“I said all you’ve got to do is bring in” two detectives who had direct knowledge of the criminal activity “and tell them if they tell the truth they’ve got immunity. And, of course, they told the truth.”
“They (the two detectives) were just trying to make a living,” Cox said. “They were just trying to follow orders.”
Cox said he also told the grand jury “the absolute truth.”
GEM CITY CONFESSIONS
A project from the Dayton Daily News
Earlier this year the Dayton Daily News published the special series Gem City Gamble: Dayton’s police corruption, gangsters and the downfall of Pete Rose. Following the popularity of the series and requests from readers for more, reporter Wes Hills dug into his notebooks and conducted new interviews for a follow-up series revealing more details about how police corruption shaped the city’s history.
These stories are compiled in a new series we’re calling Gem City Confessions.
The grand jury eventually approved criminal charges against nearly 20 current and former law enforcement officers. The charges ranged from tampering with evidence, dereliction of duty, eavesdropping and interfering with civil rights to perjury and involuntary manslaughter. It was characterized as the worst scandal in the history of the Dayton Police Department.
No one had a better vantage point than Cox to know how and why this scandal originated. He also suggests reforms to ensure it never happens again.
Bobby Joe Cox
As a police officer, Cox wrote the program to consolidate the intelligence, vice and narcotics units into a new Organized Crime Unit. Recruits would have to pass a polygraph test to be admitted to the unit and take the test every six months to ensure they remained honest.
Cox was the first officer to be admitted to the unit in 1970 when he was promoted to sergeant and supervised the night shift so he would be able to complete his studies to become an attorney.
After completing law school in 1973 and leaving the department, Cox represented several members of the unit allegedly involved in criminal activity. When he left the unit, Cox said he assumed all of the wiretapping remained locked up in Chief Robert Igleburger’s office.
In 1973, Igleburger was succeeded by Grover W. O’Connor, who eventually acknowledged resuming illegal wiretapping to monitor militant and violent organizations such as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen.
Cox said the department also failed to heed the warnings of continued corruption exposed during polygraph tests.
In an internal Dayton Police Department investigation related to the grand jury probe, former Dayton Police Deputy Director William P. Riley described the “horrendous” admissions of criminal conduct made by many of the 80 police officers who took polygraph tests to fill 13 positions in the Organized Crime Squad.
Cox said the officers who admitted such wrongdoing should have been “prosecuted if you have the evidence.”
Sgt. Haller
Cox said he was “pretty close” to former Dayton Police Detective Sergeant Dennis K. Haller. Both Haller and Cox received the department’s highest honor, the Medal of Valor, for entering a burning home to rescue six people.
Soon after Haller’s son, Scott, committed suicide with Haller’s police handgun on Sept. 13, 1979, he sent The Dayton Daily News a copy of his “Anonymous Memo” detailing the police corruption, including his own. Stories in the Dayton Daily News about that memo and other information led to the appointment of Troy attorney Jose Lopez as special prosecutor over the grand jury.
“It really tore him apart,” Cox said of the impact Scott’s death had on Haller. “He said ‘I can’t go back to that mess.’ I was the lawyer who got him the disability pension. The power structure didn’t like Denny because he didn’t play ball with them. Haller admired me because I would stand up against the system like he did. The system was corrupt.”
As one of his department’s polygraph examiners, Haller screened applicants to Organized Crime Unit. Like Riley, he also became sickened by their admissions to serious crimes. One applicant for the unit, Haller wrote, “even revealed the fact that he planted narcotics on suspects and his sergeant ... did the same thing.”
‘The temptation is so great’
Cox said essential to keeping police honest is having sergeants and lieutenants “who are going to hold officers to certain standards.”
“Police will do what they can get away with,” he said of the need for discipline.
Cox said serious reports of police misconduct should go directly to the chief because he or she can be more easily be held accountable. “A chief can be easily fired” for failing to properly discipline.
He said the “old school guys” in the police command below the chief are usually long serving veterans of the department who are “reluctant to discipline.”
At least eight key supervisors in the department, including O’Connor and Riley, were aware of, approved, or directly involved in the illegal wiretapping according to court and other records.
O’Connor was never charged.
Riley eventually pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of dereliction of duty and interfering with civil rights in connection with the illegal wiretapping. He was fined $500 and placed on unsupervised release.
Many of the officials charged with criminal offenses in the Lopez investigation received light sentences because of the police department’s own negligence and City Hall’s lack of oversight. This included the department buying the wiretapping equipment, sending officers to a school to learn how to use it, and top police commanders receiving information obtained from its use at a time when Ohio law did not permit such activity.
“The system is going to take care of itself,” Cox said of the lack of discipline. “It protects itself.”
“I believe an officer can be kept clean if you force him. The temptation is so great. I mean, when you’re a policeman with the power you’ve got” when assigned to a special squad like the Organized Crime Unit — “You’ve got a rent-a-car. Nobody knows who you are. You don’t have to report to anybody. One cop even joined a motorcycle gang.”
Officer discipline
Cox opens a legal quagmire regarding discipling police when he takes off his cop hat and pulls out his bar card.
Unlike polygraph testing for criminal suspects, police officers are not administered a Miranda warning when seeking to become a member of a squad like the former Organized Crime Unit. This raises issues regarding whether any admissions made by police officers on polygraph tests can be admitted as evidence in a courtroom or disciplinary hearing.
Cox said a chief “has the power to do it (fire the officer), depending on what the evidence is, but when a person is fired, he’s going to immediately appeal it to the Civil Service Board.”
He said the officer is entitled to “a full hearing with an attorney” where the board must conclude there is “clear and convincing evidence” the officer committed the crime.
“The only time a police officer would take a polygraph examination against their will is when they are accused of some kind of criminal activity or ordered to take it,” Cox said. “And then they’re going to have an attorney — a bad guy like me — and I’m going to tell them, ‘I don’t know if you did it or not, but if you ever admit to wrongdoing, it can be used against you. If you deny it, the most they’re going to do is” determine the polygraph test is “inconclusive.”
“Once you tell a story, you stick to it, you go the grave with it.”
Cox, 84, is now facing the illness of the woman he married 67 years ago with the same courage and compassion he gave to policing and the practice of law.
He rents an apartment in the same facility where Shirley is slowly fading into the fog of Alzheimer’s so he can spend as much time as possible at her side.
“We have good days and bad days,” he said. “She still recognizes me.”