Ex-SC police chief coached basketball in another county while on the clock, SLED says
Former Pine Ridge Police Chief Keith Parks was coaching basketball on at least six days when he was supposed to be overseeing the small Lexington County town’s police department, according to records obtained by The State.
An investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division concluded Parks was likely coaching a school basketball team when records indicated he was on duty at Pine Ridge. SLED determined that Pine Ridge paid Parks nearly $500 for time he spent coaching basketball.
Parks faced no criminal charges following SLED’s investigation, but he resigned during the investigation in April. Several months later, he left a similar position in Marion.
Parks denied the findings of the investigation. Through his attorney, Parks said he was a salaried employee who, at the town’s direction, submitted eight-hour daily time sheets no matter how many hours he worked.
“Keith often worked well in excess of 40 hours, but he was told to always put the same five, eight-hour days on his time sheets every week,” attorney Paul Porter told The State in an email. That led “to the appearance of an overlap, but not actual double pay.”
Parks is one of four police chiefs who have left the town in the past three years. Pine Ridge has been without a functioning police department since its last chief resigned in October. The turnover has upset some residents, who accuse Mayor Robert Wells of meddling in the department.
An 18-page summary of SLED’s Pine Ridge investigation details Parks’ efforts to juggle his two jobs over several months, often leaving the police department early to coach at a school almost an hour outside of town.
SLED began an investigation in March when the issue was referred to the agency by Wells. The town had noted, through a GPS tracker on Parks’ town-issued vehicle, that he was taking frequent trips to Orangeburg County.
On one occasion, Parks told the town administrator he was working the night shift in order to serve arrest warrants in town, according to the SLED report. Instead, the GPS showed him traveling that night to an Orangeburg County school, which led Wells to suspect Parks was working a second job, against town policy and without permission, according to the SLED report.
Parks had told the town he was coaching his daughter’s basketball team as an unpaid volunteer, Wells said, but the mayor suspected he might be coaching a boys basketball team at Hunter-Kinard-Tyler Middle/High School, another Orangeburg County school in Neeses. Parks confirmed to SLED investigators he was coaching the junior varsity team at Hunter-Kinard-Tyler.
After the town council met to determine whether to terminate Parks, the police chief handed in his resignation on April 29.
But Parks had informed the town about his coaching position and teaching schedule when he was hired, and the mayor had even commented it would “look good for the town,” according to Porter. Parks ultimately resigned because of the mayor’s “obsession” with the police department, the attorney said.
Other officers who have left the department also complained about Wells’ involvement in the department.
“If someone from the town told SLED that the town did not know about Keith’s coaching, mentoring and such before he was hired, then they are either lying or uninformed,” said Porter, Parks’ attorney.
Town Administrator Viki Miller told SLED that Parks was entitled to take compensatory time when he worked overtime, in lieu of earning overtime pay. He took it so much she had to back track over his time sheets, where officers were supposed to mark their hours worked. Checking town vehicles’ GPS trackers was also part of confirming officers’ work time, she said. With one exception, Miller said Parks had never told her ahead of time when he would take his compensatory time. She would find out when he submitted his time sheets.
Moonlighting as SC teacher, coach
At the beginning of the year, Parks had also asked for a blank W9 tax form, explaining it was not for town business but for paid speaking engagements he had taken, the town administrator told a SLED investigator.
The Orangeburg school district told a SLED investigator that Parks had been hired as a substitute teacher in November 2019, one month before he took the job as Pine Ridge’s police chief.
When Parks was interviewed by SLED, he told agents he had informed the town when he was hired that he was coaching basketball and had received permission to continue, according to investigators. He also said it was understood he would return to Pine Ridge for any emergency while he was coaching.
Parks’ normal hours with the police department were 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., although they could vary considerably, SLED found. To coach basketball, Parks would arrive at the school between 3:45 and 4:15 p.m. and coach until after 7 p.m. The school district did not keep track of Parks’ hours, and by contract he only had to coach one practice to be paid for the season.
Parks said this schedule was ideal for allowing him to work both jobs and that he avoided his hours overlapping. “I would never put myself in a position to be on the clock for both for both times,” he told SLED investigators.
But investigators found times when Parks’ two jobs overlapped.
▪ On Dec. 18, 2019, Parks’ log sheet showed he worked from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. The GPS on Parks’ vehicle showed he left home at 11:58 a.m. that day and was at Hunter-Kinard Tyler School from 3:42 p.m. to 5:43 p.m., on a day when Parks’ team would have practiced. Parks could not explain the discrepancy to investigators, according to SLED.
