Story note: I know how to navigate institutions and bureaucracies that want to keep things hidden. More than a year after the initial highway patrol investigation, I had deep sources keeping me plugged in.May 27, 2007 Sunday
BYLINE: BRAD SCHRADE
SECTION: Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1998 words
A year and a half after Gov. Phil Bredesen pledged to clean up the scandal-plagued Tennessee Highway Patrol, some promised reforms have not happened and troopers are getting mired in new embarrassing incidents.
In the past week, a trooper allegedly shot illicit video of a porn actress and himself during a Wilson County traffic stop; a trooper allegedly shot his mother during an argument with his father; and a trooper shot a fellow officer in the foot while cleaning his handgun at the THP's Nashville training facility.
A key reform that Bredesen pledged to professionalize the THP in 2006 putting troopers under the same oversight board as every local police officer in the state has not happened. The overwhelming majority of the state's 900 troopers are not under its review.
But state Safety Commissioner Dave Mitchell says internal reforms have been made.
"The events that occurred in the last week were troublesome," Mitchell said. "But I want the public to know there have been substantial changes in this organization in the last 18 months. ... We've increased the number of personnel to look at all complaints or allegations of misconduct, inappropriate action, illegal conduct. We do this fairly, quietly and aggressively."
The troopers in both the mother-shooting case and the video incident had issues in the past, their files show, though state records do not show they had ever been punished.
The patrol's history of turning a blind eye to past officer troubles was a key issue that led its top three leaders to step down in December 2005.
Bredesen took steps
Since the 2005 THP meltdown in the face of allegations of ticket-fixing, cronyism and other misconduct, Bredesen and his administration have taken some major steps. The governor's longtime fix-it man, Gerald Nicely, took over for a year. He demoted and fired officers with problem records, cleared out the patrol's remaining central command staff and half of its district captains, and set up new hiring and promotions policies intended to rid the patrol of political influence.
But the publicity over the recent incidents, including international attention for the explicit narrative on the Knoxville porn actress' Web site, may be the worst the patrol has seen since the governor stepped to a microphone at the Capitol in December 2005 and said of the Highway Patrol's problems: "It didn't start on my watch, but it's going to end on my watch."
Systemic problems seem to still exist, said David Raybin, a Nashville attorney who has represented officer unions.
He said the number of issues that have cropped up suggest problems with the patrol's midlevel management. Like the military, he said, that's where a police agency functions well or doesn't.
"You don't have that many issues cropping up without a problem," Raybin said. "The issue is not whether you have a problem. The issue is, what do we do about it?"
Sex allegation goes global
When it was revealed in late 2005 that the Tennessee Highway Patrol had officers on patrol who had been charged with drunken driving and had been accused of fixing tickets in return for free hams and liquor, and had rehired a trooper who once forged a judge's name on a court document, it got a lot of attention here in Tennessee but Pravda didn't pay much mind.
But when a pornographic film actress alleged in explicit detail on her blog this month how she gave oral sex to a trooper who chose not to charge her with drug possession during a traffic stop, even the one-time voice of the Soviet Communist Party took notice, informing the Russian public about the tale on its English Web site.
Porn actress posts video
On May 7, Trooper James Randy Moss, 40, working late at night, stopped 21-year-old porn actress Justis Ellen Richert for speeding. She goes by the stage name Barbie Cummings, and she had drugs or as she called them "happy pills" in her pink Honda Accord, with a license plate bearing the letters "XKLUSIV."
She alleged she performed oral sex on Moss in exchange for him looking the other way on the drugs, according to what she wrote on her Web site.
The trooper, who had worked 10 years for the state Safety Department, made a cell phone video of the 21-year-old actress as she performed the act on him, according to her blog, and he later sent her a copy of the video at her request, which she then posted on her Web site.
Past allegations unseen
Despite the various housecleaning methods employed by the new THP leadership after the 2005 scandals, at least one other previous allegation against Moss remained hidden until the Richert case became public: A female trucker had alleged in 2000 that Moss had asked her to show him her breasts during a traffic stop, state records show. At the time, the trooper denied making the statement, and the investigation was inconclusive.
A second previous allegation of a "sexual nature" involving a 2005 traffic stop by Moss also came to light last week, according to THP spokesman Mike Browning.
Mitchell fired Moss on Thursday and announced a widening criminal investigation into the ex-trooper's activities.
The governor was unavailable for comment Friday, but his spokeswoman applauded Mitchell's decision.
"Commissioner Mitchell's prompt action in this case shows the Department of Safety won't tolerate this kind of behavior," said press secretary Lydia Lenker. "This reflects the broader change in culture that has taken place since the governor made leadership changes."
