Beaufort cop invited kids to lunch. Then he showed them family’s criminal records
When Officer Coley Hebrard called two students into his office for lunch at the end of March, he said he intended to talk to them about changing their behavior.
Instead, Hebrard, a member of the Beaufort Police Department assigned to Beaufort Middle School as a school resource officer, looked up several of their family members on a police-only search system, showing them criminal records and evidence of a relative’s suicide attempts.
“SRO Coley Hebrard had good intentions, but poor judgment,” Lt. Charles Squire said in an April 15 disciplinary investigation, according to records obtained by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette newspapers under the Freedom of Information Act. The newspapers requested records of citizen complaints at local police departments.
Hebrard was never placed on administrative leave and did not lose pay during the investigation. Instead, he was ordered to attend a training session, department spokesperson Captain George Erdel said Monday.
What happened?
Hebrard has been assigned to Beaufort Middle School since at least 2018, when he won South Carolina’s School Resource Officer of the Year award.
According to the report of the incident, because both students had been in trouble, Hebrard said he thought looking them up in the department’s Spillman Record System, a password-protected search engine, would help. This is not the first time he has searched students in the database, according to the report.
“I have used this in the past with positive results and helped some students get back on the right track,” Hebrard said in the report. “Since kids have to see something to fully understand than just simply saying it was there.”
That’s when one of the students asked if Hebrard would look up his father in the database.
“I said no at first, but he started naming all the things he had done, so I figured he knew,” he said in the report. “So, I looked up his father and saw his involvements.”
Hebrard then searched for the student’s other family members in the database.
Parents complained to the school and police over the next two days when their children told them what happened. An investigation was launched by the department and found Hebrard had violated Beaufort Police Department’s General Order 1.19 and 1.33. Those orders say police cannot release confidential information without authorization.
Hebrard was set to attend formal counseling on April 19.
Candace Bruder, spokesperson for Beaufort County School District, said the district “has an excellent relationship with the City of Beaufort Police Department, and “any disciplinary matters related to SROs” are the responsibility of the department, she said.
“We work with our police departments to collaboratively reassess the SROs at our school sites on an annual basis during the summer months and engage in discussions regarding school assignments at that time,” she said Monday.
Hebrard was still assigned to Beaufort Middle School as of Monday, Bruder confirmed.
Erdel said Monday that the department is “definitely not reassigning him.”
