2 Winthrop student charges dropped after pressure on school police chief

Because of pressure from at least one higher-up, Winthrop University’s police chief reluctantly urged prosecutors earlier this year to drop criminal charges against a student-athlete and his girlfriend who were accused of stealing a bicycle on campus, according to public records and interviews with school and court officials.

Police Chief Frank Zebedis wasn’t happy about Winthrop intervening, according to an email he wrote in March. Zebedis said it was the first time in his 16 years at Winthrop that he’s ever been asked by a school official to try to have a student’s charges dropped.

Statements from Zebedis and university records obtained by The Herald show that former Winthrop President Jamie Comstock Williamson called Zebedis to ask that he seek to have Rock Hill’s solicitor drop the charges against the two students. The city’s solicitors are responsible for prosecuting nearly all charges filed by Winthrop police.

Months later, in a text message to Zebedis, Williamson appeared to imply that a Winthrop trustee had “directed” her to make the request of the police chief. The text was sent in June, just a few days after Winthrop trustees suspended Williamson and said they intended to fire her.

In the text, Williamson says: “If asked would you confirm my call to you ... that Kathy directed me to make the call.” The school’s Board of Trustees chairwoman is Kathy Bigham.

Bigham said she did not make such a request.

“I did not direct anyone to have any charges dropped,” Bigham said. She says she doesn’t know why Williamson sent the text message, adding, “I cannot speak for Dr. Williamson, especially about events immediately following her suspension.”

Bigham said she had a casual conversation about the arrests with Williamson in January, nearly two months after the students were charged. Bigham wanted to relay some concerns she’d heard as a trustee, she said.

That type of conversation is routine for any trustee, Bigham said, and it was not an order for the then-president to see that the charges would be dropped.

Other trustees had fielded questions and concerns from people who had heard about the two students being arrested, she said. The concerns centered on circumstances surrounding the arrest and whether Winthrop officials were improperly enticing students to steal bicycles on campus.

A Winthrop trustee knows the family of one of the students who was arrested, Bigham said. She said she’s never met the two students and has no connection to their families.

Bigham would not identify that board member to The Herald out of concern for identifying the student.

Rock Hill’s top solicitor, Chris Barton, says prosecution of the two students would have continued had the university not intervened. But he added that prosecuting the case would not have guaranteed a conviction. For example, he said, defendants can sometimes choose diversion programs, be found not guilty during a trial, or enter a plea for a lesser charge.

The Herald made several attempts to reach Williamson and her attorney in recent months, but phone calls and emails were not returned.

Williamson was fired in June by Winthrop trustees, who cited several problems with the former president, including allegations that she violated South Carolina’s nepotism law, was rude and hostile toward employees, and lied to trustees.

Williamson has denied those claims and has threatened to sue the university and individual Winthrop trustees. Mediation is still pending between Winthrop and Williamson.

Students were riding a ‘bait bike’

The two students were arrested nearly a year ago after a Winthrop police officer found them riding a bike on campus just before 1 a.m. on Nov. 1, 2013. They were taking turns riding the bike on Scholar’s Walk in the middle of campus, according to the police incident report.

While watching one of the students running alongside the other, “laughing and talking,” the Winthrop officer noticed that the bike looked “identical” to those used in Winthrop’s “bait bike” program, the report states.

The “bait bike” program was created in 2010 as a bike theft-prevention measure. The school places unlocked “bait” bicycles equipped with GPS or satellite navigation systems around campus. When a bait bike is moved, the Winthrop Campus Police Department is immediately alerted by a computer system about the bicycle’s location.

In this case, the students were caught with a bait bike while an officer was locking doors, the report states. He checked with the police department’s dispatch, which confirmed the bait bike alert system indicated a bicycle had been moved.

The officer arrested the two students, charging them with larceny of a bike.

Three days after the arrests, on Nov. 4, the mother of one of the students called Zebedis to ask that the university drop the charges, according to Winthrop email records. The police chief recently told The Herald that parents “very infrequently” call the Winthrop police department with that type of request.

On Nov. 6, Kimberly Faust, the chief of staff for Williamson and secretary to the school’s Board of Trustees, sent an email to Zebedis asking about the students’ arrest. The police chief responded that he did not fulfill the mother’s request.

“We are not permitted by law to drop charges, but I told her she could request the solicitor to drop the charges or (her child) could attend PTI,” Zebedis wrote. PTI is “pretrial intervention,” an optional court program that enables a person to have their criminal record cleared.

It’s unclear why Faust asked about the bait bike arrests. Other than the mother’s request, Faust and Zebedis’ Nov. 6 emails make no mention of anyone at Winthrop wanting the charges dropped. The Herald attempted to contact Faust but a university spokesman responded, saying that Winthrop officials would not comment.

