Love triangle leads to end of police captain’s career in Palmetto

Former Palmetto Police Capt. Stephen Greer has resigned after an internal affairs investigation uncovered that Greer sent a series of texts exposing an apparent love triangle dispute involving Greer, a female detective and another police officer.

Palmetto Police Chief Scott Tyler said he felt “violated and betrayed” by his former third in command.

In April, Greer was placed on paid administrative leave while Tyler personally handled the investigation into an accusation of sexual harassment, though the details of the investigation were not released until Monday. Greer also was also accused of creating a hostile work environment and conduct unbecoming an officer.

Tyler said the sexual harassment complaint was filed through human resources anonymously, but the complaint was serious enough to warrant an investigation. Greer’s police cellphone was confiscated as part of the investigation and Tyler initially found some concerning texts from Greer to a female subordinate and another male police officer.

Those texts went missing a few days into the investigation.

“It’s one of the reasons why this took longer than it should have,” Tyler said. “The texts vanished, the data was wiped clean and from there we had to determine if it was done deliberately and by whom.”

Greer would later admit to deleting the texts from an iCloud account, which Tyler felt was a criminal act. The information was sent to the state attorney’s office, which declined to criminally prosecute. Tyler said that left it up to him to once again pursue the case administratively.

Tyler was able to retrieve the missing texts and it appeared to indicate a relationship between Greer and the female subordinate, but that she eventually lost interest and became involved with another officer. While Tyler said the texts were “concerning,” he didn’t feel they warranted a sexual harassment case, but he did find that Greer created a hostile work environment and that his conduct was unbecoming of a police officer.

Greer also was texting the male employee who was gaining the interest of the female, but Tyler said they were not threatening in nature, “rather he was clearly upset.”

Despite admitting he deleted evidence during the course of an internal affairs investigation, Greer appealed Tyler’s termination decision to Mayor Shirley Groover Bryant. During the course of that appeal, Greer was allowed to resign instead and will keep his pension after working for the department for 28 years.

“We are a small department,” Tyler said. “They both have admitted that they have been ‘very close’ friends for some time. It appears that he wanted more and she did not, so he was upset about her not spending enough time with him and more time with the other officer.”

Tyler said there are no department policies against employees seeing one another in social settings, but he will review the department’s policies going forward, especially those governing the use of department cellphones.

“The bottom line here is that he was the No. 3 in command and should have known better,” Tyler said. “It was divisive behavior and bad for morale. This is not how a superior should be acting and I had no choice but to tell him I couldn’t use him here anymore.”

In the early 2000’s, Greer was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a female teenager, but no charges were ever brought forward after the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office investigated the claims.

This story was originally published July 3, 2017 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Love triangle leads to end of police captain’s career in Palmetto."