Sheriff Crenshaw and Captain Dixon of Oconee County, SC are hiding from accountability

https://youtu.be/CFW8Z4rvKEg?si=FdcGyYHkqdnvAW_i

On March 14th, my fiancé, Dorothy Pierce, had nine hearings in the 10th Circuit Court of South Carolina. The hearings were separated into a morning and afternoon docket. A few years back, after being failed by an attorney, Mrs. Pierce decided to represent herself in court. As the stakes of her situation in Oconee County became higher, she found herself filing lawsuits against an electrical company, the Seneca Police Department, two local entrenched lawyers, and the Seneca Journal Newspaper. A lot was happening in the courts on March 14, and the pressure was on Mrs. Pierce.

Mrs. Pierce was alone in court all morning. She came home for lunch, so I ran out to buy food from Los Amigos. When I returned, I pulled up to the gate and got out of my truck to unlock and open it. While I was out of my car, a small grey SUV rolled slowly over the hill, looking like it was going to stop before reaching the back of my truck. I walked back to introduce myself.

I found a heavy-set man with a white goatee and white hair in the driver's seat and a lanky, slightly younger-looking man in the passenger seat. The driver was wearing an Oconee County Sheriff’s Department polo shirt, and the other was in uniform. The driver introduced himself as Jimmy Dixon. Dixon informed me that someone reported that Mrs. Pierce’s child had not been seen for a few weeks. This is an odd thing to hear. We don’t keep the kind of schedule that could leave anyone expecting to see our baby. He does not go to daycare or anything of the sort, and we don’t keep any regular schedule outside of the house with the baby. We raise him in and around the house. Where he plays outside is not visible to the neighbors. I found this statement that our child had not been seen in weeks suspicious, especially with Mrs. Pierce home on a break from court, with important hearings against powerful local men pending for the afternoon.

I informed Dixon that he would not be coming onto the property without a search warrant. He agreed. I then proposed that I could bring the child to the Sheriff’s department for verification that all is well. He said that would not be necessary, and the tone got more awkward. I asked how the complaint came in. Dixon said he did not know. He said that three days prior, Mike Crenshaw had called him with a message that he needed to check on Mrs. Pierce’s baby because he “had not been seen for three weeks.” The official story is that Crenshaw, the Sheriff himself, received a report that our baby had not been seen for three weeks. Jimmy then waits three days, comes to our house, meets me at the gate, and decides that without seeing the baby, all is well, and the investigation is over.

I was not buying into this program. Fortunately, I had a friend at the house when this all went down. I put on my navy suit and headed out to afternoon court with Mrs. Pierce. Getting out of the house became hectic due to conversations about Dixon, yet we made it to afternoon court on time without incident on the road. In the courtroom, at the table on the defendant’s side, there were seven established lawyers, several of them veterans in the courtroom. They brought extra chairs. On the plaintiff’s side, Mrs. Pierce sits alone, acting pro se. If there was ever a modern-day courtroom rendition of David and Goliath, this was it.

The preparation Mrs. Pierce put into the written documents over the previous weeks was essential for Judge McIntosh to have any bearings. These are involved cases with contested facts and a plethora of misinformation. Mrs. Pierce’s time to prepare for afternoon court got cut short by conversations about why the police were at our house claiming our child was missing. The cohort of lawyers clearly dominated in the war of courtroom procedure, and if they only had facts on their side, they could have made a stand. It seems to me that neither the judge nor the defense counsel understood the entirety of the case or the relevant law. Mrs. Pierce held her own after being set up to fail with nine hearings in one day and a distraction by police at the house while prepping for afternoon hearings.

After the day’s hearings, still dressed for court, we went to the Oconee County Sheriff’s office around 4 pm. I asked to speak with Jimmy Dixon and was told he was not available. I requested to file a FOIA form for Jimmy Dixon's visit to our residence. The front desk officer said that it was not Jimmy Dixon at our house because he was not working. I found this odd. I googled Dixon and found a picture of him on the department website, verifying it was in fact him at our house earlier that day. I filed a FOIA form requesting all records and recordings of Jimmy Dixon in the driveway.

I called dispatch, and they also verified it could not have been Jimmy Dixon at our house. The next day, I got Dixon on the phone. He confirmed the events of the previous day as I recalled them. He confirmed that Crenshaw had informed him on Monday, March 11, of a call from an anonymous source saying Mrs. Pierce’s child had not been seen for three weeks. When I requested a full police report, the tone became contentious. I continued to state that I want a full police report, including the chain of events that led to the arrival at our residence. I asked if he was on duty when we met, and he said he was. Dixon stated that he had been nice to this point, and he did not need to be. Mrs. Pierce took the phone and calmed him down. I filed an additional FOIA request for all the calls to and from my phone on and after March 14.

After about a week, I received a call from OCSD to pick up the FOIA requests. I found that OCSD did not report any calls to or from my phone regarding these dates when there were five calls, including three outgoing and two incoming. One of the outgoing calls had the dispatcher telling me Jimmy Dixon was not on duty on March 14. One return call was Dixon calling me back. Sheriff Mike Crenshaw also called me back. Crenshaw was polite when we spoke. His story was that he received an anonymous call from a man directly to his cell phone, so there would be no record of anyone calling dispatch and no traceable notes or calls for service. Crenshaw claims he simply took the call from the anonymous man to his direct line with no assistance from dispatch and then called Dixon on his cell phone. He noted it was a man’s voice.

