Former police officer mentioned bosses retaliated after she refused to signal bogus search warrant

An ex-detective for the Elkhart Police Department is suing her former employer and several other law enforcement officials, accusing them of taking away her livelihood and ruining her status after she refused to signal what she believed to be a bogus search warrant.

Joy Phillips, who labored for the division for six years, accuses the company of discriminating and retaliating towards her. She additionally alleges the retaliation continued after she testified publicly in regards to the misconduct she witnessed.

“There’s not a phrase sufficiently big to precise the quantity of corruption” within the police division, Phillips mentioned, “and the way it’s being allowed to proceed and the way it looks as if on a regular basis just isn’t an enormous deal.”

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Phillips additionally names as defendants Police Chief Dan Milanese, former Police Chief Kris Seymore, Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker and eight law enforcement officials.

The case is considered one of three lawsuits filed in current days by the identical regulation agency alleging varied misconduct by metropolis and county officers.

“What occurred to Pleasure is in line with the sample of misconduct that has permeated the Elkhart Police Division for many years: systemic misconduct clouded by a code of silence,” mentioned Phillips’ legal professional, Elliot Slosar of the Chicago regulation agency Loevy & Loevy.

In an announcement to IndyStar, Corinne Straight, a spokesperson for town and the mayor’s workplace, mentioned she can not but touch upon the allegations.

“As soon as the Metropolis is served and has a chance to probe these allegations, the Metropolis will probably have loads to say,” Straight mentioned. “However these are lawsuits; and lawsuits, are tried in a court docket of regulation, not the press, however the tactic of some attorneys to do in any other case.”

“I might encourage the Star to comply with the litigation, attend the court docket proceedings, and canopy these issues within the courts the place the regulation and guidelines of proof take a look at the truthfulness of the claims which can be immediately, mere allegations,” Straight added.

Becker, who was elected prosecutor in 2016, mentioned she’s unable to remark outdoors the judicial course of.

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A housebreaking investigation or sham?

Phillips started her regulation enforcement profession in 1999 on the South Bend Police Division. She started working for the Elkhart Police Division in 2016 and was later promoted to intercourse crimes detective. Based on her criticism, which was filed earlier this month in federal court docket in South Bend, she had “exemplary” efficiency opinions throughout most of her time on the company and twice turned a candidate for police chief.

However a collection of occasions that started in July 2022 and ended together with her firing virtually a 12 months later turned her life and profession “the wrong way up,” the criticism says.

Phillips mentioned she was an on-call detective the day she acquired a name asking her to help in an investigation involving a Cadillac that crashed in a parking zone. She was advised the automobile was tied to a housebreaking of a close-by constructing. However Phillips mentioned she there have been no witnesses and surveillance footage. The 2 males within the automobile, who have been taken to the hospital, later mentioned they crashed within the parking zone as a result of they have been being shot at, they usually did not know something a few housebreaking, Phillips defined.

A girl, whose father owns the constructing and had a key to the property, advised police there was no compelled entry and nothing was stolen, Phillips recalled. The girl additionally mentioned, based on Phillips, that she did not see the 2 males inside her father’s constructing.

“There was nothing there,” Phillips mentioned, “It was a nothing sandwich.”

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However Phillips alleges that two of the defendants, Sgt. Brandon Roundtree and Capt. Andrew Whitmyer, advised her to signal a search warrant to analyze the alleged housebreaking.

“I mentioned, ‘You’ll be able to’t make me do something unlawful, unethical or immoral,'” mentioned Phillips, including that three different detectives had refused to signal the warrant. “I mentioned, ‘I am prepared to take the write up for it.'”

Roundtree, based on the criticism, threatened that Phillips can be demoted. Whitmyer allegedly lashed out, telling her to “cease defending f—— crackheads!”

Phillips was later disciplined. Throughout a listening to earlier than the police division’s disciplinary board, Phillips mentioned she defended her actions and offered the board with proof of misconduct by different officers. Physique digicam footage that Phillips obtained confirmed {that a} police officer had “compelled open” the door to the property the place the housebreaking had supposedly occurred and that officer had fabricated particulars in his police report, Phillips alleges.

“I defined to them the whole lot, all of the unlawful stuff that I noticed, and the way there was no possible trigger,” Phillips mentioned. “There is no crime dedicated, and that they might do effectively to analyze their officers. As a result of that is rubbish.”

Phillips was suspended for 3 days ― an motion that she mentioned was a retaliation for blowing the whistle. She challenged the suspension by the grievance course of and appeared at two hearings in October 2022 earlier than the Board of Public Security.

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Police officers defend their actions

Throughout one of many hearings, Roundtree pushed again towards Phillips’ claims that the search warrant was unjustified.

“Primarily based on the knowledge that I knew from earlier circumstances being reported, I felt because the supervisor there was sufficient to acquire the search warrant,” Roundtree testified.

Seymore, who was the police chief at the moment, additionally defended the division, saying Phillips’ allegations weren’t true.

“Coverage was not damaged. Coverage was adopted,” Seymore testified, according to ABC 57. “I’ve suspended captains for violating coverage. And I’ve eliminated skilled commonplace investigators for not following coverage. So, to insinuate that I might stand idly by and permit insurance policies to be damaged by the very folks that I’ve appointed, flies within the face of the whole lot that I’ve sworn since day one.”

Shortly after the hearings, Phillips mentioned she acquired a foul evaluation accusing her of “unacceptable efficiency.” Cops filed complaints against Phillips accusing her of improperly acquiring and improperly releasing investigatory data.

Becker, the county prosecutor, additionally wrote a letter to then-Police Chief Seymore, citing issues over supervisors’ testimonies about Phillips through the Board of Public Security hearings. Becker wrote that testimonies from three supervisors “would lead an inexpensive particular person to consider that Detective Phillips has a status for dishonesty.”

“This places my Workplace is a very hindered place,” Becker wrote, “… if now we have to name Detective Phillips as a fabric witness in a prison continuing, her credibility is tainted, and we should disclose this reality to the protection in any pending matter.”

Phillips, who additionally accuses Becker of conspiring to retaliate towards her, was positioned on an indefinite administrative depart in November 2022. As she was leaving, Phillips alleged the defendants saved her from getting out of her workplace and the constructing till they inspected her backpack and she or he turned over a private audio recorder.

The Indiana State Police investigated the incident and really helpful prison confinement costs towards the officers. No costs have been filed. Phillips has requested a particular prosecutor to analyze.

In 2023, the Elkhart Police Benefit Fee voted to fireplace her after what Phillips described as a “sham continuing.”

“The issues that occurred to me should not occur to anyone,” Phillips mentioned. “If you happen to have been to simply hear this story, you’d suppose it is so far fetched and outlandish that it might by no means be allowed, when each a part of it’s true.”

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Phillips, who’s now an officer at a smaller police division, mentioned she’s suing to “restore my identify, my status.”

“I nonetheless love regulation enforcement,” she mentioned. “I do it for all the precise causes. I like the power to vary somebody’s life for the higher, to really feel such as you’re making an affect for all of the optimistic and proper causes.”

The South Bend Tribune contributed to this story. Contact IndyStar reporter Kristine Phillips at (317) 444-3026 or at kphillips@indystar.com.

This text initially appeared on Indianapolis Star: Joy Phillips accuses the Elkhart Police Department of retaliation