When Columbia Police Chief Randy Scott announced his sudden sabbatical from his high-profile post a week ago, we were confused. The city government released a document in response to the requests of many media outlets, and rather than being content with “answers” to the Randy Scott mystery, we’re now even more confused.
The 50-page report the city government released was impressively cryptic for a document of such length. Much to our disappointment, the report didn’t tell us anything about where Scott had gone, why he had left and didn’t even give us reasons for why the city refuses to tell us any concrete information at all. The only thing we do know is that complaints have recently been filed against Scott, for which the city had considered “disciplinary action.”
We have no grounds upon which to make any speculations about the reason for Scott’s departure, but for our city government, we expect a lot more transparency. We understand that, sometimes, information can’t be disclosed when facts are still unconfirmed or if there’s uncertainty about the situation. But if that’s the case, we expect the government to at least tell us. The fact that we’ve been kept in the dark gives us reason to think something more serious, or even scandalous, is going on. For a city police chief in charge of ensuring the safety of Columbia, that’s not a doubt we want to have.
Hopefully, the city will step into the light in the next few days and give us some real answers. Goodness knows we don’t need any more reasons to be skeptical of South Carolina’s government.