Video: Battle Between Police Chief and Board of Alderman Continues in Aberdeen

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ABERDEEN, Miss. (WCBI) – The battle between the police chief and the board of aldermen in Aberdeen continues after a heated meeting last week.

The Board has asked the Chief to return his city vehicle and they plan to cut his salary in half. There seems to be no end in sight to the disagreements between the Aberdeen Board of Aldermen and Police Chief Henry Randle.

Randle was asked to relinquish his city vehicle on Friday but he has not complied with the order.

“Subsequent to that Board meeting, he went and hopped in his truck that’s owned by the City in direct defiance of the Board’s directives and drove off to I don’t know where,” says Aberdeen City Attorney, John Dudley Williams.

“As far as the vehicle, I’ve never known where an elected official or police chief had to walk to work or walk home,” responded Chief Henry Randle, of the Aberdeen Police Department.

The Board also plans to cut the Chief’s salary in half. Randle says he’ll fight the move because he hasn’t been charged with any crime and is being unfairly targeted.
Mayor Cecil Belle says because Chief Randle is an elected official, the Board nor the citizens can legally hold Randle accountable.

“I think in this situation, he doesn’t have to come to work or do anything that we tell him to do,” says Aberdeen Mayor Cecil Belle.

Randle countered Belle saying, “They made decisions based on what they want. They have not sat down, taken the time to talk with the police department about any of these matters. They just took it into their own hands.”

One of the main issues of debate is who exactly is in charge of the Aberdeen Police Department.

“The day-to-day operations of the police department are pretty much under my supervision but with the board that we have now, they seem to think that they can do what ever they want to do,” says Randle.

Belle disagrees.

“In our charter today, it says that the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen have the authority over all police matters,” says Belle.

Mayor Belle says the Board is moving forward with plans to amend the city charter, allowing the chief of police to be appointed and not elected, in the future.

Randle was also accused of ethics violations that included hiring his brother-in-law and using his own tow truck service on police calls. Randle says all of the ethics violations have been dismissed.

It seems there’s no real solution to the disagreements at this point, but both sides say they’re trying to do what’s best for Aberdeen.