A time when I used anonymous sources- an investigation of the Webb City Police Department

The use of anonymous sources in stories was criticized in Joplin Globe Editor Carol Stark's column on Sunday's opinion page. Though much of the first part of her column was devoted to people wanting to run anonymous letters to the editor, she warmed up to the topic as she explained how she and the Joplin Globe have high ethics standards and would only resort to using anonymous sources under an extremely limited set of circumstances.

This is something I have been hearing from the Globe for more than two decades. A lot of it dates back to the story I am reprinting in this post. This was the first chapter in my 2007 book, The Turner Report, and shows the way that I used anonymous sources when I was a newspaper reporter. Reporters always prefer to have sources who are willing to go on the record, but sometimes that is simply not possible and the story you are working on is so important that the information needs to get to the public.

Often, as is the case in the story you are about to read, as a story develops, sources who were originally anonymous will eventually allow their names to be used, and more importantly, other sources will come forward.

***

When the light turns yellow- stop.

That was what I always told myself when I went through Webb City during the early 1990s. At one time, Webb City was primarily regarded as a suburb bedroom community, a town of approximately 7,500, most of whom made the daily trek to Joplin just a few miles away for work and then returned each evening.

As the ‘90s continued, Webb City became known for its string of state championship football teams, a string that has continued into the 21st century. But in the early 1990s, the city also had a reputation as a town with a few rogue police officers who enjoyed making the most of the power they held over those who were unfortunate enough to cross their path.

And I was one of those who crossed their path- deliberately.

It was early November 1990 as I traveled east through Webb City, nine miles away from the Jasper County seat, Carthage, where I worked as the area reporter for The Carthage Press.

To get through Webb City, you had to go through three stoplights. I had just gone through the first one, when I saw a black-and-white police cruiser crossing lanes to pull in behind me.

Normally, I would not have been nervous. I had only had one traffic violation, a speeding ticket in Cedar County in 1988 in 15 years, and I was breaking no traffic laws. I made sure of that. I checked the speedometer; I was five miles below the limit. Still, my heart was pounding a mile a minute. If this police officer knows who I am, he’s going to pull me over. I glanced at my watch, it was ten minutes before 1 a.m. The midnight shift was on. And in Webb City, Missouri, that meant trouble.

Unfortunately, my timing was off as we approached the second traffic signal. It was green, but I could tell it was just about to change. Normally, I would have plenty of time, but if it changed at the wrong moment, and I continued through the intersection, I would probably be pulled over and if they found out who I was, I could be in for a beating.

The light was still green, and the officer was right behind me. I saw the light turning to yellow. Should I stop? I asked myself. If I did, I was probably going to have a police officer ramming the back end of my car, so I said a silent prayer and zipped on through, the officer right behind me. So far, he had not turned on his light. Maybe I was going to make it. Then he pulled up right beside me, where he stayed for a long, uncomfortable few seconds that seemed more like hours.…and then the lights began flashing. He had me. I pulled over onto the shoulder…and watched as he sped right past me, pursuing some actual lawbreaker.

The officer pulled into the right-hand lane and turned in to the Take-a-Break convenience store at the third stoplight, where another police officer had a motorist stopped. I breathed a deep sigh of relief, continued to travel well under the speed limit and headed home.

In retrospect, it seems silly to think that I feared being pulled over for something like that. But those were not normal times for The Carthage Press or for the Webb City Police Department, and things were not going to be normal for years to come.

***

At the time of what I thought of as my near-miss in Webb City, I had been the area reporter for the Carthage Press for only seven months, a somewhat older than usual rookie reporter at a daily newspaper. My only experience at a daily had been 12 years earlier when I was sports editor at the Lamar Democrat. That job lasted only eight months. In between, my journalism experience was limited to weekly newspapers, and there were a lot of people who thought I was going to fall flat on my face when I decided to make the switch when I was already in my mid-30s.

