Government pays in some odd ways, files show

Sept. 18--It was a first for both the Knoxville Police Department and a Maryville father.

In June 2010, the platform of KPD's Sky Watch aerial surveillance tower came crashing down, landing on the roof of a car at a West Knox County theater parking lot. James White's phone rang with some startling news -- the car was his and, for once, his then-teenage daughter was not to blame for the damage it sustained.

"My daughter has managed to run into a lot of things since then," White said in a recent interview with the News Sentinel. "But this one wasn't her fault."

A News Sentinel investigation of legal claims paid from the risk management funds of Knox County and the city of Knoxville turned up dozens of accidents involving governmental vehicles and equipment.

But in three years of legal claims, only this one involved Sky Watch, a piece of equipment the size of a small RV with a platform that extends 30 feet into the air. Equipped with four cameras, recording capabilities and room for an officer in the boxlike platform, it is used to monitor large crowds like those at Neyland Stadium for football games and in parking lots and other crime hot spots to deter would-be criminals.

According to records, KPD Sgt. Robert Taylor parked the surveillance tower in the parking lot of Regal Pinnacle Stadium theater on Parkside Drive and left it there. That's one of the Sky Watch deterrence tricks -- sometimes it's manned, sometimes it's not. The cameras, of course, are always rolling.

Meanwhile, White's daughter pulled up beside it, and she and her boyfriend went inside the theater to watch a flick.

The tower's hydraulic lift system began to leak, and the platform slipped down the greasy support pole.

"This resulted (in) the observation platform box to drop onto the top of a vehicle parked in the adjacent space," Taylor wrote in a report.

The accident was discovered when White's daughter walked out of the theater and saw the Sky Watch platform box resting on top of the 2006 Honda her dad allowed her to drive.

A preliminary investigation showed the Sky Watch tower was not equipped with a manual lock that would allow an officer to keep it locked at whatever height it was extended. Instead, the only way to ensure the platform was automatically locked into place was to extend the tower to its maximum height.

Taylor was faulted in a risk management form for not blocking off parking spaces around the tower before extending the tower. City taxpayers coughed up $3,134 to repair White's car.

"They were real good about it," White said of city officials. "They accepted responsibility for it."

BETTER CHECK FOR LIENS

A stray pony, a lost bracelet and an abandoned car cost taxpayers a combined $1,515 and, in one case, prompted a policy change.

KCSO was trying to round up a stray pony on the loose on McMillan Road in June 2010. Good Samaritan Nancy Welborn helped out, allowing the animal control officers to use her barn stall to corral the pony until a horse trailer arrived.

For her generosity, Welborn received a gouge in her driveway and a broken curb in KCSO's process of hauling the pony back to its owner.

The agency hoped it could use inmates to fix the damage, but a report stated there wasn't a single prisoner with the skill to do it. A local company did the work instead, for a price tag of $700.

Carolyn Maples was none too happy when, she said, KPD officers "dragged" her from a car "at gunpoint," temporarily seized her money, debit card and diamond bracelet during a home invasion probe in January 2012.

She filed a risk management claim when police didn't return the bracelet.

"The case is basically that KPD doesn't know what happened to the bracelet," a risk management report stated.

Maples collected $100 for the missing bauble.

Jim Seals didn't get much cash, but he led to a change in KPD policy in the handling of seized vehicles. Reports show a car was found abandoned in 2011. KPD checked to make sure the car wasn't stolen but didn't determine if anyone had an outstanding lien on it. The agency auctioned the car for $900.

Seals, as it turned out, did have a lien for $2,065. He got the proceeds of the sale, minus a $550 tow and impound fee, and taxpayers kicked in the remaining $815.

As a result of the Seals snafu, KPD now requires its computer operators to check for liens three days before an auction.

ONCE THERE WAS A HOUSE

Monty Fairchild was eating breakfast when his phone rang in March 2010.

