SC pol arrested after a DMV mistake wants $2M from the town she represents. Why? | Opinion
Just before midnight on the Fourth of July, thieves with a power saw and an extension ladder cut through the roof and four locked security cages inside of a Best Buy in Bluffton to steal a small fortune in electronics. It’s not even the most brazen robbery attempt in town this summer.
That distinction goes to Town Council Member Bridgette Frazier who is trying to extort $2 million from Bluffton in a shakedown that would be hard to believe if her lawyer hadn’t put it in writing.
This all starts with a traffic stop, one of thousands that Bluffton’s 65 police officers initiate every year. Officer Richard Ramirez pulled Frazier over March 9 for driving 56 mph in a 35 mph zone.
The officer arrested Frazier when a review of her long list of driving violations showed her license had been suspended by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Problem was it hadn’t been. The DMV incorrectly listed it as suspended, leading to a wrongful arrest. As reported this week, the DMV admitted its mistake and apologized, and Frazier’s arrest record has been expunged.
But Frazier has demanded $2 million from Bluffton to avoid a lawsuit. A June 25 letter from her lawyer gave the town two weeks to hand over the money in a “quick, quiet and amicable manner.” The threat and timing sounded more like a bank robber’s note than a public servant’s.
The police chief says his officers did their duty because of the DMV’s records, but the lawyer’s letter raises two areas of concern. It says the officers’ body cameras were being turned off and on while they discussed arresting her in March and that she was never read her Miranda rights.
Frazier, of course, has every right to pursue remedies in court — and to make her case in the court of public opinion, as she has done in social media posts since her arrest. One question is why a council member elected to represent a town would demand $2 million in just two weeks from it to avoid litigation when another agency appears to be at the root of the problem. Another is whether she will target the DMV, where much of the blame for this mess seems to rest.
Frazier didn’t return an interview request. Ultimately, it may be up to a judge and jury to decide who did what wrong, exactly, but from the DMV’s mistake to the police officers’ missteps to Frazier’s brazen money grab, this is a case where everyone in public service is acting poorly.
The day of her wrongful arrest, Frazier was booked into the Beaufort County Detention Center at 11:39 a.m. and released by 12:51 p.m., 72 minutes later, according to the center’s inmate inquiry system. That’s a speedy release compared to other cases, but Frazier, elected to a second four-year term on the town council in November, was still justifiably incensed.
On June 25, her lawyer demanded the $2 million from Bluffton for “negligence, negligent supervision, false arrest and false imprisonment that caused tremendous damage to my client.” Bluffton was given until 5 p.m. on July 8 to pay a “demand … based upon the damages which can be substantiated and in line with recent jury verdicts and settlements for similar cases.”
There was no elaboration on the damages or on any recent verdicts or settlements.
The Hilton Head Island Packet reported that the earliest the council could discuss the demand in closed session is next month so the two-week shakedown came and went without anything happening. The Post and Courier reported that Bluffton’s $1 million tort liability policy limit would leave the town responsible for any payment beyond that amount if found liable. It also reported Frazier’s license has been suspended five times since 2015, all for failure to pay traffic tickets.
The lawyer’s letter said “a thorough review of Ms. Frazier’s Official 10 Year Driver Record would have revealed that most of the issues Officer Ramirez relied upon to make the arrest were resolved at the time he arrested her.” It’s unclear which were resolved or unresolved, but a March review showed Frazier had nine traffic violations, including the March speeding ticket, since 2009: five for speeding, three for not wearing a seat belt and one for driving a vehicle without a license in possession.
During her re-election, Frazier praised the town’s police officers. “We believe in our police department, and we love the community sense that they bring to the area,” she told the Bluffton Buzz. “They’re not people who just pull someone over for a ticket or go in and do raids. Our community officers are really out and about in schools, they’re in neighborhoods, they’re doing, like, relief efforts for people so we value that.”
Now she’s put another value on their actions: $2 million. Coincidentally, that is about how much the town’s annual budget was reduced from last year’s spending plan when the council passed the new one last month. Bluffton is not a town blessed with a money tree.
To other town officials’ credit, Frazier’s demand letter was passed along to their own lawyers and the decision was made not to hand over the town’s money by the deadline. It may be that the legal system will see fit to reward Frazier for her mistreatment, but that’s a decision for another day. For now, the public should question the judgment of everyone involved in this fiasco, including Frazier’s.
This story was originally published July 12, 2024 at 12:00 PM.