And there was no one who was scared of failure more than I was. My first few months at Carthage were nothing special. I mainly covered area city council and school board meetings, did the occasional feature, and filled in for reporters on their days off or when all of the reporters were assigned to other stories. One thing Managing Editor Neil Campbell learned quickly was that I wanted to work. I was never a person who was comfortable with down time. When I finished with one story, I was ready to work on the next.

But after my first six months at The Press, I had yet to land one story that really challenged me. That was about to change in October 1990. Ironically, considering that I later built a reputation for breaking big stories, I had nothing to do with breaking the one that ended up making my reputation in Carthage.
That honor belonged to Andy Ostmeyer, a reporter with the area’s biggest newspaper, the Joplin Globe. It was Ostmeyer who wrote the story of a man named Vince McCarty from nearby Carterville, who was pulled over on a bad check warrant by an officer from the Webb City Police Department’s midnight shift. McCarty later claimed he had been severely beaten by three officers while he was in the Webb City Jail. Ostmeyer, a skilled reporter and gifted communicator, broke the story and it was the talk of Jasper County. And The Carthage Press did not have anything on it. I later learned that the information had been brought to Ostmeyer. Nothing wrong with that. He had earned his reputation and though he was younger than I was, the people who wanted to make the Webb City Police pay for Vince McCarty’s beating, had no reason to think of me or The Press when they decided to go to public.

As I read Ostmeyer’s gripping account of the Vince McCarty story, I knew I had to get in on this, and by a lucky twist of fate I did. One of my regular beats was Webb City’s municipal government and a 6:30 p.m. Monday City Council meeting was scheduled for the next week. The agenda was light, just a few items before the council went into a closed session to discuss personnel matters. It was October, and it was stuffy in the ancient city building, so many of those at the meeting went outside and stood on the sidewalk while the council conferred in a meeting room inside.

I have never been a social person. I always stood on the outer perimeter and listened, and one talent I picked up early in my journalism career was the ability to pick out a conversation from several feet away and listen to it no matter how many distractions there were or how many other conversations were taking place.

On this night, the most interesting conversation revolved around the beating of Vince McCarty. Everyone was talking about Andy Ostmeyer’s article. I heard one man say, “It sounds like they beat the hell out of him.”

A woman answered, “You should hear the tape.”

The tape? I leaned in closer and said, “I wouldn’t mind hearing that tape.”

The woman looked at me and quickly put me in my place. “And who in the hell are you?”

Now that any illusions I had of the fame that comes with a career in journalism had been shattered, I meekly said, “I’m Randy Turner. I’m a reporter for The Carthage Press.”

She paused for several long seconds, then said, “If you come to the Take-A-Break after 2:30 tomorrow, I’ll have a copy of the tape for you.” I agreed and in just those few seconds I had somehow managed to jump into the story of Vince McCarty’s beating.

After about 15 minutes, the city council returned from its closed session, not that I cared. I was far more excited about the tape and anxious to get hold of a copy of it.

When the next day arrived, I was not going to give the woman the opportunity to back out of the agreement. I arrived at the Take-A-Break just before 2:30, and true to her word she had a copy of the tape for me.

The cassette player in my car was not working, so I had to drive back to Carthage and play it at the Press office. As I listened, it was hard to make out a lot of the words, but enough of them came through loud and clear. I had no doubt this tape was made at the Webb City Jail and that the beating of Vince McCarty had been captured. I still had questions though that needed to be answered. Had anything been edited out of the tape? Who were the people whose voices I heard? Were they the ones who had been mentioned in Ostmeyer’s article? How did this tape come to exist in the first place? Why would someone secretly tape the Webb City Police Department? And, of course, the main question that a reporter always has during circumstances like this? Is my editor going to let me run this story?

***

Before I talked to my editor, Neil Campbell, I did my best to verify the authenticity of the tape. I identified the voices with the help of a city council member, a city hall employee, and an officer from the Webb City P. D. day shift.

I still had not answered all of my questions, but I had enough to take the tape to Neil Campbell and get his reaction. It boiled down to one word. “Wow!”

After a short silence, Neil added, “We need to take this to Jim.” Jim Farley was the publisher. When he listened, it was obvious he was getting a kick out of his newspaper having this tape. “This is great stuff,” he said, “after we listened to it, “but we can’t run it.”

