SCORPION supervisor had prior reprimands

Court records detail Smith’s infractions

One of the four supervisors of the Memphis Police Department’s now-defunct SCORPION Unit had been suspended, sanctioned and received a verbal reprimand in separate internal investigations into “a domestic violence situation,” an unnecessary use-of-force incident and personal conduct violation.

Lt. Dewayne Maurice Smith confirmed in testimony in a 2017 drug case he had received the punishments. Federal prosecutors would later dismiss the case after a judge found the testimony of Smith and another detective unreliable.

The cross-examination came during a motion hearing where federal defense attorney Tyrone Paylor asked about prior infractions.

Smith confirmed the first two with a “yes, sir,” but said he did not remember getting a reprimand for a personal conduct violation.

“I didn’t remember getting [any reprimand] for that,” Smith said in the hearing. “I had an incident with a fireman, but I didn’t remember getting anything. But if [the reprimand is] in there, then I did.”

Smith, more than four years later, would be promoted to a supervisory position with the department’s SCORPION Unit, which is at the center of the investigation into the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Fedex worker and father of one who died after being beaten by five members of the detail in January.

The hearing Smith testified in stemmed from an arrest he and a fellow officer, Josh Myers — both detectives within the department’s Organized Crime Unit at the time — had made in 2016. Smith told the court he had been with OCU for six years, but spent 19 with the department in total.

Although the SCORPION Unit would not be active for more than four “I had an incident with a fireman, but I didn’t remember getting anything. But if [the reprimand is] in there, then I did.”

more years, Smith said he and his partner were conducting “saturation detail.”

Saturation policing was a tactic used by the SCORPION Unit, officially known as the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods team and was the focal point of calls to deactivate the unit from activists and civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci in the wake of Tyre Nichols’ beating. The federal case from 2017 indicates that at least some Organized Crime Unit officers were conducting saturation patrols at the time.

On August 17, 2016, Smith and Myers were driving around North Memphis and stopped a man, named Reginald Monroe, driving a Honda Accord saying they believed his windows were tinted darker than the legal limit.

Smith testified they pulled Monroe over and “we both smelled raw marijuana coming from the vehicle.” The officers were in an unmarked car when they pulled over Monroe, who testified he was on his way to pick his son up from school.

Monroe also said neither officer said anything to him about the smell of marijuana coming from his car.

“Detective Myers asked Mr. Monroe if he could take a look in the vehicle, and he agreed to a search of the vehicle,” Smith told the federal prosecutor. “[Monroe] stepped out and I had him come back to the rear of the vehicle while Detective Myers searched the vehicle.”

But, when being cross examined by Paylor, Smith said he could not hear what Myers was telling Monroe, nor could he hear Monroe consent to the search. In his testimony, Monroe said he did not agree to the car search.

During the search, when Myers opened a compartment to the trunk, Smith told the court he heard Monroe run away. After a chase, Monroe fell into a creek and was later arrested.

In the trunk of the car, officers said they found a pink shoe box with marijuana, a pill bottle with crack cocaine and, in the compartment where a spare tire would be kept, a bag with a handgun.

The tint on the car’s windows were eventually tested, and returned a legal limit.

Monroe was subsequently charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute and unlawfully transporting a firearm, but the evidence was challenged in a court motion by Paylor, who argued the search was illegal and the evidence should be inadmissible.

The magistrate judge who heard the motion agreed, ruling in favor of the motion because neither the affidavit nor incident report for Monroe’s arrest mentioned the officers smelling marijuana and the two documents were inconsistent with the testimony.

The search, in those documents, was attributed to an inventory being taken prior to Monroe’s car being towed after he was arrested.

“The testimony regarding the smell of marijuana is troubling,” Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Diane Vescovo wrote in her ruling. “Although Detectives Myers and Smith both testified that they smelled an odor of marijuana emanating from Monroe’s vehicle as they approached, they did not state in either the affidavit of complaint or the incident report that they detected the odor of marijuana, nor was there any testimony they communicated their observation to each other or Monroe.

“Before the response to the motion to suppress [the evidence MPD obtained from Monroe’s car] was filed, there was no indication that the officers searched Monroe’s vehicle because they detected the smell of marijuana.”

The incident report also said that Smith and Myers had pulled Monroe over, “at that time the driver, the later identified Reginald Monroe, jumped out and ran from the vehicle southbound.”

“However, both detectives testified that they spoke with Monroe, asked him out of the vehicle, and that Detective Myers began to search the vehicle based on the smell of marijuana before Monroe fled — none of which are included in the affidavit of complaint or the incident report,” Vescovo wrote.

Vescovo called the contradictory recounting of events “troubling” and made Smith and Myers’ testimonies “unreliable.” She also found that “the government has failed to carry its burden in proving that Monroe consented to a search” of his car.

“...It is recommended that Monroe’s motion to suppress be granted and that all evidence obtained from Monroe’s vehicle as a result of the unconstitutional search be suppressed,” she wrote in her recommendation.

The case was ultimately dismissed by the federal prosecutor in May 2018, about eight months after the motion to suppress was heard in court.

Smith would eventually join the SCORPION Unit in a supervisory role, although it is unclear what group of the unit he supervised.

Smith could not be located for comment by publication time and a records request for his personnel file was not returned at the time of publication.

The Memphis Police Department did not respond to requests for comment about Smith’s current employment status, but records obtained by The Commercial Appeal from the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST) indicate he is still employed.

POST is Tennessee’s police certification body, which also decertifies officers and prevents them from working in the state at another department.

Those records also show that MPD has not filed to decertify Smith, who was first brought into the department in December 1998. Smith was promoted to lieutenant status in late September 2022.

Lucas Finton is a news reporter with The Commercial Appeal.