US NC: SPRING LAKE: THE DEMISE OF A POLICE DEPARTMENT

SPRING LAKE -- Just days after Larry Faison settled into his new job
as town manager in October 2007, a two-page letter hit his desk. The
letter urged Faison to investigate alleged wrongdoing by Police Chief
A.C. Brown and one of his supervisors, Sgt. Darryl Coulter. It was
the first of many complaints sent anonymously to Faison's office and
other town leaders between October 2007 and February of this year.
The Fayetteville Observer obtained the letters -- as well as e-mails
- -- which cited dates and times of alleged instances of
double-dipping, false arrests, planting of drugs on suspects and
other abuses of power by some of the town's police officers.

Police sources said nine current and former officers drafted the
letters, which became more intense as time went by.

"Few of the officers do not know what else we can do to let you guys
know that things in the department are going downhill," one letter
said. "We really feel like we have no one who is listening to our
concerns, especially when you have officers breaking the law. We want
the town staff to handle the concerns within but we are getting to a
point where we no longer feel like the staff is listening. ... Please
help!!!" Alderman James O'Garra acknowledged that town leaders became
aware of the letters, but he said they didn't take them seriously
because Faison repeatedly assured the board that the allegations were
unfounded. "He just kept saying I checked with A.C. (Brown), and he
says there is nothing to it," O'Garra said.

Faison did not return repeated calls for comment last week. The
town's inaction ultimately prompted the officers to complain to the
State Bureau of Investigation, according to interviews and a Dec. 1,
2007, letter to the state Attorney General's Office.

Later in December, SBI agents began fanning out across the county
collecting background information from former Spring Lake officers,
according to several who were interviewed.

Now, nearly two years later, the results of the state's investigation
have begun to surface.

On a September night last year, two men were huddled inside Room 247
of the Sleep Inn when Spring Lake police began pounding on the door,
police records show. When the door opened, five officers -- including
Sgt. Darryl E. Coulter Sr. and Sgt. Alfonzo D. Whittington Jr. --
entered and pointed guns at the men. Although neither man had drugs,
a Spring Lake police report from that night shows, Coulter said he
smelled marijuana in the room. The police handcuffed the men, then
seized $2,900 that had been lying in plain sight. In a report of the
incident, the officers called the money "found property." What the
officers didn't know that night was that the SBI had booked the room
under a fictitious name -- Bradley Johnson. The SBI had provided the
men -- who were from Greensboro and Dillon, S.C. -- with the money.
Video cameras were installed throughout the room, sources close to
the SBI investigation say.

Another incident also was caught on tape -- this time from a camera
inside a Spring Lake police car.

On April 27, 2008, Coulter and other officers responded to a call of
shots being fired. The tape appears to show Coulter leading two other
officers to a house. After pacing outside for minutes, Coulter begins
shouting at the door. It appears that Coulter enters suddenly. The
video then shows three men being yanked from the house and tossed on
the ground. They remain in that position, often pleading, for at
least 30 minutes, while the other officers point guns at them.

Monday, a special Cumberland County grand jury indicted Coulter and
Whittington. Among other charges, the indictments allege that Coulter
lied when he said he smelled marijuana in the motel room. The
indictment also charges Coulter with kidnapping, assault and false
arrest, saying he had no legal justification for the raid on the
home. Whittington is accused of taking the $2,900 from the
department's evidence room and falsifying records to cover it up.
Whittington reported on an evidence property record that he returned
the money to a Bradley Johnson -- the name sources say the SBI made
up at the motel.

After the indictments were returned, town leaders fired Whittington
and suspended Coulter without pay, pending an administrative
investigation. Whittington had been with the Spring Lake Police
Department since 2005. Coulter has been with the department since 1999.

Moments after the indictments, Chief District Court Judge Beth Keever
issued an order stripping the Spring Lake Police Department of all of
its police powers. District Attorney Ed Grannis announced that the
SBI continues to investigate, and more arrests could be coming.
Grannis also said he is dismissing all of the Spring Lake Police
Department's pending misdemeanor cases and is reviewing pending felony cases.

Brown resigned Tuesday afternoon in a closed-door meeting with Faison
and Mayor Ethel Clark.

The next morning, Grannis filed a motion saying the SBI received
information that Brown was at the Police Department until 2:30 a.m.
Wednesday shredding material. Wednesday night, Spring Lake officials
changed the locks to the Police Department, hours after a judge
ordered the town to secure police records. SBI agents went back to
Spring Lake to seize records. Brown has not been charged with any
crimes. Sgt. Mack J. Utley III has been named acting police chief.

Personnel records show that Whittington was fired from the
Fayetteville Police Department in 2000 and from the Lumberton Police
Department in 2003. While working as a Fayetteville police officer in
2000, Whittington was accused of pushing a handcuffed homeless man
off a bench and punching him several times. The incident happened in
a room at the police station, and a video camera reportedly caught it on tape.

The act was particularly shocking, a police supervisor said at the
time, because the man, Dennis Ray Hunt, was deaf and mute and
couldn't scream or holler for help.

"This is against our policies, our procedures, and it's criminal,"
Sgt. Roberto Rivera told a reporter.

A judge dismissed charges against Whittington after Fayetteville
police said they couldn't locate Hunt.

After being fired from the Fayetteville Police Department,
Whittington went to work in 2001 for the Lumberton Police Department.
He was fired in April 2003 for undisclosed reasons, according to
personnel records. Two years later, Whittington found himself working
for the Spring Lake Police Department -- under Brown's direction.

Hiring police officers who have been fired from other departments is
not uncommon for small towns, says Jenny Little, law enforcement
coordinator for the state's Training and Standards Division.

"Obviously, you would think that someone would think long and hard
about hiring someone who has been fired twice," Little said. "But in
this day and age, a lot of small towns can't afford to hire the cream
of the crop. So what might be an issue to you, might not be an issue to them."

Former Spring Lake officers say Whittington and Coulter were Brown's
closest confidants. All three men had been divorced and had
experienced financial troubles. Coulter has filed for bankruptcy
three times -- in 1996, 2002 and 2004 -- and has been evicted twice
since working for Spring Lake, court records show. In November 2004,
the records show, O'Garra, the alderman, threw him out because of unpaid rent.

O'Garra said that after a closed-door meeting with Brown, Coulter and
former town manager Hal Hegwer, the town paid O'Garra $630 to settle
Coulter's debt on the condition that Coulter pay the town back.

Coulter repaid the town in February of this year, days after an
Observer query about the matter.

The SBI investigation and the resulting actions against the Spring
Lake Police Department raise questions about why town leaders didn't
aggressively investigate allegations of police wrongdoing.

Mayor Ethel Clark chafes at those suggestions. Before late last week,
Clark consistently had defended Brown and the Police Department. She
says she was shocked by the indictments and the allegations that
Brown had shredded materials at the police station.

Clark insists that she never covered up problems or complaints. "This
stuff was well hidden," she said. "If any officers did that stuff,
then they need to go. And if the chief did that stuff, then he needs
to go, too. "But I don't understand how people can think we should
have known about this. If it takes the SBI a full year to dig this
mess out, how do you think an elected official is going to do it?"
O'Garra said the problems in the Police Department could flood over
into Town Hall. "I feel town voters will probably show us how they
feel with this embarrassment," he said.