About two weeks after their arrests, the students were set to have an initial appearance in Rock Hill Municipal Court. But their attorneys requested jury trials and the trial date was scheduled for March 3.

It’s unclear when Williamson asked Zebedis to drop the charges. He wouldn’t say, and Williamson has been unavailable for comment. The chief also declined to specify what Williamson said when she called about the request.

Barton, Rock Hill’s lead solicitor, said he became aware of Winthrop’s request when Zebedis called him in January or February. He said Zebedis did not give a specific reason the university wanted to halt prosecution.

Bigham’s conversation with Williamson happened on Jan. 15. They talked as Bigham, Williamson, Williamson’s husband and others from Winthrop walked from a meeting at the State House in Columbia, Bigham said.

Two days after her conversation with Bigham, Williamson sent Zebedis an email about the arrests. She wrote, “I am sorry if I have asked you to compromise your values.”

Bigham said she never followed up with Williamson about the arrests. Faust later emailed trustees saying the decision on the charges would rest with the solicitor’s office, Bigham said.

After the students’ charges were dropped, Rock Hill’s court issued an expungement order.

An expungement prevents a person’s arrest history from appearing on criminal background checks. In South Carolina, many types of criminal charges are eligible for expungement if the accused person is found not guilty or if the charges are dropped.

Neither Winthrop nor Rock Hill officials would identify the two arrested students, citing privacy concerns and the expungement order.

Solicitor raised fairness issue

Zebedis suggests in one university email that he and others “were pressured into a decision” about the charges. He sent that email on March 3, the day the charges were scheduled for trial. It’s also the day the charges were dropped by a Rock Hill solicitor.

He also wrote, “I certainly don’t agree with the request that was made from the Winthrop administration and I have expressed that concern.”

When The Herald asked Zebedis to explain why he wasn’t happy about the request, he would not comment. Instead, he pointed to his March 3 email and other records obtained by the newspaper.

In his email, Zebedis wrote that the Winthrop bait bike program “is very successful and prosecution of these cases are imperative to keep the program successful.”

Before starting the program, Winthrop’s campus saw an average of 20 bike thefts a year, with only two cases out of 100 solved, Zebedis said. The bait bike program has been a deterrent to bike thefts, he said, with only six non-bait bicycles stolen over the life of the program.

The March 3 email exchange between Zebedis and Rock Hill Assistant Solicitor Paula Knox Brown indicates that Winthrop’s request about the student charges prompted the solicitor to also drop similar charges against two other people who were scheduled to go to trial on the same day. The other two suspects, both 19, were not Winthrop students. They had been charged on Sept. 21, 2013, under the bait bike program.

In light of Winthrop’s request about the students’ charges, the solicitor’s office decided not to prosecute the two 19-year-olds in order to be fair, Brown wrote.

“Everyone is to be treated the same,” she wrote. “It has come to my attention ... that the intent to prosecute has changed with respect to some of the defendants” on the March 3 docket.

Brown added that she would drop the charges to “be respectful of the decision reached between the Board of Trustees and the Winthrop Police Department in respect to declination of prosecution (for the two students).”

Bigham says there was never a decision or understanding between the Winthrop board and the school’s police department about the student arrests.

Winthrop had initially supported prosecution of all four bait bike suspects, said Barton, the city’s top solicitor.

Barton said dropping the charges against all four people was appropriate because the cases were similar.

Winthrop police records indicate that in both the Sept. 21 and Nov. 1 cases, two people were arrested at the same time, accused of stealing a bait bike together. Also in both cases, Winthrop officers made the arrests while the suspects were still on campus with the bike.

Barton said he doesn’t see anything the solicitor’s office should have done differently in handling the cases.

“We don’t play favorites,” he said, adding that the office’s goal is “to do the right thing for the right reason, and I think we did so in this case.”

Even if court proceedings had continued, Barton said, it’s possible all four bait bike charges would have been dismissed on March 3.

In South Carolina, he said, prosecutors need to prove criminal intent when trying a larceny case. Prosecutors must prove the suspects intended to permanently take away the bike. “Simply joyriding on a bicycle that does not belong to you is not a criminal offense,” Barton said.

One example that might demonstrate criminal intent to steal a bike, Barton said, is if a person takes a bicycle and puts it inside their home or in their car.

It’s unclear from the Winthrop police report whether the two students intended to steal the bicycle or just ride it around campus and return the bicycle later.

The only people convicted under Winthrop’s bait bike program were found off campus with the bicycle, school records show.

Since 2010, eight people have been arrested with the bait bike while on campus. In those eight cases, at least four of the charges were dropped by the solicitor before a trial, while other charges were dismissed because the defendant chose PTI. It’s possible that other charges were handled in a bench or jury trial.

