Greenville News | Senators question Patrol’s mission
Filed Under Caucus, Knotts, McConnell
COLUMBIA — Senators questioned Thursday whether the state Highway Patrol has exceeded its mission by creating drug-interdiction squads and a SWAT team and allowing troopers to accompany college coaches as security during games.
“That’s not the scope of the Highway Patrol,” said Sen. Jake Knotts, a West Columbia Republican and former law enforcement officer. “Their duty is to patrol the highways and make the highways safe.”
Knotts’ comments came as a Senate judiciary subcommittee prepared for confirmation hearings for the man nominated by Gov. Mark Sanford to lead the state Department of Public Safety, which includes the Highway Patrol. Senators expect those hearings to begin as early as May 19.
Senate Judiciary Committee staffers have been studying hundreds of DPS records and videotapes in the wake of publicized tapes that have shown troopers engaged in misconduct ranging from racial slurs to striking people with patrol cars or with their hands or feet.
The tapes also are the subject of a U.S. Justice Department civil rights investigation.
Knotts told other senators of watching machine-gun-toting marksmen on the top of the Statehouse during Sanford’s last inauguration, part of what was referred to as a Highway Patrol SWAT team. And he said he continues to receive questions from constituents over the use of troopers as security for college coaches.
“That’s more patrolmen that could be on the road,” he said. “The universities have their own campus police.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell, who is chairing the subcommittee, said he wants to know how the programs started and what the new director plans to do about them.
Sid Gaulden, a spokesman for DPS, said the drug-interdiction teams and coaches’ security are long-time programs that preceded current director James Schweitzer or recently retired Highway Patrol Commander Col. Russell Roark.
He said the marksman positions no longer exist at the agency, following a meeting between Knotts and Schweitzer two years ago. Members of the agency’s Civilian Emergency Response Team, which responds to riots or disasters, as well as troopers who escort college coaches, do those duties in addition to their regular Patrol duties, Gaulden said.
The committee also was told that one citizen wants to appear before senators with a complaint about the nominee, State Law Enforcement Maj. Mark Keel, but does not want to disclose the nature of his complaint before testifying.
McConnell said any witness approaching the committee will have to reveal the nature of their complaint if they want to talk to senators. He said he wants to use the hearings and questions about the agency’s management to help provide a positive direction for the agency’s future.
He also said he wants to know whether Sanford’s office exercised any oversight of DPS prior to events of the past two months. “Do they ever ask for a report on what’s going on over there?” he asked.
Sanford withdrew the nomination of Schweitzer for a second term earlier this year after watching a videotape in which a white state trooper used a racial slur and threatened a black man in a 2004 traffic stop. Schweitzer had approved a reprimand and counseling as punishment for the trooper, while Sanford said he believed the trooper should have been fired.
Published in the Greenville News
By Tim Smith
May 9, 2008
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