Phenix City officer arrested after firing gun during argument with neighbors, sheriff says
Phenix City police officer Charles Everett Fields was arrested Monday after firing a gun into the air amid an argument with neighbors about loud music during a July 4 party, said Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor.
“He was asking them to turn it down,” Taylor said during a news conference Monday, “and it got into an altercation.”
Fields, 40, was charged with menacing, a misdemeanor, Taylor said. He was released from the Russell County Jail on a $1,000 bond.
Fields was suspended without pay as the Phenix City Police Department conducted its administrative investigation separate from the sheriff’s office criminal investigation.
Wednesday, he was fired after the police department determined his actions during the incident violated department rules, Capt. George Staudinger told the Ledger-Enquirer.
“The investigation found he violated standards of off duty behavior and certainly conduct unbecoming an employee of the Phenix City Police Department,” Chief Ray Smith said in an email to the L-E.
The incident happened during the early morning hours of July 5 off Alabama Highway 165 on Sweet Birch Drive, where Fields lives, Taylor said. The weapon Fields used was his personal handgun.
“He brandished the firearm in the direction of multiple people there in the crowd and actually fired a couple of warning shots in the air,” Taylor said.
“We believe alcohol was involved,” Taylor said, “not to say Mr. Fields was intoxicated at the time.”
Fields, retired from the military, has been a Phenix City police officer for three months, Taylor said. He had just finished his in-service training but hadn’t been to the police academy.
“He made what we believe to be some bad decisions,” Taylor said. “… He will answer for those decisions in court.”
No assault charge was filed, Taylor said, because the witness said Fields fired the gun two to three times into the air — not at anybody — and nobody was injured.
“The menacing case is what we know we can make,” he said. “… After consultations with the district attorney, we don’t think the other charges would be as easy to make. We don’t know we can make them at all.”
If convicted, Taylor said, Fields faces up to 1-2 years in prison.
“Given he is retired military and doesn’t have a record, doesn’t have a criminal record, I would imagine that he would be able to come out OK in our system today,” Taylor said.
Staudinger told the Ledger-Enquirer after the news conference that the arrest of the officer is “disheartening, especially in the time now when police departments across the country are under scrutiny. . . . We want the public to know we are a professional organization, and if there are allegations of misconduct, they are not going to be swept under the rug.”
Despite the menacing charge being a misdemeanor, Staudinger said, “It is a serious allegation when you have an officer accused of brandishing a weapon. If those type of allegations are sustained, they would be violations of several policies and directives, and it would be dealt with accordingly, up to termination.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 5:05 PM.