"I received a call from someone telling me (a city demolition crew) was there (at a house he owned on Burnside Street in the Lonsdale area), tearing the house down," Fairchild wrote in a letter to the city. "I asked (the caller) to try and stop them, that I was on my way. When I got there, a bulldozer was sitting in the middle of what used to be my house."

Even now, Fairchild and the city are at odds over who bears fault for the demolition, records show.

According to the city's Codes Enforcement Office, the house had been condemned in 2003. In April 2010, the Better Building Board issued a 60-day order -- Fairchild must repair the house and bring it up to code or the city would tear it down.

Just as time was running out to fix the house, Fairchild's contractor secured a building permit. Six months passed. Codes enforcers insisted "no significant work had been performed," so the house was placed on the demolition list.

Fairchild's contractor, David Kern, insisted a good deal of work had been done on the property, and he had been assured there was no danger of demolition. Fairchild conceded bad weather in December 2010 slowed down repairs but denied the city's claim that little progress had been made.

Fairchild, via attorney Jerry Martin, took the case to court. Knox County Circuit Court Judge Wheeler Rosenbalm, who since has retired, ruled the city was "two-thirds at fault because of unclear statements which the owner interpreted as giving him more time for rehab."

The city wound up paying Fairchild $22,500. David Brace, director of the city's public service department, said the city has since changed the language in its codes enforcement paperwork to make clear no extensions on a demolition order will be granted absent a written authorization.

"They got us on a technicality," Brace said. "We looked at it and made a change to close that risk."

THE WRONG DOOR

Sure, it makes for good footage on the reality show "Cops," but taxpayers foot the bill when police bust down a door -- especially when it's the wrong house.

Just ask Shannon Casey.

Casey and his wife weren't at their Kesterwood Drive home when KPD came calling in February 2013, but his dog was. Imagine, Casey told the News Sentinel, the pooch's fright when officers smashed in the front door.

"Thankfully, our screen door was unlocked," Casey said, allowing the officers to see there was no bleeding man inside.

That bleeding man was across the street inside his house. According to risk management records, KPD received a call that a man had shot himself in a suicide attempt. His address was one digit different from Casey's address. That one number made all the difference -- for Casey at least -- as the officers kicked in his door by mistake.

The city offered to replace the door, but Casey said it was an antique in keeping with the style of the 1940s home he and his wife had been restoring.

"They really shortchanged us because it was an antique door," Casey said. "At first, they wanted to send someone out to put some cheap plastic up."

The city wound up paying the Caseys $1,000. They still haven't found a proper replacement.

"My wife and I just Band-Aided it for now," he said.

KPD was wrong again a month later. This time, officers weren't at the wrong house. They were at the wrong apartment complex.

Records don't say why officers kicked in the door at the complex on Old Maynardville Pike or where the intended target was. There's good reason, according to risk management documents.

Ginger Huskey, who handles such claims for the city, wrote in a report that KPD failed to fill out a report at the time of the incident "because the resident stated nothing needed to be repaired." The complex owner, on the other hand, wanted a new door. Police did not contact her.

"Was the (city) responsible?" Huskey wrote. "Yes. The officer should have verified the address before kicking in the door. Once he had reported the incident, KPD should have contacted the property owner."

Price tag for the foul-up? Just over $400.

It wasn't a wrong address but a matter of just cause that cost county taxpayers $1,216 when the Knox County Sheriff's Office busted the front door of Corey Monarch's Kimberlin Heights Road home.

Deputies were dispatched to Monarch's house when his girlfriend complained he wouldn't let her get her belongings. Before they arrived, though, she called back to say Monarch would let her in if no law enforcement showed up. Two hours later, however, deputies did show up. The call, it turns out, was never cleared from the E-911 center computer.

"The officers observed the couple in the front yard when they arrived, but the couple went inside the house and refused to answer the door," KCSO Administrative Chief Carleton "Butch" Bryant wrote in a letter to county lawyers.

