Jail probe leads to arrest of officers

Apr. 12—UPDATE: A previous version of this story refers to a uniformed officer with the Milledgeville Police Department having been arrested on criminal charges at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center (GPSTC) in Forsyth on Wednesday.

Milledgeville Police Department Maj. Linc Boyer, commander of the road patrol division, told the newspaper on Saturday afternoon that the suspect was actually a cadet in training and not yet a certified police officer in uniform.

The story has been updated.

An internal investigation at the Baldwin County Jail has led to the arrests of two detention officers and a uniformed patrol officer with the Milledgeville Police Department, The Union-Recorder has learned.

The probe began several weeks ago and culminated Wednesday with the arrests of two of the suspects, according to Baldwin County Sheriff Bill Massee. A third arrest took place Thursday afternoon.

Massee identified the suspects taken into custody Wednesday as Tamayo Alexis Howard of Milledgeville; and Romeris Andre Culver of Mitchell.

The sheriff said Howard was called to the sheriff's office where he subsequently was arrested, while Culver was taken into custody during a break while he was attending a state-mandated certification class at the Georgia Law Enforcement Training Center in Forsyth.

Warrants were later issued against both men for trading with inmates without the consent of a warden or supervisor, and violation of oath by a public officer, records show.

Howard was still employed as a detention officer until his arrest, while Culver had previously worked at the detention center for several months as a detention officer before he left to become a city police officer.

Milledgeville Police Chief Dray Swicord said Culver began work at the police department on April 1.

Swicord said Culver was terminated after he the arrest, but his firing was related to another matter.

"He was fired because he didn't meet the requirements for pre-certification," Swicord said. "I had given him a job pending him graduating from mandate and passing everything."

For the last six to eight weeks, Massee said there had been complaints about jail employees or someone bringing contraband into the jail.

"We utilized open source technology, as well as normal investigative means."

The sheriff said "quite frankly" neither Howard nor Culver should have ever been hired by the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office.

"Sometimes good things come out of investigations," Massee said. "In the course of this internal investigation, we found out during our vetting process that quite candidly they slipped through the cracks. We never should have hired either one of them."

The sheriff said that did not come to light until the internal investigation began.

Detective Chris Burrell led the investigation with assistance from Evelyn Johnson, who works as an analyst with the sheriff's office.

"This investigation was conducted using new technology that has never been available to us before," Massee said. "Our analyst, Evelyn Johnson, worked in cooperation with Detective Burrell, and we obtained probable cause to arrest Culver and Howard."

The sheriff said the investigation remained active and ongoing but he did not go into detail.

He pointed out that some hiring policies have been "tweaked" to prevent issues in the future.

He said a meeting was held Wednesday morning to discuss safety issues related to housing inmates at the county jail. He also noted that under normal circumstances, deputies would not have gone to the state law enforcement training center to arrest someone.

"But because of the importance of ensuring safety of every inmate in our jail, we went ahead and made that arrest there," Massee said. "And to be real candid with you, we didn't feel with what he had done in our jail and his involvement in our investigation at the jail, we didn't think it was appropriate for him to remain in a training class with qualified young people pursuing our profession."

The sheriff said he hopes the investigation doesn't lead to anyone else being arrested, but that if it did, he and his staff would simply have to deal with it.

New jail policies went into place earlier this year to prevent illegal contraband and safeguard inmates as well as jail staff.

"We started that out of an abundance of caution," Massee said. "We didn't think at the time that we had had any issues. Since we went online with this new protocol and through interviews and through some phone calls that we've intercepted, we've found that some people were soaking some letters in different types of narcotics."

Massee said such items can reach inmates and they can then chew up the piece of paper to get high from methamphetamine or some other water soluble drug.

Massee said he and members of his command staff believe that some detention officers get knocked off track and enticed by money.

"But we don't look at this as a financial investigation," he said. "We look at this as a true public safety issue because the last thing we want is any contraband in our jail that can cause harm to our inmates. Our total responsibility is care, custody and control of inmates. That's the bottom line of our job."

Massee admitted he made a mistake in hiring both men.

"I made that mistake," he said. "And the bad thing is the city of Milledgeville inherited my mistake."