Former Detroit cop accused of preying on women has checkered past

Gina Kaufman | Detroit Free Press

Chancellor Searcy’s policing career had already been controversial by the time prosecutors charged him this summer with demanding phone numbers from women to avoid traffic tickets.

Searcy, who resigned from the Detroit Police Department in July, is facing misconduct in office charges — and the possibility of never again wearing a badge in another city. If convicted, he would join the small number of officers across Michigan to have their law enforcement licenses revoked.

An investigation by the Free Press, which has been examining police misconduct issues in an ongoing series of stories since 2017, showed Michigan is lax compared with other states when it comes to holding officers accountable for misconduct and questionable behavior. In Michigan, an officer's license is yanked when they are convicted of a felony or, in a recent addition to state law, a handful of misdemeanor charges. Other states are more aggressive.

A review of meeting minutes for the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards found that, as of June, 144 officers have had their licenses revoked since 2007. In Michigan, where there are about 19,000 officers, it is nearly impossible to determine how many have committed other types of serious misconduct because no agency collects that information.

Like other officers the newspaper has reported on around the state, Searcy's most recent problem isn't his first.

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Searcy was charged criminally in 2015, accused of wrongfully seizing money and, in one case, fabricating the circumstances of an arrest. Searcy was acquitted, though, and went back to work as a Detroit Police officer.

While that episode garnered headlines, the Free Press has learned that Searcy also faced troubles in 2010 after a woman claimed he threatened to shoot her during a road rage incident. Prosecutors declined to charge Searcy in that case because there was “insufficient evidence,” but Detroit’s top cop recently said that Searcy’s past causes him concern.

“Given his history,” Detroit Police Chief James Craig said, “I am pleased that he is no longer a member of this department."

Searcy faces trial on his current case early next year.

Todd Perkins, his attorney, declined to comment on the pending criminal case, as well as the 2010 incident, saying he doesn’t know the circumstances surrounding that case. Perkins also said Searcy would not make any comments, “on the advice of counsel.”

Craig said Searcy’s resignation is noted as having been “under charges” — meaning if he tried to get another policing job, the circumstances of his departure should be clear to agencies conducting a background check. In its investigation, the Free Press found previous examples of officers job-hopping from one town to another, regardless of past transgressions. Though background checks are routinely conducted, the newspaper found that some departments decided to overlook histories of problems.

In 2017, legislation was passed in an effort to prevent misconduct from being hidden by officers' resignations. It, in part, requires that police departments keep records about the circumstances of an officer's departure from the agency.

Searcy, 33, who started working for Detroit Police in 2008, found himself under investigation by internal affairs following an alleged off-duty road rage incident in 2010.

According to a warrant request submitted to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and obtained by the Free Press through a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request, a woman was driving in Detroit in June 2010 with her three friends and 2-year-old daughter when she saw Searcy standing in the street and honked her horn to get him out of the way. She said he got into a vehicle, followed her, then pulled up alongside and said: “I’ll shoot you (expletives).”

The woman then drove “at a high rate of speed” to the Highland Park police station, where she banged on the door and told officers that Searcy, who was sitting in his vehicle in the parking lot, had threatened to shoot her and her passengers, according to the request.

Police saw a handgun between the armrest and driver’s seat in Searcy’s car. As he was being taken into custody, Searcy initially refused to put his hands on his head, asking the officers what probable cause they had and “why are you felonious assaulting me?” according to the warrant request.

Searcy refused to answer any questions or provide a statement to the Detroit Police internal affairs sergeant in charge of the investigation, the request says. The prosecutor’s office declined to charge him.

When asked recently how the prosecutor's office made its determination, a spokeswoman wrote that the office “looked at the facts and evidence in the case and determined that there was insufficient evidence to bring a criminal charge in the matter.” She did not elaborate.

Detroit Police officials recommended Searcy serve a 20-day suspension for the incident — but that recommendation wasn’t made until four years later, in 2014.

Craig, who came to the department as chief in 2013, dismissed the case. He said recently that four years is an “excessive” amount of time to have elapsed. Craig said he has issued a rule in the department that misconduct investigations typically need to be adjudicated within one year.

He said the department had lost cases with similarly long delays that ended up in arbitration and that was a concern.

“I think part of the problem in this case was that it wasn’t adjudicated. It took four years,” Craig said. When the 20-day suspension was recommended, “I said, ‘Well the case is four years old, what have we done with it for four years but just put it in a desk?’ That’s a glaring example of some of the things we found that was broken in our system and one of the primary reasons, I think, that the arbitrator was dismissing these cases.”

That same year, in 2014, Searcy and his partner in the tactical response unit were suspended while being investigated for alleged misconduct, according to a 2015 Free Press article. The officers were accused of wrongly confiscating money from a man they arrested and fabricating the circumstances of another arrest.

The officers were charged criminally in 2015 with several counts, including misconduct in office, embezzlement, larceny and false report of a felony. Searcy was also charged in two additional cases, also involving the seizing of money from people who had been stopped.

The then-president of the Detroit Police Officers Association told the Free Press at the time that Searcy and his partner were “two solid police officers with one goal, and that is to protect our citizens.”

Both officers were acquitted by a jury.

But when Searcy returned to work in 2017, he was given a lower-profile assignment in communications, Craig said.

Then came the latest criminal allegations.

Prosecutors said that during two separate incidents in summer 2018, Searcy pulled women over and demanded their phone numbers to avoid a ticket from him.

Both women testified during Searcy's preliminary examination that Searcy — wearing a uniform and driving a patrol car — stopped them in downtown Detroit. They said Searcy told them to provide their phone numbers, which he had them recite.

A sergeant with internal affairs testified that Searcy had been doing work at the time through the Detroit Police Department's secondary employment program, which allows businesses or organizations to hire off-duty officers. Perkins, Searcy's attorney, said his client had been working secondary assignments on the dates of the alleged incidents.

According to a transcript of the preliminary exam, Detroit Police Sgt. Kenneth Butler testified that, even while on a secondary assignment, an officer has the authority to "make arrests, issue tickets, conduct traffic stops" in uniform and in a police vehicle.

One woman, pulled over in July 2018, testified that Searcy's instruction to provide her number felt "like a demand." Afterward, she said Searcy called and texted, at one point asking in a message whether she had received a ticket in the mail. The woman testified she then filed a complaint with the police department, "because I felt like he was trying to scare me into responding."

The other woman, who was stopped in August 2018, testified that Searcy told her she made an illegal turn and said her license had been suspended, though she disputed both claims and testified she had just renewed her license.

The woman testified Searcy told her he could take her to jail over the suspended license, give her a ticket and impound the car. She said Searcy told her he could "make all of this go away" if she gave him her number. After she did, the woman testified, Searcy cautioned that he still her information, saying: "This better be the right number," according to the transcript.

Asked about not giving Searcy a fake number instead, the woman testified: "Of course I didn't. He's a police officer and he definitely would verify it and if he wanted to do anything to me, with all my information he already had, he could have."

She said Searcy called and texted her, too, but she eventually told him she was uncomfortable with the contact and reported the issue to a friend, whose brother works for Detroit Police.

Searcy, the woman testified, later apologized.

Searcy is charged with two counts of misconduct in office. His trial is scheduled to start March 2.

Though Searcy resigned on his own, Craig said he would have been let go anyway.

"He resigned," Craig said, "before I could fire him."

Gina Kaufman is a member of the Free Press Investigations Team specializing in criminal justice issues. Contact her at 313-223-4526 or gkaufman@freepress.com. To read more about police misconduct or other Free Press investigations, visit www.freep.com/news/investigations.