I-Team: Mystery claims police chief's job

AUGUSTA, Ky. - Greg Cummins patrolled the streets of this small city along the Ohio River for more than three decades.

Now he's taking the city itself to court.

Cummins is suing Augusta and Mayor John Laycock, claiming he was fired for insisting one of his own officers be investigated and suspended. We have only the former police chief's side of the story because everyone on the other side has refused to talk with us, even off the record.

Lawyers hired by the city have told Mayor Laycock and the officer in question not to answer our questions. For the most part, that's all we're left with: Questions.

Cummins started with the Augusta Police Department in 1978. He served under another Chief Cummins; his older brother. When Phil Cummins retired in 1994, Greg took his place.

Augusta has a population of 1,200 and the entire police department consists of just three officers, including the chief. Cummins says he remembers seeing a young George Clooney while on patrol here, and he was a cop when Mayor Laycock was a teenager in town.

That teenager became his boss, and ultimately ended Cummins' career.

Cummins says the trouble started when Augusta hired officer Kelly Baxter, a retired lieutenant from the larger city of Maysville, to work under the chief as a patrolman.

The former chief says he discovered his new officer was investigating him. Cummins gave us an affidavit he says he got from a burglary suspect, Stefanie Habermehl. She allegedly told the then-chief that officer Baxter offered to lose her confession if she would say Cummins sold marijuana or helped drug dealers.

For page one of Habermehl's statement, visit http://media2.wcpo.com/pdfs/Stephanie1.pdf. For page two, visit http://media2.wcpo.com/pdfs/Stephanie2.pdf

Cummins says Officer Baxter was, "trying to get her to say that I was a drug dealer, and that I was taking payments from drug dealers."

The statement Cummins gave us quotes Habermehl as saying, "if Greg was actually doing anything like that I would know because of all the drugs I was doing and all the people I was hanging out with."

Habermehl is currently serving nine years in state prison for unrelated crimes. She refused our request for an interview.

Another affidavit Cummins says he obtained from a different suspect says Officer Baxter offered the man help if he would say the police chief sold marijuana and cocaine.

Cummins calls the suggestion he's involved in the Augusta drug trade preposterous.

"If I had been doing anything remotely like that, I couldn't have survived as a police officer for as long as I have," Cummins said.

Augusta has seen major drug cases before, but federal investigators made the biggest arrest of all. The town's only family doctor was running a multi-state pill mill. For months in 2007, agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency watched the office of Dr. Milton Brindley before raiding the doctor's office. Doctor Brindley is now in federal prison.

The doctor's office was right across the street from the police department.

Chief Cummins says there were rumors of the doctor writing prescriptions, but his tiny department could do little to investigate because he didn't have a single detective. The DEA said the police department and its chief had nothing to do with the case.

One night while checking the patrol cars, the former chief says he found paperwork hidden in a trunk. He says there were reports and other paperwork taken from his file cabinet, along with Habermehl's confession to the burglary.

Cummins suspected Officer Baxter, even though the reports were allegedly found in the trunk of another officer's cruiser.

"He told her, 'I'm going to lose that statement you gave me,'" said Cummins, claiming this was the fruit of a deal between Officer Baxter and Habermehl, the burglary suspect. "You can't tell anyone that you were in the police station, and your statement will go away. And essentially it had."

By all accounts, Chief Cummins contacted outside authorities, asking them to investigate Officer Baxter for theft, official misconduct and tampering with evidence. In court documents, both sides stipulate that the commonwealth attorney dropped the case after finding "no evidence of criminal action."

Cummins was not satisfied, and he contacted a circuit court judge asking that a grand jury to hear the case. Those efforts went nowhere.

Chief Cummins tried to suspend Officer Baxter, but he says Mayor Laycock over-ruled that suspension.

Mayor Laycock then issued an order, according to the former chief, commanding him to stop investigating any and all employees of the city of Augusta.

"I would obey his orders, but I felt they were wrong; that he as the mayor did not have the authority to tell a police officer he can't investigate a crime," Cummins said.

On Dec. 7, 2011, the mayor fired the veteran police chief. Augusta is one of a handful of municipalities without a police pension, so Cummins receives no retirement pay.

Officer Kelly Baxter has been promoted to interim police chief.

It's important to point out that no one has been charged with a crime, and we could find no evidence of an ongoing criminal investigation involving anyone in this story.

Cummins is suing on several counts, including a claim that he is a whistle blower and is therefore covered under Kentucky's whistle blower protection law. The city's motion to dismiss the lawsuit insists the commonwealth's whistle blower law applies only to the state and county governments, not municipalities. To read the motion to dismiss, visit http://media2.wcpo.com/pdfs/MotiontoDismiss.pdf.

We tried to talk with Interim Police Chief Kelly Baxter. He was told not to attend the city council meeting when our cameras were there, and when we staked out the police department before his shift, he answered our questions with "no comment."

The city's law firm is arguing there was no crime for Chief Cummins or anyone else to investigate. "Although Cummins may have been dissatisfied," the motion to dismiss argues, "Mayor Laycock is not required to second-guess the Commonwealth's Attorney."

A circuit court judge is scheduled to hear arguments on the city's motion on Thursday.

To read the full lawsuit of Cummins vs. The City of Augusta and Mayor Laycock, visit http://media2.wcpo.com/pdfs/lawsuit.pdf.