I had halfway expected this response, but I was still disappointed. I supposed I had been hoping that we would run with it without having it thoroughly checked out. It was the right decision…but maybe there was another way to approach it.

“The FBI has a copy of this tape,” I told Jim and Neil, repeating what the woman at the convenience store told me.

“I’m listening,” Jim said.

“I have a source at the FBI. If I can get him to confirm that they are looking at this tape…”

“And you’re sure they have the same tape as the one you have?”

“According to both of the people I talked to.”

“If you can get a confirmation from the FBI that they’re looking into the tape and that it’s the same tape, then we run with it.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Twenty minutes later, I had my confirmation and thus would start a two-year investigation into the Webb City Police Department, one which would put me on the map as a reporter…and start a series of criticisms of my reporting methods that have lasted to this day.

***
The article ran in the Oct. 24, 1990, Carthage Press, under the headline “Tape seems to back up Carterville man’s claim.” Neil Campbell was a cautious editor, sometimes overcautious, and this story was a prime example. In addition to the word “seems” in the headline, Neil packed one “allegedly” after another in the text of the article, under the mistaken impression that the word serves as protection for any libelous items that happen to slip into a newspaper.

The article started, “An audiocassette recording allegedly made at the Webb City Police Department after the arrest of Vince McCarty Oct. 6 appears to back up the Carterville man’s claim that he was brutally beaten by three Webb City officers.” The next paragraph nearly drove me crazy, but I couldn’t talk Neil out of injecting “allegedly” in a spot where it totally distorted the meaning of the words. “A copy of the tape reportedly has been turned over to the FBI which allegedly is investigating the incidents. The Carthage Press obtained another copy.” In other words, my confirmation from an FBI source was not enough to remove allegedly and made it appear as though we were not sure of the FBI’s involvement. Unfortunately for me, my FBI source was willing to verify my information, but there was no way he would allow me to use his name. So I had verification from the people who turned the tape over to the FBI and from the FBI, and a step-by-step verification of each portion of the tape to make sure I had the same one the FBI had, but that was not enough. Still, I was the only one who appeared to be disturbed by the safety precautions. The story still had a powerful impact when it hit the streets in Webb City.

The article continued, “The tape indicates that McCarty, who was arrested by Webb City police on a Jasper County bad check warrant, was beaten after he urinated in an interrogation room and refused to mop it up.

“The tape appears to feature McCarty screaming for the policemen to stop beating him and threats from night shift supervisor Lou Angel to teach him not to do that kind of thing in Webb City.”

During much of the article, I quoted from the police report submitted by reserve officer Bob Hataway, who did not take part in the beating, and who was deeply disturbed by it. Hataway noted that McCarty made two requests to go to the bathroom. I related what the tape revealed about what happened next.

“After another request was made, McCarty can be heard on the tape stating his intention to go ahead and go to the bathroom on the floor.”

In his report, Hataway said he told McCarty not to go to the bathroom on the floor and he would find Sgt. Angel and see if McCarty could be taken to the restroom. Hataway could not find Angel and when Hataway returned to the interrogation room, McCarty was urinating. Hataway told Officer Scott Malone what had happened.

On the tape, Malone can be heard telling McCarty, “You’re going to clean it up or you’re going to have a dent in your head.” The next sound was water running, then Malone said, “Clean it up, boy!”
At that point, the sounds of a struggle could be heard. “Don’t you f--- with me, you hear me” Malone said. After that, the only sounds that can be heard are McCarty screaming for Malone to stop.
Hataway described the situation in his report. “Officer Malone had the mop bucket and mop in the interrogation room and was trying to make Mr. McCarty take hold of the mop, but he refused. Officer Malone then tried to put a control hold on the prisoner. It involved grabbing hold of the prisoner’s two forefingers and applying pressure so as to control the prisoner through pain infliction. It took Officer Malone several attempts, then he finally started escorting Mr. McCarty across the hall to the cell, without resistance.” Hataway said that Malone became violent with McCarty when McCarty tried to avoid going into the cell. Malone went to find Sgt. Angel. Hataway said he asked McCarty to stand back so he could lock the cell door and the prisoner offered no resistance. On the tape, McCarty can be heard saying, “He hit me for no reason. He bloodied my nose for no reason. He had no right to hit me in the nose like that.”

