KNOXVILLE, Tenn — On his own and without legal authority, an armed Knox County Sheriff's Office civilian employee blocked a female driver last month at night, turned on his unmarked vehicle's blue lights and confronted her in her vehicle, WBIR has learned.
The Oct. 7 encounter frightened the woman because Boyd Ray Vineyard didn't appear to her to be a law officer and he declined to give her his name, despite her requests. He also had a gun on his hip.
Rather than answer her questions about who he was, he drove off.
To the East Knox County woman, the stop seemed like "a really creepy and egregious abuse of power."
WBIR is identifying the 45-year-old by her initials, S.C. She still fears for her safety, she said.
"This was someone who aggressively rolled up on me, stopped me in the middle of the road, didn't identify themselves," S.C. told Officer Amanda Darnell of the department's Office of Professional Standards on Oct. 10. "It wasn't for any legitimate reason."
Vineyard abruptly retired effective Oct. 27. An internal department review found he'd violated numerous department policies and procedures, including presenting himself as something he was not -- a law officer.
"If I've scared her I'm very sorry, but I didn't...it wasn't intentioned to do that. I mean, I just wanted to talk to her about pulling out in front of me and me within 40 feet of her. And her then put the brakes on. And I was polite, I didn't say nothing out of the way, it was, Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, and did you know that I was coming?" Vineyard said Oct. 11 during an interview with Darnell and Sgt. Toby Champion, also of department's Office of Professional Standards.
Efforts to reach Vineyard were unsuccessful.
He worked about 20 years as a civilian employee with the department, most recently as an assistant supervisor for court services, his personnel file shows.
Sheriff Tom Spangler issued a statement to WBIR on Monday:
"I am disappointed as the leader of this agency. I always tell our employees if I don't know something is broken, I can't fix it. Once the complaint came into the Office of Professional Standards, they opened an investigation. The evidence is clear, and among everything else our agency has gone through the last month and a half, this, too, had to be dealt with. Mr. Vineyard chose to retire during the investigation.
"We have an overwhelming group of individuals who selflessly serve this community with honor and integrity. I want to assure the public that incidents like this will be dealt with swiftly per our general orders and the law.”
The investigation by Darnell, a veteran internal affairs investigator who until earlier this year worked for the Knoxville Police Department, found he'd previously been ordered by department administrators not to perform traffic stops. Records don't detail why he'd been given that order.
He also brought discredit on KCSO, the investigation found, and in fact appeared to have broken the law "when he performed a traffic stop that he had no authority to conduct, including asking for (the woman's) driver's license," the review showed.
He also improperly used a county-issued Ford Explorer for a personal errand -- driving to the pharmacy -- at the time he stopped the woman, the investigation found.
THE STOP
S.C. had just turned onto Thorngrove Pike from Sinking Springs Road about 7 p.m. Oct. 7 -- a Saturday -- when the incident occurred.
A vehicle -- driven by Vineyard -- rapidly approached her from behind. It waited on an oncoming car to pass and then pulled around in front of her, the KCSO investigation found.
S.C. watched as the driver, an older man in a long-sleeved polo and khakis, turned on his vehicle's blue lights. He had a gun on his hip and carried a radio.
When S.C. cracked her window open, Vineyard asked for her driver's license.
S.C. wasn't buying it.
She told Darnell later she couldn't tell who he was. He didn't look like an officer.
"Everything about the interaction felt very wrong," S.C. told Darnell.
S.C. asked for his identification. He pulled up his shirt a moment to show what appeared to be "a small metal object" inside the wide band on the belt, she told Darnell. She could also see he had a gun on his hip.
She requested again to see his identification, according to her interview with Darnell. Vineyard appeared to become irritated with her.
Still refusing to give his name or even say that he worked for Knox County, she said he walked back to his Explorer with the lights flashing and retrieved what appeared to be a stack of cards.
"And he came back with a stack of...it was like a whole stack of cards that had a hole punch in the corner. And he kind of put it up in the corner of my window where I couldn't even see it, it was obvious that he put it up in the corner (of) my window where I couldn't even see it, And I thought, I can't see that. And he dropped it down," she told Darnell.
The man kept telling her to be careful, which to S.C. came off more as a threat than as helpful advice.
"I said something along the lines of, I'm a female in a vehicle by myself, you should understand that I want to see your identification. And he had some sort of response of... that he didn't know who was in the car."
To S.C., he had no legitimate reason to stop her and block her.
Finally, he turned and left, speeding away into the night.
She tried to follow to get his tag number. She only got a few numbers.
But S.C. had gotten something else.
When he'd walked back to his vehicle to get that stack of cards, she'd had the presence of mind to snap his photo.
The following day, she contacted the Sheriff's Office to complain about the man's conduct.
The photo helped confirm it was Vineyard who'd stopped her. And when department investigators questioned him, he confirmed he'd made the stop.
He did it, he said, because he thought her driving had been unsafe. She'd pulled out in front of him and brake-checked him, he said.
He'd been on his way to an Asheville Highway drugstore when he encountered her.
"I was just gonna talk to the lady," he said.
S.C. didn't see it that way. She said he'd driven aggressively to stop her, an overreaction if all he wanted to do was comment on her driving.
S.C. told investigators she also recalled a similar incident that a friend had experienced early one morning in September in Sevier County.
Darnell noted in her report that she couldn't prove or disprove that allegation against Vineyard. She did not sustain that finding in her report.
Vineyard said it wasn't true. He hadn't made such a stop earlier this year.
"I've got no lies to tell," he said.