The Associated Press
MOUNT OLIVE, N.C. (AP) - Three Mount Olive police officers accused of taking money from Hispanic men during traffic stops have been suspended pending an investigation, authorities said Friday.
Court documents show an officer took $310 in marked money from the wallet of a State Bureau of Investigation agent who was working undercover in the town, about 70 miles southeast of Raleigh.
The officers have not been arrested or charged with any crime, but were suspended indefinitely without pay on Wednesday, said Mount Olive police Chief Emmett Ballree.
He said he turned the case over to the State Bureau of Investigation after a preliminary inquiry by his department.
Ballree called Sgt. Joshua Joseph Ehnert, Senior Patrolman Freddie Southerland and Patrolman David Johnson good officers, but said the seriousness of the allegations prompted town officials to act.
The suspended officers could not be reached for comment.
The Wayne County town of about 4,600 people has a 15-member police department. Ehnert had been an officer with the town four years, Southerland for two years and Johnson, one year.
District Attorney C. Branson Vickory III said Friday that the investigation indicated the three officers were acting together. He said he could not say how many people might have been by the officers were alleged to have victimized because the investigation was continuing.
Ballree said he received information in mid-August about possible involvement of officers in targeting some members of the community. He said he only had information from a “third party.”
The SBI said in a search warrant filed Tuesday that the Mount Olive Police Department received “numerous complaints from Latino males” that they had been stopped by Ehnert.
“After the traffic stops, the Latino males were missing money from their wallets,” the affidavit said.
Leticia Zavala of Goldsboro, a community activist, said that she knew of no thefts but that Hispanics think officers treat them differently from others.
“They always target us,” she said.
About 6.1 percent of Wayne County’s estimated population of 112,783 in 2003 was Hispanic, according to census reports. The Hispanic population more than tripled in the decade between 1990 and 2000, according to the census.