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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowCriminal charges won’t be pursued against a former South Bend police chief in a case of wiretapping within the police department, a special prosecutor ruled.
Former Vanderburgh County prosecutor Stanley Levco said in a Wednesday report that criminal charges won’t be filed against former chief Darryl Boykins or others in the case. Among factors cited by Levco were that federal prosecutors declined prosecution in 2012, the age of the case and that a civil lawsuit was filed and settled.
“If I thought the U.S. Attorney was wrong and they made a mistake, I would have filed them,” Levco said in an interview with WSBT-TV. “But I didn't feel that. I felt they made their decision legitimately and for legitimate reasons.”
Levco was appointed to the case after a complaint was filed by a police officer who was among several whose phone conversations were recorded. The complaint accused Boykins and others of violating the Indiana Wiretap Act.
The complaint was filed shortly after a federal judge ruled in January that the department violated the law by continuing the recordings after learning in early 2011 that a captain’s phone line was inadvertently tapped. But the judge said recordings from on or before Feb. 4, 2011, weren’t illegal because no one meant to record the line.
Boykins was demoted in 2012.
South Bend has spent more than $1.6 million on attorney fees and settlements in the case.
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