▪ On Dec. 8, Parks’ police log sheet showed he worked from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. The GPS on Parks’ vehicle showed he was at the school from 2:33 p.m. until 5:01 p.m.
▪ On Dec. 20, Parks’ log indicate he worked 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., but the GPS had him at Hunter-Kinard Tyler School from 11:31 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., the same day as a basketball game at the school.
▪ On Jan. 6, the log records Parks worked 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. The GPS had him at the school from 11:52 a.m. to 1:56 p.m. That was a teacher workday in the Orangeburg County school district.
▪ On Jan. 8, the activity log said Parks had worked 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but his GPS had him at the school from 2:33 p.m. until 5:01 p.m. Parks told SLED he must have taken compensatory time, but said he didn’t keep a log of the time he took off, other than a piece of paper on which he wrote the days he worked more than eight hours.
That paper included four hours of compensatory time for time Parks said he spent in town court that December. The town court schedule indicated there were no court dates in December, according to SLED.
On at least two other occasions, Parks’ records and his time at the school, per GPS, overlap for a total of three hours and 12 minutes. In total, Parks was paid by both the school district and the Pine Ridge Police Department for seven hours of overlapping work time. The SLED report concluded, based on Parks’ police salary of $48,789, that the town of Pine Ridge paid him $496 for time he spent coaching basketball.
Parks also received two payments of $1,250 from the Orangeburg County school district during the basketball season.
A SLED agent pointed out to Parks that he often worked night shifts on days when he was substitute teaching. Parks said he had permission to “be flexible” when scheduling his hours, but that he did not tell the town he was teaching during those days.
Pine Ridge’s other full-time officer told SLED he often had difficulty reaching Parks when the chief was out of town. When Parks told the officer he should have contacted him about a particular incident in the town, the officer told Parks “he never answered his phone because he was always coaching a basketball team,” the SLED report says. The officer also recalled Parks leaving the town’s 2019 Christmas parade early because of a basketball game.
The town clerk of court also mentioned Parks once told her he would serve an arrest warrant one night with the town’s other officer, according to the investigation. But the other officer had been home sleeping that night, he told the clerk. The town’s part-time officers also did not recall going out with the chief that night.
Did police chief break the law?
SLED’s investigation didn’t get the former chief in any legal trouble. In a letter to the SLED agent in charge of the case, 11th Circuit Deputy Solicitor Shawn Graham said the evidence would not support a charge of misconduct in office against Parks. In South Carolina, the crime of misconduct in office applies whenever anyone “in public office fails to properly and faithfully discharge a duty owed by law.”
“(A)fter review of the file, I find that former Chief Keith Parks would be considered a public official under the common law crime of Misconduct,” Graham wrote. He also agreed records show the town paid Parks for working at times the GPS showed him to be coaching basketball.
“Unfortunately, that clear provable fact becomes obscured when trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Parks’ actions were done willfully, dishonestly and corruptly,” Graham wrote.
Graham notes that the town didn’t seem to have an actual policy on compensatory time for employees, including how it was supposed to be calculated or recorded.
Any evidence that Parks acted unlawfully “is left only to differing accounts of the individuals involved and is insufficient to obtain a conviction,” Graham wrote.
Parks was named police chief in Marion in late September, but resigned just six weeks after taking the job. In a Facebook post on Nov. 18, the city of Marion said it received allegations of misconduct on Nov. 12 from the S.C. Criminal Justice Academy dating back to Parks’ time in Pine Ridge.
“City officials were told the (criminal justice academy) received the misconduct report from the Pine Ridge Department on October 30, six months after his resignation from their agency in April,” the city announced on Facebook.
In a submission to the S.C. Criminal Justice Academy, Wells said Parks had not disclosed an internal investigation at the Lexington Police Department that led to him leaving that agency in 2011 or a disciplinary issue while at the Estill Police Department that led to Parks losing the privilege of driving a town vehicle.
Those violations came to the attention of Pine Ridge officials as part of the SLED investigation into the town police, Wells told The State at the time.
Responding to The State, Parks was understanding about the city of Marion’s actions.
“Marion did what it had to do with all this mess going on in the background,” Porter said. “Keith does not fault Marion for that. If anything, Keith is sorry for any inconvenience to Marion caused by this mess from Pine Ridge.”
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