By Tanya Eiserer
Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle fired a four-year veteran officer Thursday after an eight-month internal investigation found, among other things, that he sent nude photos of himself to a high school student during school hours, kept several people’s ID cards and failed to give copies of tickets to several violators who were later wanted for arrest because they didn’t pay the tickets.
Bryan Crews, 30, will appeal his firing, his attorney, Haakon Donnelly, wrote in an e-mail.
“The department should be ashamed of its actions and methods of investigation into this officer’s personal private life, which has nothing to do his status as a police officer or on-the-job conduct,” Donnelly wrote.
“We further believe that members of the department investigating the underlying complaint – initiated by Officer Crews’ wife in the course of divorce proceedings – engaged in misconduct in obtaining and reviewing alleged information and evidence, which taints the entire investigation as well as his termination.”
Kunkle declined to comment, citing the likelihood of litigation. The case was an unusual one for the department because it involved sexually explicit images that the officer had saved on his personal cellphone.
The internal affairs investigation started in late February after Crews’ wife gave authorities his private cellphone memory card, ticket books and other evidence. Crews’ wife told officials that she believed some of the sexually explicit images to be child pornography, but the investigation found no evidence that the images were of minors.
The investigation also found:
•That Crews personally kept dozens of unauthorized photos that he’d taken of crime scenes, which investigators concluded violated departmental policy.
•That he sent nude photos of himself to a 17-year-old North Dallas High School student while she was in school on three different days; that he took several nude photos of himself in which his police uniform could be seen in the background; that he received and saved several sexually explicit videos on his phone while on duty; and that he received nude photos from a female sergeant, which were taken on police property while she was on duty.
•That he showed nude photos, including those of female police employees, to other police officers while on duty.
•That he sent and received excessive personal text messages and phone calls while on duty. In January 2009, records showed that he sent or received about 850 text messages and engaged in 433 minutes of phone conversations with the high school student. The following month, he sent or received 1,045 text messages and engaged in 431 minutes of phone conversations with her.
•That in four separate cases he kept copies of tickets he’d written that he was supposed to have given to violators. Because the suspected violators didn’t know about the tickets, arrest warrants were issued due to the unpaid fines.
Police officials have since had the tickets dismissed. Crews characterized it as a “rookie mistake,” records show.
•That he kept the identification cards of four different people. His wife told investigators that she found four ID cards in the trash. Crews told officials that he accidentally kept the cards and intended to mail them back, but failed to do so. He said he thought he had placed them in the bathroom drawer, not the trash.
Departmental policy requires that officers return all ID cards, either in person if they live nearby or by mail.
“I do not deny all of the allegations, but question the integrity of the investigation, and how the evidence was obtained,” Crews wrote in a statement to internal investigators. “I am not saying that my behavior was OK.”
Crews’ sergeant, who recommended that he receive a one-day suspension, wrote a memo contesting some of the findings of the internal affairs investigation. He noted that in the cases where Crews took photos of crime scenes, he was the investigating officer at the scene.
The amount of text messages and phone calls “may be questionable, [but] I do not believe that the use of his phone interfered with his ability to perform his job at a high level,” Sgt. Paul Morris wrote. “Officer Crews’ activity was over 100 percent of the sector average, and he had no complaints during that period.”
The sexually explicit photos and videos “may be objectionable,” but he wrote that Crews never made them public and therefore didn’t harm the department’s reputation.
Copyright 2010 Dallas Morning News