The Bodycam Footage That ENDED His Career

[00:30] this is the docket tonight it's here at home in horry county south carolina my home state one rule before we start i need you to hold me to it you're going to hear the word alleges over and over again in this segment that work word is doing real work this case has not been adjudicated yet in any civil court and so we are we're using the word alleged okay because none of it some of what i'm about to show you is documented on video yes and audio some of it is accusation in a lawsuit that no judge and no jury has tested yet and i will tell you which is which every single time that's my promise to you but on september 9th 2023 a man named scott spivey was 33 years old an insurance adjuster and was driving his truck up highway 9 headed home and i'm going to give you the whole record including the parts his family probably doesn't wish were true because you deserve all of it before you sit in judgment of this case and this story doesn't need either side sanitized okay witnesses that day reported erratic driving more than one said he displayed a handgun his blood alcohol was later reported at 0.13 and we need to go there because there needs to be a real debate on how his alcohol levels were tested by the way because that matters here they weren't tested right away his body was still left in a truck driven 25 miles away and i'm told was in a condition that that could have exacerbated the alcohol level because of how long they waited in the condition of

[02:00] the body when they waited and those facts are central to the original ruling that was self that this was self-defense and they're real here's what else is real a russian owner named weldon boyd with a passenger whose last name is williams followed scott spivey for roughly nine miles evidence later presented in court put speeds above 100 miles an hour boyd called 911 himself and on day told the dispatcher that if spivey aimed a gun again quote we're gonna have to shoot him

[02:31] we're going to have to shoot him he told the 911 dispatcher spivey turned right on a camp swamp road the road toward his own house boyd boydot's stated destination was straight ahead boyd decided decided to turn right and follow Spivey. Minutes later, Scott Spivey was dead, and Boyd and Williams had both fired, allegedly. Neither of them had a scratch. Both said were self-defense. Neither man has ever been charged with a crime, and both maintained that to this day, they acted lawfully. Who fired first is genuinely disputed, and what the docket is about tonight is what police did next. By two in the morning, the lead detective's initial report already described the shooting as appearing justified, and then piece by piece over three years, over the last three years, their frame fell apart. Fact one, documented on body camera, sergeant at the scene, Damon Viscovi, wrote five words on a yellow legal pad and held it up for Boyd and Williams to see. The words were, act like a victim, camera. He checked whether another officer's camera was running first. He angled his own away.

[03:33] His own body camera caught the note anyway. Let's put it on the screen. Let people read it. An independent journalist named Beth Braden found that moment buried in hours of footage almost two years later. The department later fired Viscovi for policy violations. Boyd, for his part, has said he didn't know the officer, wishes he had never been shown the note, and thinks the officer may have been trying to calm him down. I wish he had never done that. Was it a surprise to you that some officer you don't know showed you this note? I didn't know what he meant by it. I was totally dumbfounded by it. I mean, what do you say to that? What do you do to that? Act like a victim. I mean, I am a victim. I'm sitting here at a scene where someone just tried to shoot me and we had to shoot back and you walk up and you just flash that at me and then I, I mean, immediately I knew this was bad

[04:26] because I didn't ask for that. That is his answer and now you have it. Let's put it on screen again for the people to read. Let's see that

[04:38] and hats off to Beth Braden with True Sunlight Podcast for finding that. Fact two, documented. Scott Spivey's truck was towed roughly 25 miles to a county facility with his body still inside it. A crime scene investigator testified she'd never seen that in her six years on the job. Former South Carolina coroners told the Wall Street Journal it was not normal practice to do that and the county's explanation was that rain threatened the evidence. His parents say they later had to watch video of their son's body being thrown around inside that truck as it was unloaded. Their lawsuit says officers on camera discussed making sure the family was never told his body had been moved that way. That last part of the story is an allegation and it's one that I can't get out of my head. Fact three, documented and this is the part that turned a bad investigation into a scandal. Weldon Boyd's phone automatically recorded his own calls. Man, I wish I had that app on my phone. I'd like to know what it was. About 90 of those recordings ended up in a police file that Scott's sister obtained by subpoena.

[05:42] She opened them at her kitchen table one day and on those recordings is the deputy chief of police, Brandon Strickland, a personal friend of Boyd's, the shooter in his own voice while his department investigated his friend for a killing. I got the people coming that I need to come, he said, working, quote, in the shadows, in the shadows. The detective is, quote, a good old boy. You were, quote, taken care of, predicting on tape that the case would be closed by, quote, the end of the week easily unless they ran extra weapon testing to determine, and this is word for word, who won the prize of killing Scott Spivey. The price. That's what they called him. And then this about the man his friend had just shot. I'm just glad it was a white guy. What's up, man? Brandon, where you at?

[06:28] Can you come to, can you come to Camp Swamp Road off of 9 like as fast as possible?

[06:35] I had to shoot somebody. This was the phone call restaurant owner Weldon Boyd made to former Horry County deputy chief Brandon Strickland following a deadly shootout between Boyd and Scott Spivey. It happened on September 9th, 2023 while the two traveled separately on highway. 9 then turned on a Camp Swamp Road. The incident was ruled self-defense and Boyd was never charged. And the detectives who met with you last night was Alan Jones, right? I think so, yeah. Yeah, country guy. Good old, good old boy. Well, that's who I sent out there and I called the captain over investigation. He told me that you were and my next call was to Jamie Richardson. Strickland does tell Boyd in the calls to talk to his attorney and though he couldn't be there physically. I was in the shadows last night. I wasn't there, but I was in the shadows. You were, you were taken care of. Surprise, end of the week easily. Glad it was a white guy. Sit with those words for a minute. A deputy chief of police calling a dead man a prize and relieved about the victim's race because he knew the scrutiny would have been far worse had it been a black man.

