By Valerie Kalfrin
The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA, Fla. - Parents picking up children at Monroe Middle School didn’t heed the no-parking signs along Montgomery Avenue until Tampa police Officer Betty Williams started issuing citations.
Most of them have learned their lesson, Williams said Wednesday.
So has she, she said.
The police department recently disciplined the 11-year veteran for not complying with its parking-violation policy. She acknowledged in an internal investigation to giving a motorist an incomplete parking ticket and telling him to throw it away later, all for the benefit of another motorist who had been cited and was watching the transaction.
The ticket cost $20, records show.
The department issued Williams a letter admonishing her. It will stay in her file for about a year. “It taught me a lesson,” the officer, 51, said Wednesday.
Accusations Of Racism
The March incident initially raised accusations of racism and officer misconduct, according to transcripts from the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau. The department released the documents this week in response to a Tampa Tribune public records request.
The department found no evidence to support those allegations, in part because each motorist said in transcripts he did not know what the officer’s motivation was.
The motorist who was cited, Paul Autry, 34, is white. The motorist told to destroy the ticket, Eddie Williams, 51, is black, as is the officer.
The Williamses are not related, but Eddie Williams and Autry are. Eddie Williams is the uncle of Autry’s wife, the documents state.
The motorists could not be reached Wednesday. In transcripts, each said he thought the situation was unfair.
“I don’t know if it’s race related,” Autry told departmental investigators. “You have to be level across the board and just enforce the law. &hellipTreat us all the same.”
“We both should have got one,” Eddie Williams said of the ticket in a transcript. “It would have been fair.”
On March 30, Autry had parked on the grassy shoulder outside the school at 4716 W. Montgomery Ave. to wait for his daughter. Eddie Williams arrived moments later in a separate car to pick up another child, documents state.
The officer happened to approach Autry first, told him to move and said she was issuing him a ticket, documents state. Autry told investigators he didn’t move right away because his daughter was coming; in the meantime, he saw the officer talking to Eddie Williams and thought, “Oh, that’s too bad for Uncle Eddie,” documents state.
At a family gathering later, the men realized Eddie Williams had not been ticketed after all, documents state. Autry’s wife complained to the police department, saying she thought the incident was racially motivated. She declined an interview Wednesday. She gave police the half-completed ticket, which Eddie Williams had not destroyed.
Eddie Williams told investigators he parked on the shoulder because he noticed Autry there. The officer told him to move, then said “she would have to write me a ticket, ‘cause, uh, she didn’t want to show no favoritism to the guy that’s behind us. ... She gave me the copies and told me as soon as I leave for me to throw them away,” he said in a transcript.
Wednesday, the officer said she had warned parents verbally for about two weeks that spring about not parking on the city right-of-way, clogging the street during dismissal. About 700 children attend the school, she said.
New To The School
That day, she said, she approached Eddie Williams’ car from the rear and wrote his license tag on the citation. As she reached the driver’s door, he protested, saying he hadn’t been to the school before and didn’t know where to park, she said.
The officer said she realized from her prior interactions with parents that she did not recognize Eddie Williams as a regular. She decided to give him a break and just warn him, but noticed Autry watching her, she said.
“I thought about the guy behind him, just staring at me,” she said in a transcript. “So I just said, ‘Here - take this and go across the street and throw it away when you get there.’ That was wrong.”
Wednesday, the officer said she was concerned about Autry being upset because working at the school has a “different dynamic” than being in patrol.
“We have to deal with these parents every day,” she said. “This is a community here. I was just trying to keep peace.”
In the transcript, the officer said she didn’t pay attention to the drivers’ racial backgrounds and thought upon recollection that they were Hispanic.
When reviewing the situation, the department asked the officer about her motivation and found no racial discrimination.
“Ultimately, the officer was trying to defuse a potential conflict,” police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said. “Her intent was good, but how she went about it was not.”
Copyright 2007 Tampa Tribune