Midlands town has new police chief after former chief’s car crash
South Congaree has hired a new police chief months after its previous chief retired following a car crash.
The town council voted to hire Carl Quinlan as South Congaree’s new chief of police at a specially called meeting on Wednesday. Quinlan will officially take over Feb. 16 in the small Lexington County town of a little more than 2,000 people.
Quinlan’s hiring follows the September retirement of former chief Steven Jonas, who was in the job for a little more than a year. Jonas was injured along with three other people on Aug. 27 when he suffered a medical episode while driving his patrol vehicle on South Beltline Boulevard in Columbia and collided head on with another vehicle.
Dashcam footage obtained by WIS TV through a public records request showed Jonas failed a field sobriety test and was arrested following the crash and taken to Alvin S. Glenn, but blew a 0.0 on a breathalyzer. A toxicology report obtained by the news station showed he had 1.5 micrograms of an unidentified daily medication in his system.
Jonas was a 23-year veteran of South Congaree’s small police department, which he joined in 2002 after a five-year stint in the Marine Corps. The town also faces a lawsuit over an allegedly wrongful arrest Jonas made of a woman on Christmas Eve 2023.
“The vision for our town is to promote our police department, to change our image, to be more professional and more community oriented,” South Congaree Mayor Cindy Campbell told media at Wednesday’s meeting. “Tonight’s decision was definitely a big step forward for our town.”
.jpg)