismissed because the officer missed court, records show
that Watson never did that last year.

Police department records also show that in only three of his 21 cases that
were dismissed last year because he failed to appear did he have a case in
another court on the same day.

The newspaper also found two felony cases that were dismissed because
Watson said he was going to seek a grand jury indictment but did not,
records show.

Defendants whose cases were dismissed because Watson didn't show say they
were pleased with the outcome but unhappy that he arrested them in the
first place.

"They kicked down my door, tore up my bedroom and pointed guns in our
faces," said Michael Chad Barkley, 22, who lives on Hunters Grove Road and
was arrested last April along with his brother and a friend and charged
with cocaine trafficking and possession of marijuana. He contends the drugs
weren't his and that he was set up.

Watson charged him again last November -- this time with possession of 14
Ecstasy pills and some marijuana -- and again the charges were dismissed
when Watson failed to appear.

Brian Edward Polsgrove, 21, whom Watson charged last July with marijuana
trafficking, also had his charge dismissed when Watson failed to show for
two consecutive hearings.

Despite the result, Polsgrove said that just for being charged he was
evicted from his apartment, missed several days of work and had to pay a
defense lawyer $500.