The 14-year-old so-called South Bend Police Tapes Case could finally be over with. A judge has ruled in favor of officers who have fought to block public release of recordings of their phone conversations.
The case started in 2012 when the city’s common council sued the Mayor Pete Buttigieg administration. The council wanted to know why Buttigieg had fired Chief Darryl Boykins, the city’s first Black chief, but the administration refused to turn over the tapes.
Buttigieg later revealed that he fired Boykins, who died in 2024, because he’d lost trust in him for failing to tell him that the FBI was investigating some officers for alleged racial comments. Some of those comments were caught on tape.
After a long series of court battles, the case finally came to trial in December before St. Joseph Superior Judge Jamie Woods. He heard closing arguments March 5 and issued a ruling Thursday.
Woods ordered the city to destroy the recordings because they were made without the officers’ consent, a violation of the Indiana and federal wiretap acts.
Woods said evidence showed it was department practice that officers had an expectation of privacy when talking on their office phone lines, and they should only be recorded with their knowledge.
Woods noted the city must wait to destroy the tapes until the council exhausts its appeal options.