But neither Winthrop nor court officials could say exactly how each case was handled, other than the four charges that were dismissed on March 3. City officials said they could not disclose whether someone opted for PTI.

Overall, more than half of the 36 people arrested with a bait bike have been found guilty in court, according to records provided to The Herald.

No ‘corroboration’ of Williamson allegation

Every person found with a bait bike – on or off campus – has been charged with larceny, Zebedis said.

Until last year’s student arrests, Bigham said, Winthrop trustees had never heard a community or campus complaint about the bait bike program.

University email records show the bait bike arrests came up again in May when Winthrop trustees were asking Williamson questions about a recent pay raise given to Zebedis. The charges had been dropped nearly two months prior.

Williamson told Zebedis in a May 1 email that some trustees weren’t happy about the incident.

She makes that claim while asking Zebedis for an updated copy of his resume. She needed his resume, she said, because trustees were asking questions about his 33 percent raise. Zebedis also received a promotion and was one of several Winthrop employees who received salary increases earlier this year.

Williamson told Zebedis in her email: “The (Board of Trustees) is questioning your recent salary increase and I am going to have to defend it.” She later discusses having “to defend this action to trustees who are not happy about the bate (sic) bike incident.”

But Bigham says that wasn’t the case.

Trustees only raised questions and relayed concerns to the president’s office because they’d received numerous phone calls about the student arrests. Some people, she said, were questioning whether Winthrop was “baiting” and then arresting its students.

Three days before Williamson’s May 1 email to Zebedis, board Vice Chairman Karl Folkens sent an email to the former president and other trustees saying he liked the bait bike program.

But, Folkens added: “It was what I perceived to be the heavy-handed ‘zero tolerance’ attitude the (police) chief had that concerned me, which seemed to run counter to what we’re trying to accomplish as an institution of higher learning.”

In that email, Folkens also mentions the two students arrested on Nov. 1. Trustees “were careful not to interject ourselves into that pending prosecution, and we definitely did not want to seek to improperly influence whether that particular alleged crime got prosecuted,” Folkens wrote. “But, we, as trustees, should be asking the larger question as to what should the role of the police be on campus. At what point, if at all, does common sense prevail over ‘zero tolerance’ policies?”

Had Williamson felt that any trustee acted improperly regarding the student arrests, she could have taken issue with Folkens’ April 28 email, he told The Herald.

“She and I had very open communication with each other,” he said.

The bait bike incident surfaced again on June 4 when Williamson called Folkens to say she had a concern about Bigham. Williamson told Folkens that her concern was related to the students’ bait bike charges, he said. Folkens would not specify what Williamson said about Bigham, citing pending legal matters with the former president.

He did say that he looked into the claim about Bigham and did not find any “corroboration for her (Williamson’s) allegations.”

Nine days later, Williamson was suspended. Folkens did not tell Bigham about the former president’s allegation against her until after Williamson was suspended, he said. He added that he did not want Bigham’s view of the board’s deliberation process affected by Williamson’s claim.

Other than the June 4 phone call and Williamson’s text message two weeks later to Zebedis, Folkens says the former president never complained or raised an issue about any trustee’s involvement with the case. In that text after her suspension, Williamson wrote, “(It) would be interesting to have it come out now.”

In her text message, Williamson asks Zebedis whether he would confirm, if asked, that she’d called “and told you that Kathy directed me to make the call.” University records indicate that Zebedis did not answer that question.

Since then, Bigham said, there’s been no formal board discussion about the bait bike program.

Ideally, Folkens said, if Winthrop’s police chief isn’t happy about something he’s asked to do by the president, he would raise a concern with school trustees. The board should have an ongoing discussion, he said, about how trustees can make sure Winthrop employees will notify the board of such issues.

Developing a campus culture where employees will feel comfortable raising concerns, Folkens said, should be a part of the conversation trustees have with applicants hoping to be the school’s next president.

Winthrop officials refuse some questions

Although one of Zebedis’ emails indicates that he’d voiced concern about the request to drop the charges, he wouldn’t say who he’d expressed his concern to. Trustees say they were not formally informed of his concern.

Other questions from The Herald to Winthrop officials also went unanswered over recent weeks, including whether it was appropriate for Zebedis to call the city solicitor with the request to drop the student charges.

Beyond what The Herald found in university email records, Zebedis would not comment on the way the case was handled. He said it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to assess the court’s or the solicitors’ decisions.

Zebedis also would not say whether the Winthrop police officer used good judgment in arresting the two students. He did say the officer followed all department policies and proper procedures in charging the students.

The Herald asked university spokesman Jeff Perez to explain why some questions weren’t answered, and he said Winthrop preferred not to discuss the matters further.

This story was originally published November 1, 2014 at 4:59 PM with the headline "2 Winthrop student charges dropped after pressure on school police chief."