When Malone and Angel return, Malone can be heard telling Angel a different story. “I got him down and I couldn’t handle him by myself. The (expletive deleted) hit me and I didn’t do nothing.”

Angel said, “It’s time we got him out for a little exercise, don’t you think?”

Angel and Officer John Dilliner went into the hallway by the cell and began screaming at McCarty. It was difficult to tell which officer shouted the next sentence, but the words were unmistakable. “You’ve forgotten what’s it like to be here in Webb City.”

Angel shouted at Hataway to get the cell key; Hataway told him it was in a desk drawer. According to Hataway’s report, Angel fetched the key. After the cell was opened, Dilliner repeatedly hit McCarty with his nightstick while Angel shouted at the prisoner and tried to unlock the door, the report said. When Angel and Dilliner finally were able to enter the cell, Angel can be heard saying, “You won’t ever forget what it’s like to be in Webb City.”

Hataway’s report said Dilliner left to get his stun gun. When Dilliner returned, Hataway said, the officer used the stun gun on McCarty twice. Later, Jasper County officers picked up McCarty.

“I left the station in disgust around 5 a.m.,” Hataway wrote. “Bothered by the incident, I could not sleep at all. After witnessing the heinous acts and abuses of power, I decided I could not trust the police department to handle this affair internally. What I saw looked like a scene out of the movies about law enforcement in the ‘50s and ‘60s. This does not happen in modern law enforcement.” Hataway’s resignation was included with the report.

Hataway’s report, and my article, concluded, “I am truly scared for the citizens of Webb City or anyone passing through our city. Anyone caught on the streets after 10 p.m. is not safe with third shift on patrol. Forget the criminal element!
“Beware of the police.”

The Carthage Press account included Dilliner’s written report which claimed that Hataway was a coward and had not helped him, Malone, or Angel. The tape backed Hataway’s version.

***
There was a certain excitement at The Carthage Press when the report broke. It was not often that The Press ran a story of this nature. I could sense that Neil was a little worried that something would go wrong and that the whole story would fall apart on us. And I will be the first to admit, every time I have written an investigative story, I always wonder if there is something I have missed, is there something that would put this whole story in a different light? And worse than that, I always worried about how my stories would affect other people. I did not mind running stories that indicated people had behaved atrociously, but how would those stories affect their families, how would they affect innocent people who had done no harm to anyone? I thought so much about those things, that sometimes I wondered if I was in the wrong business. As it turned out a few years later, my bosses wondered that, too.

We didn’t receive any immediate feedback on the Webb City beating story- no indignant protests from Police Chief Emmett McFarland or any of the officers, no word from the mayor, nothing from the FBI. As much as we did not want to hear anything that would disprove our story, we wanted people to at least notice that we had this big story. The response to the article did not come in the usual fashion…mainly because no one in Webb City had read the story. We did not have a sizable circulation in the town to begin with, having only a few subscribers and leaving papers at racks in two or three convenience stores and at a grocery store.

Clyde Phillips, the Press circulation supervisor, told Neil he had received a complaint from a convenience store owner in Webb City that his customers were upset because there were no newspapers. “He said they were calling right and left,” mainly because word was out that the truth about Vince McCarty’s beating was in The Press. One store owner indicated that the police officers who were named in the article bought all of the papers, and then immediately burned them.

An employee at the Broadway Market told me all of its newspapers had been purchased by one person, but he would not tell me who it was. I called a few minutes later, slightly disguising my voice, had that employee put another one on the line, and the woman, who I had met at a city council meeting, told me that the newspapers were bought by Sgt. Lou Angel.

The next call went to Chief McFarland, “I saw Lou reading The Carthage Press,” McFarland told me before I was able to explain to him why I was calling. McFarland quickly added to his statement, saying he had no knowledge of Angel buying newspapers and destroying them.”

