In an article titled, “Councilman’s son faces jail term,” Birmingham Post-Herald reporter Taylor Bright writes that Irondale, AL mayor Allen Ramsey’s planned polygraph dragnet at city hall has been put on hold, and that the mayor himself is now under investigation.
The son of an Irondale city councilman is expected to be sentenced to prison today, but not for a police incident that led to the city’s mayor demanding polygraph tests of employees.
Matthew C. Jackson, 19, son of Irondale Councilman Ray Jackson, pleaded guilty to two counts of armed robbery and is expected to be sentenced to the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, according to court records. Jackson was charged with robbing a Domino’s Pizza in Leeds and CVS Pharmacy in Trussville in March 2002. Both counts are felonies.
According to records in the Jefferson County criminal clerk’s office, Circuit Judge James Hard is expected to sentence Matt Jackson to 20 years, of which three will be served in St. Clair. He will receive five years’ probation after that, and if he completes the probation without incident, the rest of his sentence will be suspended.
In an unrelated incident, the Jefferson County district attorney’s office has begun an investigation into how the Irondale Police Department handled a case involving Matt Jackson.
“We are looking at whether there was a criminal case or should have been a criminal case, but we’re not interested in the leak of information, as it’s been called,” said Roger Brown, chief deputy district attorney for Jefferson County. Brown declined to name the individuals involved.
According to police reports provided to the Birmingham Post-Herald, Irondale police stopped Matt Jackson in front of his parents’ home, where they found three gallon-size plastic bags containing a substance that appeared to be marijuana.
According to the report, Jackson fled after the discovery, and police pursued for several blocks. Although the report stated “felony warrants are pending,” no charges were filed and there is no record of Jackson being booked into the Irondale Jail for the incident, according to the Irondale Police Department Jail Log.
An unidentified person released the report detailing the incident to morning talk show hosts Russ and Dee Fine at WYDE (101.1 FM).
Irondale Mayor Allen Ramsey at first demanded city employees take lie-detector tests to find out who sent out the report, which he called “confidential information.” The city won’t release the report and late last week denied it exists.
The plan for lie-detector tests demanded by Ramsey have been abandoned, said Greg Morris, Irondale city attorney.
“The fact is no other actions are being taken at this point,” Morris said.
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Morris said the city would cooperate with the district attorney’s investigation and said Ramsey and Ray Jackson are not involved in any internal investigation led by the City Council Public Safety Committee.
“Because the mayor and Councilman Jackson have been alleged to have been involved in some type of scheme, they have withdrawn from any discussions of this matter with me and or the Public Safety Committee, and that’s probably rightfully so,” Morris said.
Irondale continues has not released the incident report, even though public-records experts say the report is a public record.
“The attorney general has come out with an opinion that the front page (of the police report) is a public record and he said the claim that the rest of the report is not a public record is somewhat specious unless there is some danger in releasing the names like a rape case,” said Ed Mullins, chairman of the journalism department at the University of Alabama.
Late last week, Irondale officials gave varying answers to why the report could not be seen.
The clerk who is in charge of letting the public see reports said the report regarding Jackson could not be seen without going through the mayor or Norman Stapp, the interim Irondale police chief. A sergeant at the station said the records could not be viewed because it’s an “active investigation.”
Stapp later said the records did not exist.
“There’s not an arrest report. I can say that. There’s not one,” Stapp said.
Stapp had no comment when a reporter produced a copy of the police report detailing Matt Jackson’s marijuana incident and deferred to Morris.
“We might should have it, we maybe have it,” Morris said. Morris wouldn’t release any information and demanded that a written request be submitted to him.
Mullins called the demand to file a written request “a harassment.”