The city of Franklin has received some scrutiny on how they handle their police department. It has recently been found out in court that the police department of Franklin has been very loose on all of the records they hold regarding their policemen such as not knowing what car a certain policeman was using during a specific day. With the loose handling of the police department happening for a long time, it has to lead to Edwin J. Delgado, a former police detective for the Franklin police department to be charged with perjury.
On August 29th, 2007, Edwin J. Delgado pulled over a suspect in Franklin under the suspicions of reckless driving as he specified in his report that he was able to clock his suspect using a speedometer for 51 mph. After pulling over the suspect for reckless driving, Delgado would end up getting his speedometer calibrated two days alter which would be sent to records. Delgado’s calibration would eventually be mentioned just a few months later in November 2007 where he was summoned to appear for the court case of reckless driving. During the court case, Delgado was asked why they weren’t able to find any calibration records for the six months leading up to the reckless driving ticket which Delgado replied that he most likely threw away the test results even though that he was regularly calibrating his speedometer. From there, Delgado was fired from Franklin’s police department and charged with perjury which he would go to court for later the next year.
Edwin J. Delgado was finally in the position in to be potentially sentenced as guilty in his case for perjury during September 2008. To find out if Delgado was guilty, prosecutors searched through large amounts of evidence from the Franklin police department across many different officers to see if the city had been acting negligently in keeping records of if Delgado was guilty in the case. Across their searches, they found that the Franklin police department was very negligent in keeping all of the records to make sure that they could be able to look back and see if a police offer was on the scene of a crime. The evidence laid out led the Franklin police department into more public scrutiny but also led to Delgado to be not guilty in his case of perjury as the court found that they couldn’t find any evidence that would suggest that Delgado was the one who was miskeeping records instead of the Franklin police department. It’s not been clear as of 2008 after Delgado’s court case was over that if he was able to rejoin the Franklin police department even if he’s completely free to work in another town.
While Franklin never commented more about Delgado after the case was over, the police department came out and complimented those that criticized them about their poor record-keeping as the police department showed a considerable amount of work that they have done to make sure they are keeping all of the records necessary in the future. Chief Hardison of the Franklin police department said in an interview that not only did the police department change their procedures when it came to record-keeping when the first news of the perjury case hit public, but that they changed their procedures once they heard in the original case about reckless driving that they weren’t doing enough to make sure that they were able to record every calibration of speedometers. As of 10 years past this case, it hasn’t been seen if the Franklin police department is still keeping up with records but it was found in 2008 that calibrations were on record for 30 during the year while it was only 6 in 2007.
Visit https://www.tidewaternews.com for more breaking news.