How many of the newspapers reached the reading public, we never knew, but we had no returns from Webb City outlets that day. Every paper was either sold, destroyed, or both.

By this time, Angel, Malone, and Dilliner had been put on desk duty until an internal investigation was completed. No one had expected the investigation to amount to much, and as we quickly discovered we were going to be the only ones pursuing the story. The Joplin Globe by this time had moved Andy Ostmeyer to another beat and his successor did not seem to have much of an interest in the activities of the midnight shift or the plight of Vince McCarty.. The story did not interest the TV stations.
I had a feeling that the beating of Vince McCarty wasn’t the real story. Something much bigger was going on in the Webb City Police Department.

Over the next several months, as I continued to cover the story, I began to develop numerous sources in and around the department and around Webb City’s municipal government. Those sources included police officers. There were a number of good officers in the Webb City department who were not happy that they were painted with the same brush as the renegades who had beaten McCarty. I was able to get officers and former officers to provide information, verify tips, and to point me in the right direction any time I got off track.

My best sources were three members of the Webb City Council, who were highly displeased with the way Mayor Phil Richardson and their fellow council members were handling the police situation. For a long time, the three council members, all women, would not allow me to use their names, but almost two years later, as the situation reached a crisis point, they went on the record, and that enabled me to use much more information that I had but had been unable to use up to that point.

And, as was usually the case during one of my investigations, much of the information came from documents, some from the courts, some from the city.

When the three officers were questioned by members of the Webb City Personnel Administration board, Sgt. Angel said there was no way he could have beaten McCarty.

“If I had beaten him, he would have looked a lot worse,” Angel said.

The three officers’ attorney, Mark Elliston, asked, “Could you have maimed McCarty?”

“Yes, I could have. I could have broken his kneecaps. I could have hit him in the Adam’s apple. I could have poked his eyes out or smashed his ear drums. Apparently, there’s some movements about some moral obligations going around so I purposely avoided any excessive techniques.” Yes, he really did talk like that.

After the three officers testified in the hearing, the audiocassette was played, despite Elliston’s vigorous objections. The Personnel Administration Board voted unanimously to have Chief McFarland fire the three officers. On Nov. 13, 1990, the council upheld that decision. After the meeting, McFarland said, “My boys were crucified. They were guilty until proven innocent.”

Three months after the officers were fired, I confirmed that Angel and Dilliner were still frequent visitors at the police station., stopping by to have coffee and to chat with the chief, and they had never cleared out their lockers. Malone’s locker was also filled with his belongings. The three former officers had never turned in their uniforms and Dilliner had been seen in Webb City wearing his city-issued jacket.

All three still had their badges.

After I passed along that information in a page-one Press article, the lockers were cleaned out and the items returned within two days.

Meanwhile, Vince McCarty, encouraged by the FBI investigation into the violation of his civil rights and the authentication of the audiocassette, prepared to sue the city. The insurance company eventually settled with him, reportedly for $30,000. Angel, Dilliner, and Malone also sued the city and despite the fact that he was working for the mayor and the city council, Chief McFarland stood squarely behind the fired officers.

On April 23, 1991, he told me, “I would love to have them back. They’re three pretty good officers. They’re good officers and we’re shorthanded. It’s hard for us to do the kind of job we should be doing for the people of Webb City if we don’t have the manpower to do it.”

In May 1992, Councilwoman Virginia Holder complained to Mayor Richardson about two posters on the front window at the police station advertising Lou Angel’s karate studio. “Here is a man who is suing the city and we’re advertising his business for him.”

McFarland said he had no choice in the matter. “We will put up any sign. All someone has to do is ask. We’ll put their ad up on our windows. No one’s any better than anyone else. As long as there’s nothing derogatory in the ads, I don’t see anything wrong in putting them up. He came in and asked if he could put it up. We’re not going to treat him any different than anyone else because of the lawsuit.”
Besides, McFarland added, “The law doesn’t allow me to discriminate against anyone.”