Trooper was put on leave
The West Tennessee trooper accused of shooting his mother during an argument with his father also had had a previous issue.
Trooper Terry L. Rainey was placed on paid leave for almost three weeks in March 2001, according to his personnel file. It's unclear why he went on leave because a memo on the subject is sparse on information, including some that Safety Department officials blacked out before they allowed a {dcidc}Tennessean reporter to review it last week.
Among the passages that were blacked out was this one: When he was allowed to return to work in late March 2001, Safety Commissioner Mike Greene required that Rainey "continue attending [words blacked out] visits during the next six months."
The department said it blacked out that passage and wouldn't discuss why Rainey was on leave because it was a confidential medical issue that was not subject to the state's public-records act.
On May 19, Rainey put a gun to his father's head and threatened to kill him before firing the shot that hit Rainey's mother in the foot, according to an affidavit filed in Chester County, where the shooting took place. Rainey's mother told authorities that her son didn't mean to shoot her.
Rainey is charged in the case, but his attorney said he didn't intend to shoot anyone and was simply defending himself.
Shots don't bar service
Shooting at relatives, loved ones or their possessions has not been a disqualifier from serving in the THP, either before the 2005 changes or after them.
Trooper Angelinette Crawford is scheduled to return to road patrol in Davidson County later this year despite a 2004 incident in which she shot her brother in the leg during an argument over a tub of butter.
Crawford later pleaded guilty but her THP superiors opted not to discipline her, instead writing a memo admonishing her to be more careful with her handgun.
Nicely moved to fire Crawford and three other THP officers soon after he took the helm of the Safety Department in late 2005, but her firing was overturned in a civil service hearing. Since her reinstatement, she has worked in the patrol's unit regulating and monitoring tractor-trailers and other commercial vehicles.
investigations going on
Another trooper, Danny Wilson, who in 1993 shot out an estranged girlfriend's television set and put two bullet holes in a large oval mirror in her Hendersonville home, was one of three THP officers promoted last year to lieutenant colonel, the No. 2 uniformed post in the patrol.
Rainey's case is one of six ongoing criminal investigations involving Safety Department officers or employees, Browning said. One of the other cases involves Moss, but Browning wouldn't reveal details or the names in the other four cases. In some instances the employees do not know they are being investigated, he said.
Oversight misses most
A key element of the governor's proposal to fix the THP was to make troopers again come under the oversight of the state commission that regulates standards and training for local police agencies in Tennessee.
Without that oversight, troopers had been allowed "to operate more fluidly" than other police and law-enforcement officers in the state, the governor said in December 2005, and that helped foster the problems in the patrol.
Last year, the state legislature passed a law intended to place troopers under the state Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission.
But that change has occurred largely on paper. In reality, the commission says it has no legal authority to oversee most of the troopers currently on the force.
"POST rules do not apply to the THP except for those employed after July 1, 2006," Brian Grisham, executive director of the commission, said last week.
In effect, the law puts troopers hired within the past year, such as the troopers in the new THP training academy cadet class, under POST's review. But troopers with more than a year's experience are exempt.
The bulk of training for both cadets and troopers is done at the Safety Department's training center in Donelson, off Stewarts Ferry Pike.
The current cadet class is the first to come under the new hiring rules intended to be free of political influence.
The training academy is where Trooper John Warren accidentally shot Trooper Tracy Tyler in the foot last week while Warren cleaned his state-issued handgun.
Four such "accidental discharges" of weapons have occurred in or near the training center in the past year, three of them since March.
The man who heads the training facility, and whose job is ensuring troopers and cadets train and learn proper techniques, including how to safely handle a gun, was among the troopers promoted in 2003 who leapfrogged ahead of other troopers who had scored higher on impartial promotion rankings.
Capt. Don Nicholson was promoted to lieutenant that year despite having had the lowest score of the 15 sergeants in his group in the promotion rankings. His family had given $350 to the governor's 2002 campaign.
Nicholson was promoted again last August, to captain, after many of the new reforms were put in place to remove politics from the patrol.
Warren was placed on administrative leave for violating department policy by having a loaded gun in the gun-cleaning room, Mitchell said.
It will be at least two weeks but probably longer before Tyler recovers and can return to duty, Browning said.
Mitchell last week expressed confidence in Nicholson and said he is reviewing safety procedures to prevent further gun discharges.
"I believe our troopers are adequately trained and proficient in the use of firearms," Mitchell said. "Unfortunately we had a trooper make a very bad mistake to walk into" a building used for shooting practice "with a magazine in the weapon."
Staff writer Sheila Wissner and The Jackson Sun newspaper contributed to this report.
Brad Schrade can be reached at 259-8086 or bschrade@Tennessean.com
