SOUTH BEND — South Bend City Clerk Dawn Jones has said she’ll take Joshua Reynolds’ word that his prior suspensions as an Indianapolis police officer amounted to retaliation for his reporting of other officers’ misconduct, but it became clear Monday night the common council won’t.
The council can’t fire Reynolds, but it appoints the citizen board to whom he would present his investigation findings and it controls his office’s budget, said council attorney Bob Palmer.
At a special meeting of the council’s Rules Committee, the committee voted unanimously to ask the full council, at its next regular meeting Monday July 26, to subpoena Community Police Review Board Director Reynolds’ internal affairs files from his former employers, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and Butler University, if he won’t agree to release them himself.
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The move came 11 days after The Tribune reported that Reynolds, hired by Jones in early May, had been suspended seven times over his nine years as an Indianapolis officer. South Bend Mayor James Mueller and the city’s Fraternal Order of Police leaders have since called for Reynolds to resign or Jones to fire him, but both have declined to do so.
The unpaid suspensions for Reynolds, 42, came between 2009 and 2016, ranging from one day to 13 days, according to Indianapolis police records. He had been hired in March 2008.
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