***

Between October 1990, and August 1992, The Press ran probably two dozen stories, building on information from nearly a dozen sources I had developed within the city. Many of the best stories came from my interviews with the mayor and Police Chief McFarland.

In late July 1992, I finally hit the jackpot, when city council members turned over a 15-page document entitled “Items for Discussion by the Police, Fire and Ambulance Committee.” The report indicated the police department’s night shift had harassed minorities and teenagers (minority or not), using racial slurs, and administering beatings that put them in hospital emergency rooms. Other accusations leveled against night shift officers included assault, burglary, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and a number of civil rights violations.

My investigation showed that McFarland had ignored warnings about his officers, and continued to praise them as “good officers.”

According to the report, the following complaints had been received about McFarland’s “good officers.”

-The beating of a black man
-The beating of a Webb City teenager, who was choked and warned that if he told anyone, the officer would kill him
-Another Webb City teen who had been sent to a convenience store to buy two loaves of bread and two packs of cigarettes for his mother was stopped by an officer for a traffic violation and was beaten.
-Another midnight shift officer pulled a gun on a Webb City teen and held it to his head. When he was called on it, the officer told the boy’s parents if any complaints were filed, he would say the boy was carrying a concealed weapon. The boy had a butter knife in the glove compartment of his car.
-Two off-duty midnight shift officers pulled a gun on a man in a bar
-One midnight shift officer was at a party where numerous teens were drinking and a half-nude teenage girl was having alcohol poured over her head.
-One officer broke into a vending machine at a convenience store and took items from it.

It probably should not come as a surprise, but the city council members told me that the biggest concern of city officials as they discussed the allegations was not if they were true, but would the city get sued over them?

Some council members were also concerned that the documents would be given to the police and that McFarland or Angel would cause problems for the complainants. After the meeting, Mayor Richardson collected each copy of the complaints, except one, according to those who attended the meeting, then took them and had them shredded. The remaining copy was locked in a safe at City Hall.
Former police officers told me that the city’s Personnel Administration Board had also turned a deaf ear to the complaints.

The Webb City police situation rapidly escalated into what appeared to be a three-way battle between the mayor, the city council, and the police chief. City council members funneled secret documents to me that indicated Chief McFarland was investigated for illegally obtaining machine guns for two of his officers for their private use.

Over a 17-month period, I had approximately two dozen scoops, as the Globe totally ceded the story it originally broke to me. One night at a Webb City Council meeting, as we waited for 6:30 to arrive and the session to begin, a prominent businessman approached the area where I was sitting alongside reporters from the Globe and the Webb City Sentinel. He started jokingly giving the Globe reporter a hard time. “The Carthage Press is really beating you guys on this police story,” he said.

The reporter replied, “We could have had those stories, too, but out editors won’t let us do THAT kind of reporting.”

Why I didn’t say anything, I will never know. A hundred responses popped into my mind after it was too late to make any. The reporter never explained what THAT kind of reporting was. If she was referring to my use of anonymous sources, I really do not know what the Globe’s policy on that was at that time or now, but no story during the two years I wrote about the Webb City police situation was written solely on the word of one anonymous source. I always had the story confirmed by at least one other source and usually two, and most often, I had documents to back up what I wrote.

The sniping from the Globe continued over the next few months, as I heard stories that a couple of Globe reporters were saying that I was making most of the information up. No one else had anything on Chief Emmett McFarland buying machine guns for his officers’ personal use. No one else had the information The Press had run on the beatings of minorities and teenagers and the problems with the midnight shift.

Though the Webb City police investigation was nothing like what Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein ran into as they tried to unravel Watergate, I kept remembering what they had written in All the President’s Men about the reaction from other media when they began writing their Watergate stories. As they continued to file one story after another, other newspapers, for the most part, were not jumping on the bandwagon and some of the Post’s editors wondered if the story was really worth all of the trouble. I had written dozens of stories about the Webb City Police Department, and while the Globe and the Sentinel had featured articles about the firing of the three midnight shift officers, the firing of four other officers who were accused of insubordination by the mayor, and their subsequent appeals to the Personnel Administration Board, nothing was being written about the major violations I had unearthed in my investigation.