[07:41] He said all of it out loud because he was certain no one would ever hear it. He didn't know he was being recorded. Strickland sighed because this show gives you both. His lawyer says those statements were blocked. Luster that he recused himself, never went to the scene and influenced nothing. The department has said the detective was already up on the on-call rotation. Strickland left the department of security as scrutiny intensified. And after the new lawsuit was filed this week, his lawyer called it inflammatory rubbish and said the officers will be vindicated in court. That may be, that's what courts are for, which brings us to this week on September 8th, three years to the week after the shooting, Scott Spivey's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in Florence in South Carolina, 14 defendants, the county, the former chief, the former deputy chief, and 11 more officers and supervisors. Boyd and Williams are not defendants in this case. The lawsuit is aimed entirely at the local government in South Carolina. The lawsuit alleges widespread intentional mishandling of the investigation into Spivey's death, starting just minutes after the shooting and going through this year.

[08:45] The Spivey family hopes when the lawsuit is done, it causes widespread change in the way of policing here in Horry County. The lawsuit makes more than 50 allegations of, quote, coordinated misuse of law enforcement authority, specifically naming 13 officers. Of those 13, we've confirmed 10 still work at HCPD. Two of the officers even testified at this year's Stand Your Ground hearings for Weldon Boyd and Kenneth Williams. The allegations include mishandling evidence at the scene of the shooting, officers failing to separate witnesses upon arrival, and turning off their body-worn cameras. The complaint alleges, and every single word of this next part is an allegation, that commanders held a meeting two days after the shooting and set the direction of the investigation, that officers were told to be nice to Boyd and Williams, that cameras were deliberately shut off, that phones and a tablet that may have recorded the shooting were left in the shooter's hands instead of being seized under a warrant.

[09:45] He did ask you to delete Facebook messages, right? He did. and

[09:51] based on his instruction you did that correct i did the

[09:57] tablet was in the truck the night of the incident right it was mounted on the dash um about right here and

[10:07] indeed some of the photos you can see it right you can see it yes sir and so you don't dispute there was a tablet on the dash and it could have been capturing images or film if it were programmed to do so right um yeah if you wanted to use it for that purpose it can be used for that purpose that bar surveillance footage was selectively cut to make spivey look worse that evidence was mislabeled so it could not be found that the crime scene log went missing for two years that pills were planted in spivey's truck through an unsealed rear window and that his body was left in the heat in a way that inflated the toxicology report on the pills the heat in the tablet i want to be straight with you no public forensic finding establishes any of those three they are claims they are allegations and discovery exists to test those claims and now for the first time there will be a discovery to test them two things have already been decided by a judge so you know this is not just a family's theory in february after a four-day hearing a judge denied boyd and williams immunity from the family's wrongful death suit and said on the record that he questioned boyd's credibility he also weighed evidence that williams deleted facebook messages at boyd's request and gave police false information denial of immunity is not a finding of guilt the wrongful death case is simply allowed to proceed and it is on the criminal side the attorney general has referred the police conduct to an outside solicitor and a state grand jury was impaneled in february grand juries are secret there's no public result yet but it's

[11:37] a case you need to be closely watching why am i giving this case a full segment because i have publicly demanded answers for this family before tonight and because every piece of it was almost never found think about the chain the note was caught by an independent journalist and the judge was not able to find it the journalist re-watching body camera footage the calls exist because a private citizen's phone happened to record them the file came out because a sister spent her super bowl sunday alone at a kitchen table with a flash drive take away any link in that chain and this case is still closed and the official story is still the only story a civilized state can't hide the truth and body camera laws mean nothing if officers can turn those cameras off at the exact moments that it matters officer involved in the case is still closed and the official story is still the only story should go to an outside agency by default not by referral two years later and evidence standards need teeth because a chain of custody that includes a private garage and an unsealed rear window is not a chain of custody at all these are policy fights worth having and the county says it doesn't comment on pending litigation a spokesperson for horry county did not provide us with a comment on the allegations most of the named officers have not yet responded in court and their silence is no admission service runs through December and we're going to follow the docket every single day and when the defendants answer you'll hear the answers in full scott spivey was not a perfect man on september 9th 2023 nobody nobody in this story was

[13:07] he was a citizen of south carolina who deserved to live though and three years later the question is no longer only who fired first the question is whether the people we pay to find out who fired first ever tried and that's the docket this is the show weeknights monday through thursday at 8 p.m i'm in session this week so we went along we went long tonight and we'll cut the program and re-air it each night segment by segment every segment you just watched goes up on its own on a different day i'll cut it down just for your evening before you go to bed at night i'm an early i go to bed early don't tell anybody but um but i i'm an early i early i'm early early to rise too. So tell a friend who thinks Congress is boring. It's not boring. And good night. Actually, not good night. One more thing. Because I promised you at the top, every claim in tonight's show has a source. And we publish the whole fact table with the episode. You'll see it in the description and in the comments. The complaint, the court record, the clips, the numbers, all of it linked.

[14:10] If somebody tells you we got something wrong, ask them for their sources because we will show you ours. Keep your receipts. We keep ours. Good night for real this time. I see you're not following me. Hit the follow button now.