COUNTY ENTERS PROBE AGAINST CITY POLICE

SCOTT CITY -- The Scott County Sheriff's Department Wednesday launched an investigation into a complaint filed against two Scott City Police officers that alleges they abandoned a 6-year-old boy after they arrested and jailed his grandfather.

The officers accused in the complaint are Lloyd Young and Bobby Wooten. Both are volunteer officers with the department and are unpaid. Young is the husband of Scott City Mayor Shirley Young.

The complaint, filed June 4 by Jeannie Moore of Cape Girardeau, claims the two officers left Moore's son in a truck unattended after they took Moore's father, Jerry Moore of Scott City, to jail. The arrest occurred May 24.

The Scott City Police Department began investigating the claim last week. The officers deny the allegation and say the only reason the boy was left at the scene is because Moore gave responsibility of the boy to friends of his who witnessed the arrest.

Jeannie Moore said she was unhappy that the investigation was being conducted by the same department whose officers were named in the complaint.

On Tuesday, Moore went to the Scott County prosecutor and then to the sheriff's department to ask for a separate investigation.

"I just didn't think the (Scott City) police department would do anything to the officers," she said.

Scott City Police Chief David Beck said officer Danny Club is conducting the investigation for his department, which is still ongoing.

A spokesperson for the sheriff's department said Deputy Tom Beardslee began investigating the complaint Wednesday.

The two Scott City officers contend the boy was left in the care of two acquaintances of Jerry Moore. The two men had witnessed the arrest, officers said.

Last week, Young and Wooten said that Moore had asked the men to care for the boy. They said that normally the procedure would be to take a child involved in an arrest to the police station, where a relative, or juvenile authorities would be called.

But Young said that because the men who witnessed the arrest were acquaintances and had agreed to take care of the boy, he decided to leave the boy in their care.

"Officer Wooten even asked them if they had any problem taking the boy home and they said, `no,'" Young said.

Young said he felt that leaving the boy with the men would be less traumatic for the boy than taking him to the police station.

Moore, police said, was taken to jail because of his arrest record, which includes three driving while intoxicated charges in the past six years, two charges of driving while his license was revoked and one charge of resisting arrest.

But Jerry Moore, who was arrested that day and later charged with driving while his license was revoked, claims he didn't give responsibility of the boy to anyone.

He said he repeatedly asked the officers what was being done with the boy.

"They just told me he was being taken care of," Moore said.

The arrest occurred near the Kelso Milling Co. in Scott City shortly after noon. Two employees of the company say they ended up taking the boy home, but didn't witness the arrest and didn't agree to take responsibility for the boy.

The two, Louis Heisserer and Wilford Raines, said they were eating lunch inside the Milling Company building with two other employees, Lennert Reisenbichler and Eugene Martin, when the arrest occurred.

Heisserer said the four men didn't know what was happening outside the building until Officer Young and Jerry Moore came inside and Moore asked them to take his keys from his pocket and drive his truck home. Moore was handcuffed.

All four men say they weren't aware that Moore's grandson was in the truck until Young "mentioned it" on his way out of the building.

"As he was walking out the door, he said, `there's a kid in the car,'" Heisserer said. "We just looked at each other and wondered if we were supposed to do something about it."

Raines said: "They seemed more interested in taking Jerry to jail than worrying about the boy.

"If he wouldn't have said there was a boy in the truck, we probably would have sat here for another hour and finished our lunch. None of us knew what happened out there, the door was closed."

Raines said the truck could not be seen from inside the building.

Young said the men's claims are ridiculous. "There is no way we would be more interested in the truck or arresting Moore than we would be in seeing to it that the boy was taken care of," he said.

The men said they didn't know the boy, and Jeannie Moore said she doesn't know any of the men.

"Anybody could have taken Chris and I would have had no idea where he was," said Jeannie Moore, who said she was at work when her father was arrested.

Raines said the men first took the boy to Jerry Moore's house in Scott City but found no one home. He said they then asked the boy where he wanted to go.

"He said he had a friend, and maybe he could go to his house," Raines said. They took him to the home of Stacy Camp, whose son is a friend of the Moore boy.