Williams' saga comes out in dribs and drabs

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By MARY JO MELONE

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 5, 2000

Trying all these months to get the straight story from St. Petersburg officials about the investigation of police Lt. Donnie Williams has been more painful than going to the dentist.

All along, when reporters for the Times asked to see the records of what was done to get to the bottom of allegations that Williams was at the very least acting like a middleman in some small cocaine deals, we were told that -- even if records existed -- they couldn't be made public. To do so, officials said in the most serious tones, would be to reveal information in a much larger and continuing federal investigation into drug dealing in St. Petersburg.

Now, reporters are citizens. I don't want dope dealers crawling the streets any more than you do. So the city's answer that to make public documents of Williams' case could hurt a bigger investigation ought to end matters. Except it's bunk.

It's like the dentist saying that when he extracts the one tooth that's hurting you, the other 31 in your mouth will also have to come out.

Last Thursday and Friday, the ex-cop who lost his job for publicly complaining about the way the charges against Williams were handled pleaded to get his job back. Ray Craig's firing was the subject of an arbitration hearing. A decision in the case is not expected for months.

Witnesses at the hearing -- undercover local and federal investigators whom the Times has agreed not to identify in order to protect them -- made remarkable statements.

A senior DEA agent who worked on the federal drug investigation until last June testified that Williams was never a subject of the federal inquiry. The allegations made against him by a confidential informant weren't serious and detailed enough, he said, to warrant federal investigators spending time on them.

This is the fundamental contradiction: Either Williams was included in the federal investigation, or he wasn't. It can't be both.

A city detective who has been on the federal case all along, and who did direct some city detectives to investigate Williams, said the federal inquiry involves nine named targets. Lesser allegations were made against 75 other people, including Williams.

What linked Williams to the bigger case, the investigators said, was the location where the informant said he saw Williams accepting small baggies of white powder, and his relationship to one of the targets.

We have waited for months for details like this -- details that flesh out, just a bit more, the disturbing scenario allegedly involving Williams.

Ray Craig was part of the investigation into Williams from July through October 1998, when he quit the vice squad partly in disgust over how the matter was handled. The squad's investigation of Williams continued until at least April 1999.

Chief Goliath Davis later said the allegations were rumor and innuendo, but in April, plans were made to have an undercover officer and a confidential informant meet with Williams.

Just about then, word got out that Ray Craig was complaining about the Williams investigation. Out of fear for the safety of undercover officers, the meeting with Williams was called off.

Nobody was asked during the arbitration if the meeting was ever rescheduled.

Nobody was asked what happened in the five months between last April and last September to make Williams promotable. While Ray Craig lost his job, Williams moved from sergeant to lieutenant.

All this should trouble anybody who wonders about the integrity of law enforcement in St. Petersburg. For months the city refused to admit whether it had records of its investigation into Williams. Then, when he was put under oath two weeks ago, Chief Davis, said, yes, such records existed.

Those are the records we still can't get, the records that are the subject of a lawsuit under the Florida public records law. Those are the records that bear some similarity to that sore tooth, the only tooth the doctor has to pull.

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