Public Record is Meant for the PUBLIC! IT IS THE LAW! Hazard Police Chief Fired for Not Following this Law

Police Denies Records to a Citizen and then Arrests Citizen

The Hazard Police Chief was fired Monday, December 16th by the Hazard City Council on the heels of two recent lawsuits filed against him.

One accused him of improperly arresting a man seeking records and another alleged he retaliated against an officer who reported an incident of excessive force. Chief Darren Williams’ employment was terminated effective immediately after improperly arresting a man seeking records, and then, the citizen retaliated against an officer who reported an incident of excessive force, allegedly. The City Manager Tony Eversole has confirmed this to media.

Tony Eversole, the City Manager, whose background is in law enforcement, said there is a command structure in place at the department to keep it running without problems, and that he will help supervise it. He is hoping things will run smoothely

Hazard Mayor Donald “Happy” Mobelini said Williams had been Police Chief about 18 months. The City Council is looking to hire someone to fill the position.


This all began last month, a former Deputy City Police Chief, Jessica Cornett, filed a federal lawsuit alleging she was demoted, retaliated against and eventually fired after asking Williams to make a report on an incident in which she said he placed someone in a neck restraint or choked them without justification.

Former Police Chief  Williams declined to complete a use-of-force report on the incident. Cornett, then, sent a memo to Eversole, filing a complaint in Perry Circuit Court. 

The day after it was filed, Chief Williams pinned the complaint to the wall at police headquarters the next day, according to public records.

Jessica Cornett said in the lawsuit that other officers were encouraged to make complaints against her. She says she was moved to the night shift, had her patrol car taken from her home and was given six “baseless” reprimands over a three-month period according to records.

Cornett was fired in August. The lawsuit seeks expenses, punitive damages and the restoration of her rank and seniority rights at Hazard’s police department.

In September, a Perry County man, Dallas Campbell, filed a lawsuit against Williams and the City of Hazard, alleging he was wrongfully arrested and assaulted by Williams when he went to the police department July 29 to submit a Kentucky Open Records Request per those said records.

Campbell says in the lawsuit he was asking for names of police officers, their hire dates and salaries, all of which are to be publicly available under Kentucky law.

Williams and the clerk in the police station’s lobby refused to provide the records and told Campbell, who was recording his interaction with them, that recording them was illegal, the suit claims.

Williams told Campbell to leave. After an interaction in which Campbell asserted his right to the information, Williams ultimately arrested him, charging him with menacing and disorderly conduct.

While Campbell was waiting to be taken to jail after his arrest, the lawsuit says the clerk took his phone and deleted video from it without his permission, as Williams stood nearby.

“Since Campbell had been arrested and would be imminently charged with a crime, the deletion of the video on Campbell’s phone constituted tampering with evidence of a crime,” the lawsuit states.

The footage was later recovered, and the county attorney dropped the criminal charges against Campbell after viewing it, according to the suit.

Campbell and his attorneys still had not received responses from the City to their records requests for the information Campbell was seeking, as required by Kentucky law, because public record is for the PUBLIC!

In its answer to the complaint, the city says Campbell’s complaint should be dismissed “on the grounds that it fails to state a claim against the Defendants for which the Court can properly grant relief.”