Horry SC police mistreated, retaliated against disabled former officer, lawsuit claims
A former Horry County Police sergeant is claiming he faced discrimination from the department due to a disability and was retaliated against for pointing out misconduct by others.
Jack Johnson, who had worked for HCPD since 2004, filed the discrimination lawsuit last week against the department, alleging the mistreatment led to him leaving his post last year.
The former officer, who served in the Army during the Gulf War, has Post-traumatic stress disorder, a traumatic brain injury and a glass eye, according to the complaint. He lost his left eye in 1995 after getting kicked in the head during a rodeo, the suit states.
Promoted to police sergeant in 2018, Johnson alleges he was targeted for his disabilities, which the department viewed as a liability, and faced harsher discipline than others, including a demotion in May 2021. That demotion was reportedly related to harassment, but no explanation was provided, according to the suit.
The department has not responded to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Johnson is now the fifth officer, either active or former, since 2018 to sue HCPD for employee discrimination.
Three of the previous employee discrimination lawsuits were dismissed, while one resulted in a settlement before reaching trial. Horry County paid Officer Jodi Ridgeway about $65,000 in losses and expenses to settle allegations she was being denied promotions due to discrimination, according to records with the S.C. Insurance Reserve Fund, which funds the county’s lawsuit settlements.
Pattern of retaliation, ignoring misconduct
Most of the complaints include allegations that misconduct by other officers is being ignored, while they face retaliation for identifying it.
Johnson noticed other officers ignoring pending dispatch calls because they were eating together or more officers were responding to a single call than necessary, the complaint states, while others were inappropriately berating suspects.
“... (W)hen responding to calls, the officers were quick to draw their weapons and curse at suspects,” the lawsuit reads. “... (The officer) would tell people if he was going to blow their heads off, I tried to tell him that that did not look good, it would be better to change his verbiage to, don’t make me shoot you.”
Whenever Johnson brought these issues to his superiors, he was ignored or the issue was not actually investigated, he alleged.
In a previous lawsuit, former Officer Raul Denis alleged he was told by superiors to forget a pair of improper uses of force he witnessed and to stop documenting when other officers failed to appear in court or complete case files on time because it “made the department look bad.”
North Charleston attorney Bonnie Travaglio Hunt has represented four of the five officers, including Johnson and Denis. She agreed that issues with HCPD ignoring reported employee misconduct appeared to be a theme among her clients, but she couldn’t speak about the department as a whole.
Hunt noted she’s a major supporter of police, but there are sometimes a few bad actors within departments that can lead to issues.
Complaints against officers are typically investigated by the department’s Office of Professional Standards, often referred to as internal affairs. Previous reporting has shown that the unit has faced a lot of turnover, and one internal affairs officer alleged in a 2017 lawsuit that he had sought a transfer because then-Chief Saundra Rhodes was ignoring findings of misconduct by officers.
HCPD did not respond to a request for information about the current state of the internal affairs unit. The Sun News filed a Freedom of Information Act request Thursday seeking staff lists, policies and complaints submitted to the Office of Professional Standards.
This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
