Cleveland Police Chief Wes Snyder and Assistant Chief Gary Hicks have strongly denied the substance of this newspaper’s stories earlier this week which said they failed to immediately begin an investigation in May of 2008 as to whether some Cleveland policemen were giving alcohol and pills to young girls and having sex with them. They claimed they had no specific information then on which to begin an official investigation until December 2008.
That is not what their own department’s internal affairs file shows. It shows that they knew enough in May of 2008 to immediately launch an investigation, yet they failed to do so — in apparent violation of state laws pertaining to reports of abuse of children and the police department’s duty to report and investigate such complaints. Tennessee laws state that failure to report claims of child abuse and neglect is itself a misdemeanor violation of the law.
A memo by Hicks, found in the file of 543 pages accumulated in the Cleveland Police Department’s internal affairs unit’s subsequent investigation, shows that Hicks held a meeting with a number of police officers on May 29, 2008, in which the nature of such alleged misconduct was discussed. The memo said the meeting was attended by Jeff Davis, the city of Cleveland’s personnel director; Captains Wesley Dilbeck and Tommy McLain; Lieutenants Danny Chastain, Steve Tyson and Lamar Anderson; Sgt. Matt Jenkins, and officers Jonathan Hammons, Bill Higdon and Nathan Thomas. It said Lt. Tyson would make Officer Dennis Hughes “aware of the warnings given during the meeting.”
Officers Hughes and Thomas were subsequently convicted, in July 2010, of statutory rape and drug use. A copy of the file of the internal investigation was requested by reporter Todd South under Tennessee’s open records law.
“No accusations were made,” in the meeting, the memo says. “However, the officers were warned about unbecoming and unacceptable behavior including, but not limited to, dating minors, porn on City-owned phones, consumption of alcoholic beverages while off-duty, snorting crushed pills, oral sex in public, and running from other law enforcement agencies.”