Kelley says city should fire police chief, investigator
He addresses Cedar Park council two days after release from jail.
Greg Kelley made his feelings clear about the Cedar Park Police Department during and after a Cedar Park City Council meeting Thursday night.
“Get Chief Mannix and Chris Dailey out of there,” he told reporters outside the council meeting. “I would be completely scared to live in this city with them in it.”
Police Chief Sean Mannix declined to comment Friday because of the pending investigation, a Cedar Park police spokeswoman said. Dailey was the Police Department’s lead investigator in the case.
Kelley was serving 25 years in prison on a 2013 sexual assault charge but was released on bond Tuesday after a judge found his due process rights were violated during a flawed police investigation.
Earlier Thursday night, he spoke to the City Council and said that while in prison he received an “outpouring of love from the community,” but that Mannix “tried to label them as a cult, just like he tried to label me as a pedophile and I believe this is toxic, inexcusable and incompetent.”
“When Chief Mannix called (the investigation against Kelley) the best police work he had ever seen, it became clear that change was required because an organization is only as good as its leaders,” Kelley told the council. “This was about winning and having a successful prosecution at all costs and had very little to do with justice and truth.”
State District Judge Donna King ordered Kelley released on bond this week after taking issue with several aspects of the investigation, including that Dailey, a police sergeant, didn’t corroborate information from the child victim, didn’t speak to Johnathan McCarty who also lived in the home where the incident occurred, “nor did he conduct any follow-up investigation into Johnathan’s involvement, if any,” King wrote.
“Detective Dailey failed to interview any adult at the McCarty household/day care, who might