Bryant wrote the deputies "made entry in an abundance of caution." Dispatch records show the deputies did not report the forced entry nor did they file a written report.

"Captain Tom Cox with the (KCSO) Office of Professional Standards suggested, and I concur, that we should replace the door," Bryant wrote.

KPD believed Brooks Gladden was lying about whether his "violent" fugitive brother was inside his Loposser Hollow Road house in September 2010. KPD contended Gladden had been seen with his brother, who isn't identified in records, two days before and already had lied to police.

The agency's Special Operations Squad, its version of a SWAT team, surrounded the house and sent in a K-9 to sniff out the fugitive. The dog "did not alert on the house," but the SOS team decided to bash in the door, records stated. The officers did so with enough force to break out four windows. Gladden, it turns out, was telling the truth. The fugitive wasn't there. Taxpayers handed over $1,031 in damages.

KPD Chief David Rausch said police are human and make mistakes.

"There's two (wrong addresses) that were clear errors -- two out of 520,000 calls," Rausch said.

CART PATH CRASHES

Wayne Ball, 76, didn't know it, but his October 2012 golf cart crash at the Three Ridges Golf Course was not the first on the path to hole No. 2.

There had been two others in the two months before the cart Ball was driving on the steeply sloped path toppled over.

"We started skidding," Ball told the News Sentinel. "I hit the cart path and the body of the cart landed on my ankle."

Ball suffered a broken leg, a hip fracture and eight cracked ribs, according to county records. It took him six months to recover.

"I still have trouble with that leg," Ball said. "They put a steel rod in that leg. Still, I was kind of fortunate because where I landed was about 6 inches (from) the concrete curb I could have gotten hurt worse or even killed."

Records show two others, Debbi Voiles and Will Brewer, were hurt on the same cart path in separate crashes in August and September 2012. Both resulted in injuries to the drivers, although there is no legal claim in the records reviewed by the News Sentinel for those two crashes.

Ball worked out a settlement with Knox County, which owns the golf course, in which taxpayers paid some $36,000 in medical bills and another $30,000 in damages.

In a report on Brewer's accident, a Three Ridges employee wrote that his wreck was the only one on that path. But Voiles' crash had occurred just two weeks before.

After Ball's accident, Three Ridges management ordered up a review of the cart path by an engineer, records show. The engineer recommended the path be reworked to lessen the severity of the slope and provide protective railing at the curve at the end of the path.

The repairs weren't finished until late June -- 20 months after Ball's crash.

Michael Grider, spokesman for Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett, said interim corrective measures were taken as the slope was regraded and noted there have been no other wrecks on the path since Ball's cart overturned.

"It's a safe, usable path now," Grider said.

WHISTLEBLOWER CLAIM

A broken lease and a whistleblower lawsuit added up to a taxpayer bill for more than $376,000.

Knox County via former Mayor Mike Ragsdale in 2005 signed a lease with Eternal Life Restoration Outreach ministry to rent space in the Five Points Village Shopping Center for use by the County Clerk's Office. It was the county's way of trying to help the fledging venture bring business to East Knoxville -- a move that later proved unsuccessful.

In 2010, Knox County Clerk Foster Arnett shut down the Five Points satellite office. Eternal Life's pastor, the Rev. James Davis, filed suit because the county had signed a 10-year lease. That case was settled for $160,000.

In 2001, attorney Herbert S. Moncier filed, on behalf of Environmental Termite & Pest Control, a whistleblower lawsuit after the firm discovered two competitors had been overbilling the school system for its services, and the law department refused to take action. The lawsuit contended the county had been overbilled $400,000.

The county eventually joined in the fight, and a settlement with the two guilty firms was reached. Under the Tennessee False Claims Act, Moncier's client was entitled to a percentage of the damages for its role in uncovering the fraud. The county's failure to discover the fraud and its reluctance to investigate netted Moncier and his client $216,684.

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