Greenwood Police Officer Sam Bowen poses in his uniform in this undated photo.
Photo provided by Jay Meisenhelder
A suspended Greenwood police officer’s fate is now in the hands of the city’s police merit commission after nearly four hours of testimony.
Officer Sam Bowen, who is suspended without pay, is facing termination for allegedly violating three of the department’s policies: Information and Technology Use; Mobile Data Center Use; and Standards of Conduct. The Greenwood Police Merit Commission heard hours of testimony from witnesses supporting the police department and Bowen during his disciplinary hearing Wednesday evening.
A final decision on whether Bowen will be fired from the department will not be made until after the commission deliberates in an executive session Thursday evening. The decision will be announced during the commission’s regular meeting that follows the executive session.
Disciplinary charges were filed against Bowen based on electronic communications compiled after Bowen filed a federal lawsuit against the city in June. In that lawsuit, Bowen is accusing Police Chief Jim Ison of depriving/conspiring to deprive him of his First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech based on posts made on Facebook before the May Municipal Primary and messages he sent to other officers.
Police officials have compiled a 5,320-page document containing instant messages sent and received by Bowen from July 14, 2021 to July 14 of this year. Within the document are over 100 exchanges between six officers that contain derogatory language that were sent on department equipment, according to the documents. The messages contained slurs referring to African Americans, Jewish people, the LGBT community and people with intellectual disabilities.
Based on the messages, the six officers were interviewed. Three of the officers resigned before disciplinary charges could be brought and one officer is not up for termination. Bowen and Officer Elijah Allen were suspended and are facing termination because of the messages.
During Bowen’s disciplinary hearing Wednesday, the five-member police merit commission heard testimony from city and police officials about how the messages were obtained and why termination was recommended for Bowen. Beth Copeland, an attorney representing the police chief, told the commission in her opening statement that the only two questions before them were whether Bowen’s conduct violated policy and where the violations warranted termination. The answer was yes to both, she argued.
“His conduct was so severe and pervasive, it cannot be tolerated,” Copeland said.
Jay Meisenhelder, Bowen’s attorney, said there was only one question before the commission: whether the conduct warranted termination. Bowen admits that what he said was wrong and a violation of policy, but he was trying to release some of the tension he experienced as an officer in stressful and discouraging situations through “what they felt at the time was humor,” Meisenhelder said.
Bowen’s conduct doesn’t merit termination, Meisenhelder argued.
“Discipline should be relatively proportional to the offense, and similar offenses should be punished similarly,” he said.
Meisenhelder also said the evidence he would present would show that Ison’s alleged motivation for Bowen’s termination was the continuation of a reprisal based on the fact he filed a lawsuit.
City and police officials testified that they felt the messages were alarming, and could undermine the public’s trust in the department. After reading the messages, assistant city attorney Drew Foster said he felt they could undermine an officer’s credibility in court.
“If you have conduct like this, that really challenges their credibility, the judge is gonna consider that,” Foster said.
Several questions were also asked about whether the department obtained messages from other officers. Bowen’s messages were pulled as part of the lawsuit, and Ison later said he personally requested the messages from the other officers’ involved.
Ison also randomly selected two officers from each shift during the same time period to have their messages pulled to see how big of an issue it was, he said.
“I did keyword searches using the same words and there was nothing,” Ison said. “So I was fairly confident that this was isolated to one faction.”
At one point during the hearing, Commission member Tom Brogan asked Ison whether the department had looked into stops performed by Bowen and the other officers involved to determine if there was any evidence of racial profiling. GPD did random pulls of reports from officers around the time the messages were sent, but they didn’t see any over patterns leading them to believe there was profiling, Ison said.
Greenwood Police has also hired a firm to do a comprehensive study of all arrests and traffic stops by officers in the department over the last year to determine if profiling is a problem. It’s expected to take nine months to know the results, he said.
“I need to know, and the public is going to demand to know if our officers are, in fact, profiling certain groups,” Ison said.
Other testimony included a legal expert on race and discrimination, and testimony from Bowen himself. When asked about the messages, Bowen said they were not something he was proud of.
“It’s not anything I’m proud of. It was, for me, humor between friends and a way to deal with stress,” Bowen said. “I think a lot of people in this police department can attest the past two years have been very difficult for Greenwood.”
Bowen also took issue with statements made that implied he was racially profiling. There were no instances of that, he said. Ison also said they didn’t find any evidence of that in cases Bowen was involved with either.
As for possible problems with past arrests he made, Bowen said there was not a single incident where he didn’t have his body camera on.
“At any point somebody can go watch my bodycam and see how I actually interacted with the public, and they won’t find anything that proves I’m racial profiling, discriminating,” he said. “I was giving nothing but what the public of Greenwood deserves, and that was excellent service from their police department.”
Social media posts made by Bowen during the primary election also came up, and both Bowen and Ison testified to their contents and the situation surrounding the posts.
This story will be updated with more details from Wednesday’s hearing on Thursday, before a decision is rendered in the case.