On March 29, I audio recorded myself in the OCSD lobbies, requesting to speak with, and then speaking with, Captain Jimmy Dixon. I requested a police report that included all events from March 14, including an account of how the initial complaint was received. He was reluctant at first to produce a report. I clearly stated I am not accusing him of any wrongdoing; in fact, my concern is that whoever called Crenshaw was using the Sheriff’s office as a weapon against Mrs. Pierce. With mild insistence, he agreed to produce the report and said I could get it next week. It was a Friday afternoon. He left the conversation assuring me he had nothing to hide. I reassured him that I also had nothing to hide.

On April 5th, I brought prepared and descriptive officer complaint forms to the OCSD for Sheriff Mike Crenshaw and Captain Jimmy Dixon. I asked for the police report I had requested, and which authority figure I could speak with. These conversations are audio recorded. The front desk officer said the investigator's office was holding the report and that I could speak with Chief Davis. Upstairs I went. I retrieved the police report from the investigator’s office and crossed the upstairs lobby to request to the administrative clerk that I would like to speak with Chief Davis.

While speaking with the clerk at the administration desk, I realized the date on the police report was not correct. This report said on about March 13, Dixon and Investigator Berry Owens met me in our driveway. The day we met was exactly March 14. In the conversation with Davis, I spent some time simply describing how I feel we got into this mess. Challenges between our family and the OCSD have been going on for years. He listened. I requested several things, including full transparency regarding the events of March 14, a written report of how the complaint call was received, and a correction to the police report to change the date to March 14. He accepted all these requests.

On April 8th, I returned and spoke with Investigator Owens. Again, I took some time to explain where, over the years, I feel the misunderstanding came from between our family and the OCSD. This was a pleasant conversation. Owens even muted calls and went out of his way to remain focused. Near the end of the conversation, about three minutes before the end of the recording, I asked Owens to change the date on the police report. He was in the passenger seat of the unmarked cruiser at my house, and this police report is incomplete and inaccurate. Owens shrugged off the request.

I asked him again to change the date on the police report to the correct date. He asked why, and I informed him it was relevant to Mrs. Pierce not being prepared for court in the afternoon. He said he could make the report say between certain dates, and I insisted that it be the correct date. He said it was so long ago he could not know the date for sure. I offered to download the GPS tracking on my phone and share text history showing that in the surrounding days, around lunchtime, I was not near Seneca. Owens stated that evidence is my side of the story.

The more I insisted that he use the correct date in the report, the more frustrated he got. When I told him I was aware that Dixon was not on duty on March 14, Owens got angry and escorted me to the lower-level lobby via the elevator. The audio recording from the time he becomes upset until he finishes escorting me to the downstairs lobby is telling.

Some officers use the argument that if a person has nothing to hide, they should be willing to be interrogated and searched. This is inappropriate behavior for any officer of the law, for as American citizens, our rights are what make us free. When an officer takes an oath to the Constitution and signs on the line to become a public servant, the rules are not the same. Officers are required to be transparent and accountable in their roles as public servants. It is clear that Dixon and Owens are hiding from something, and they are under moral and legal obligation to be transparent.

On June 12, I put in a set of FOIA requests regarding a separate incident and a FOIA request for the complaint history of Jimmy Dixon and Mike Crenshaw. My concern is that the complaints were never properly addressed or put on record. I question if the vague police report with the incorrect date is properly recorded on the record.

On about July 22, I went to retrieve the FOIA documents. At this point, I had served 30 days in the Oconee County Detention Center over contempt of the Oconee probate court. Judge Singleton and I had a misunderstanding about the First Amendment and more. This dispute will take some time to play out in the courts.

While incarcerated, I received a letter from the OCSD stating they received my FOIA requests. I could only see the letter on the inmate mail kiosk; I do not have a record of it with me now. When I requested my FOIA documents, the front desk officer said that because all the requests were regarding the same set of issues, I should call Jimmy Watt, the public information officer, to receive the documents directly from him.

I called dispatch and asked to speak with Watt. I was sent to his voicemail and left a polite message requesting that he call me with some urgency so that I could receive my documents. After not hearing from him, I called dispatch again and left a message with dispatch. Without any communication from the OCSD, I returned to the OCSD, and the front desk officer now said she had my documents. I paid the $50. The documents were far from complete. Calls to dispatch were, again, missing from the call records. The complaint histories of the four officers were not included. I called and left another message with dispatch and Watts.

To date, August 6, 2024, I have not received a police report with the correct date or any clarification about why it took three days to investigate a report of a potentially missing child, why Dixon did not want to see the child to verify his well-being, who made the original call to have the whereabouts of the child investigated, or what Dixon was or was not supposed to be doing. These are simple questions to answer if there is nothing to hide, as Jimmy Dixon proclaimed on March 29. I have not heard back from Watts.

On August 6 I emailed the above article, requesting comment, to Sheriff Mike Crenshaw, Captain Jimmy Dixon, Investigator Berry Owens, Public Information Officer Jimmy Watts and the entire Oconee County Council. I did not receive any replies to this email as of end of business today, August 8. I called each of the county council members as well, leaving messages when possible. John Elliot answered his phone and we had a good conversation. He said he had been reading the emails over the last year and was advised not to comment on legal issues. I expressed my concern that the elected officials are not standing up for the rights of the constituency and that is more important than avoiding lawsuits. I am hopeful to have a strong working relationship with Oconee County Council moving forward.