Newly appointed Lake City police chief fired from Pee Dee law-enforcement job in 2015 over policy violation
LAKE CITY, S.C. (WBTW) — Newly appointed Lake City Police Chief Emmanuel Williams was fired from the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office in January 2015 over a policy violation but was eventually rehired by the department in 2019, according to records News13 obtained from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy.
Williams, a Coker University graduate is currently a sergeant with the Bennettsville Police Department. He is scheduled to begin his job in Lake City on March 4 and officially be sworn into office in early April.
The academy records do not reveal what policy he violated, but they do say the violation did not involve misconduct.
The records show that Williams began his South Carolina law enforcement career in October 2014 at the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office. After his firing, he did student training at the Lancaster County Detention Center from June 2015 until September 2015.
He then worked at the Bennettsville Police Department for about a year — from January 2017 to January 2018 — before moving to the Darlington County Sheriff’s Office in February 2018.
He remained there for about four months before returning to Bennettsville in July 2018. He worked there until November 2019, when he moved back to the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office.
Williams worked at the sheriff’s office for nearly a year — until October 2020 — until he went on military leave. Lake City officials said last week that he has served in the Army National Guard for 14 years.
He came to the sheriff’s office for about 11 months starting in November 2021 before returning to the Bennettsville Police Department where he served as a sergeant before being named Lake City’s new police chief on Friday.
Williams was chosen from among more than two dozen applications, including Maj. Patrick Miles, a member of the Lake City department who was placed on unpaid administrative leave in late December as part of an investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
Lake City officials said Miles was cleared within 30 days of the SLED investigation and has already returned to his duties.
Lake City has been without a police chief since the resignation of resignation of Jody Cooper in October. In January, the Florence County Sheriff’s Office agreed to manage the police department until Lake City could name a new chief.
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Dennis Bright is a Digital Producer at News13. He joined the team in May 2021. Dennis is a West Virginia native and a graduate of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Follow Dennis on, Facebook, X, formerly Twitter, and read more of his work here.
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