I was fortunate to have an editor and a publisher who stood 100 percent behind my reporting. Neil Campbell and Jim Farley backed me every step of the way and never once failed to publish any of the articles.

The sniping from some of the people at Jasper County’s biggest newspaper grew after it was announced that my Webb City investigation was a finalist in the Associated Press Managing Editors national contest. (It lost to the Waco, Texas coverage of the Branch Davidian massacre.) Though no Globe reporter ever said the words (as far as I am aware), the impression was being given that I was either making up the stories or was being used by some disgruntled council members.

And there was enough of an element of truth in what was being said that my reputation suffered. What was not being mentioned, and should have been, is that many of the biggest stories start with people who are unhappy about the way things are going. Do they have an ax to grind? In many cases, yes. Does that place their stories off limits? It shouldn’t. Reporters just have to be careful to make sure their stories are not coated with the same bias that their sources have.

The Press ran a three-part story on Webb City in its Aug. 6-8, 1992 editions, including much new information that I had only uncovered in the three weeks prior to the series. Much of that came from the three council members who resigned to protest what they considered to be the mayor’s failure to deal with the police problem. The series sold well in Webb City, but nothing happened because of it, as far as I could tell. Six weeks passed without any developments and because of that, it was much easier for The Press’ competitors to say that I had blown the story totally out of proportion.

And then the trial was held for the lawsuit filed by four of the fired police officers and I had an experience not many reporters ever get to have. I watched as one witness after another testified that the information in the stories I had written was completely accurate. And even though The Carthage Press was not mentioned (and did not need to be) the information that had been running in its pages for months was on all three local television stations both nights during the two-day trial and featured prominently in the Joplin Globe on each of the following mornings.

In my article in the Sept. 22, 1992, Press, I wrote, “In his opening statement, Michael Jerde, a Kansas City attorney, said the officers had been called into (Mayor) Richardson’s office July 11, 1991, to give information about McFarland…primarily his purchase of machine guns for the private use of two officers.” That statement verified the information that had been included in the Aug. 8, 1992, Press.
The article continued, “Jerde said it would have been illegal for the two officers, Lou Angel and Galen Barlow, to have owned the guns. ‘It would have been a criminal offense. They wanted them and the chief said I’ll buy them for you.’ “

But the information included in the trial was not limited to the machine gun purchases. For the first time in any other source besides The Carthage Press, readers and viewers found out about “Items for Discussion by the Police, Fire, and Ambulance Committee.”

The information, a list of complaints, including some of brutality against the midnight shift officers, had been provided to the full City Council and to the Personnel Administration Board, but a full investigation into its contents had been delayed by other, more pressing matters- the beating of Vince McCarty and the police chief’s purchase of the machine guns, Jerde said. Every statement made by Jerde, representing officers Larry Stapleton, Jaryl “Joe” Beckett, Mark Wall, and Michael Malone, was backed up by the testimony offered during the two-day trial.

Not surprisingly, I never heard any apologies for all of the aspersions that had been cast on my reporting abilities and on my journalistic ethics. The other representatives of the media acted as if this story had not existed until it was spoken in that Joplin courtroom.

And I didn’t care a bit. It wasn’t my story when Andy Ostmeyer broke the news of Vince McCarty’s beating nearly two years earlier, but it was mine now and there was no doubt about it.

What came of the situation? Though Emmett McFarland remained as police chief for a few more years, the problems in the Webb City Police Department eventually faded away, the department’s stature grew and with the appointment of Don Richardson as police chief following McFarland’s retirement, the department’s operation became crisp and professional.

The three officers who participated in the beating of Vince McCarty, were removed from Webb City, and as far as I can tell, are no longer in law enforcement.

And to this day, I have no idea who taped the beating in the Webb City Jail.

***

 I should mention something that I did not print in that 2007 book- the Joplin Globe reporter who replaced Andy Ostmeyer on the Webb City beat and who criticized my ethics and my methods of reporting is now the editor of the Joplin Globe Carol Stark.