2006 Award Winner
Charleston's 'Tarnished Badges' Wins First Taylor-Tomlin Award

By Doug Fisher

The story could have been told in a few paragraphs and then slipped into history, lost in the daily newspaper crush. A Port of Charleston policeman had pulled his gun on a longshoreman during an argument on the docks.

No one was hurt, but Ron Menchaca and Glenn Smith of The Post and Courier kept asking: What was this officer's record? Why was he hired when his temper had surfaced in earlier police jobs? Who tracked potentially dangerous officers? Was this a problem statewide?

After nearly a year of reporting and court battles, "Tarnished Badges" detailed failure in a system that should keep dangerous officers from flitting among police jobs. And the three-day series is the first winner of the Taylor-Tomlin Award for Investigative Journalism given by the USC School of Journalism and Mass Communications in cooperation with the South Carolina Press Association.

"The accolades are great, but the biggest thing is that it actually did something. It actually changed policy and is still hopefully changing policy for the better," Menchaca said.

The $5,000 Taylor-Tomlin prize "is special because it comes from within journalism, but it also comes from outside journalism," he said.

Columbia businessmen Donald R. Tomlin Jr. and Joe E. Taylor Jr., now state commerce secretary, proposed the award after Tomlin read what he thought was a particularly effective piece of local journalism and wanted to recognize such work.

"I am particularly delighted that they picked a winner that, in fact, has caused change," Tomlin said. "When you find people who go the extra mile in asking perceptive questions and they do the research to ask perceptive questions, that's what this was designed to reward."

The goal is "more probing and effective journalism that has meaning in the communities newspapers serve," said Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Science. The series "did just that to produce changes in the way law enforcement serves those communities."

As The Post and Courier Executive Editor Bill Hawkins wrote in his nominating letter, the March 2005 series "detailed how governmental failings and a 'code of silence' routinely enabled problem officers in South Carolina to cover their tracks and keep their badges."

After "Tarnished Badges," Gov. Mark Sanford appointed a task force that has recommended changes in how the state tracks troubled officers, and the Legislature approved $500,000 to restore psychological screening. Four officers have been banned from law enforcement, and five left their jobs voluntarily, Hawkins wrote.

Selected from among eight entries, The Post and Courier series "symbolized the kind of hard-hitting, probing, investigative journalism this prize seeks to recognize," said the school's director, Dr. Shirley Staples Carter. "The school is very pleased to be a part of a tradition that strengthens ties between academia and industry and improves communities and lives through good journalism."

Smith said the award shows investigative journalism is a worthy investment.

"These kinds of projects are challenging and time consuming, but they're also reason we got into this business," he said.

John Shurr, the Associated Press bureau chief in Columbia; Henry Schulte, a longtime editor and former USC professor; and Mitch Weiss, a Pulitzer Prize winner and deputy business editor at The Charlotte Observer, judged the award.

"There's always a tendency with these kinds of stories to go overboard," Weiss said. "They didn't. It was stark."

The incident on the docks happened on a weekend, and "I was scrambling on a Monday, already upset that I was a day late," Menchaca said. He wrote some daily stories, but the questions – and the tips about other troubled officers – were compelling.

Menchaca, a special projects reporter, teamed with Smith, a police beat reporter, to pore through documents and make call after call just to discover the state Criminal Justice Academy was in charge of tracking troubled cops.

"They were just kind of this forgotten corner of state government," Menchaca said. "Yet you could argue they had one of the most important jobs in state government."

But many local agencies didn't tell the academy – or other departments – when officers left under a cloud. The Post and Courier successfully sued to force some departments to open personnel records.

"It continues to be difficult" with some of them, Smith said.

The Taylor-Tomlin Award "confirms what works," Menchaca said – dogged, grinding pursuit that sometimes had editors wondering whether the reporting would ever be done.

"It's getting more difficult for daily newspapers to do this type of thing," Schulte said. The Project for Excellence in Journalism says more media are covering fewer stories, with the result that investigative projects can get shut out.

But of the prize money, Schulte said: "That's a lot of dough. It ought to inspire people."

Menchaca, 33, now an editor at the Medical University of South Carolina, says the money will be handy as he, his wife and two children look to move out of their cramped Summerville home. Smith, 41, who remains on the beat, says it will help pay for some things around the house, "maybe a new lawn."

Doug Fisher teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina. A former AP news editor, he is the author of Common Sense Journalism.