CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – Leaders at the Horry County Police Department say they have a new plan to hold officers more accountable.
In the last year, the department has had to reopen investigations, and it faces several lawsuits from alleged rape victims.
Those suits say the department has known about the problems, but hasn’t done anything about it.
Horry County police leaders say they’ve launched several new initiatives to help with accountability throughout the chain of command.
One of the biggest changes is a new computer software program, custom made for the department, Lt. Raul Denis says will help them avoid repeating the past.
“There are problems that have been aired in the recent past with our case management and issues with detective’s work and that kind of thing,” said Denis.
While SLED continues to investigate several officers in the department, lawsuits have been filed claiming negligence, failure to properly investigate sexual assault cases, and that a former detective sexually assaulted multiple women while he was assigned to their case.
Council member Johnny Vaught says that shows a lack of oversight in the department.
“People were not being supervised as closely as they should have been supervised, and it appears from the changes that are going to be taking place, that’s going to happen now,” said Vaught.
That failure of supervision is seen in an internal investigation on former Sergeant Luke Green.
It says in June of 2014, Horry County Police set up a prostitution bust in a hotel room in Conway. Investigators say one of the suspects fought back and Green used force to get him under control. The suspect claimed his tooth was knocked out. Investigators found Green walked the suspect out of the room, never charged him, and let him go. It says Green never reported the suspect’s injury or that he used force, until his supervisors found out about it.
Then, investigators claim he looked through the list of suspects and picked out the one that looked most like the man he let go and sent in a report. Later, his supervisors found out he listed the wrong guy.
It’s errors like that Lt. Denis says the new software system will catch.
“This new system will bring all that to light. It will make our practices more standardized and more by the book. It should alleviate some of our previous problems,” said Denis.
The system will send officers and supervisors notifications to let them know what needs to be done, and it will be used to track cases, case assignments, and reviews for all cases in the Criminal Investigation Division.
Denis says the new system will also make department heads go through a sign-off procedure to be sure there’s always oversight. These are changes council leaders say are long overdue.
“It absolutely has to happen just as quickly as possible, and I think that putting the people that we have in place now is going a long way towards doing that. We’ve got to change the institutional problems that we’ve had, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” said Vaught.
That new software was custom made by the county’s IT department. County Spokesperson Lisa Bourcier says it didn’t cost the county any additional money.
Lt. Denis says it’s set to roll out later this week, but it’s only one of the changes made in the department.
The department also recently hired an internal affairs officer and two victim advocate leaders.
It’s also increased ethics training. Before, officers were required to go every 18 months. Now, they’ll have to attend ethics training four times a year.
