Today’s question to my audience is this: Does the over-use of social media create poor choices or, should people who are naturally prone to poor choices stay completely off the social media? A follow-up question I could add is: Should people who are placed in roles of the public trust be allowed within a mile of personal social media accounts?
Jason Collier – Oh no, you didn’t!
In February 2020, the City of Stinnett, Texas hired Jason Collier as their new police chief. He is the father of four children and, in addition to his job as a police officer he was allegedly an ordained minister.
A year later he was arrested, then placed on administrative leave and resigned from his post. While being hired on as police chief of Stinnett, a town of about 1,900 people is hardly Dallas or Houston, it is an important career move and a very public-facing opportunity.
What led to Collier’s downfall?
Some might blame Facebook. Some might try to blame Collier’s victims. I blame his downfall on two factors: he believed he was “invisible” to the social media world and that he rationalized that his choices would have no consequences.
What started his downfall was characterized in January 2020 by Sergeant Cindy Barkley with the Texas Department of Public Safety as fraud:
“Collier allegedly sent a text message to the victim with a fraudulent government record attached. The document was a fraudulent marriage annulment.”
How did this start?
It started “innocently” enough when a post appeared on Facebook. A woman claimed to be the former girlfriend of the police chief. The girlfriend posted to Facebook that the Sherriff lived a rather complex social life. He has a wife and multiple fiancées.
The “former girlfriend” tagged the City of Stinnett Facebook page as to the obvious lack of ethics of the police chief. Collier allegedly asked two different women to marry him – while he was still married. To perpetuate the scam, he gave the women fake marriage annulment documents.
When she posted the attachment, it garnered hundreds of Facebook “Likes.” This then led to further embarrassment for the city in that a Facebook page was created called “Victims of Jason Collier.” Thus far, the page has attracted thousands of followers.
To fan the angry flames Collier posted a “contrite video” to the entire Facebook group apologizing for his actions in hoodwinking at least two women in addition to his own wife. The video is rather easy to find online. He appears so remorseful in the video. The video, less than a minute in length, is non-specific and directed at no one. He had the audacity to be in his squad car (ostensibly on-duty) and apparently in uniform.
The scandal, in turn, has caused the City of Stinnett to remove their Facebook page, most probably to allow the dust of the scandal to settle.
Who is this man?
To say that Jason Collier is unethical or even a blatant liar may be understatements. He was passing off a false government document of a marriage annulment to two women he was allegedly engaged to, in a juggling act between three women and their children.
He was a police officer and then a police chief. He knew better.
As the accusations piled up against him, and his further playing out the charade on social media, Collier was revealed as a man without conscience, but not nearly so serious as the flaws in the vetting and hiring process. It is difficult to imagine that a thorough background check of Collier would have revealed no improprieties in his past.
That aside, Collier, with no oversite was somehow able to get a blank marriage annulment form, forge names and dates, and possibly an official seal. Granted, it is a small town where access to such documents might have been easy, but there needed to be a system of oversite in place.
Was Collier’s need, a need for power? Possibly. Then again, he was at least taking some financial advantage of them in addition to emotional and seemingly physical advantage.
Whether Collier was able to rationalize his behavior or was simply doing whatever felt good, is a matter of conjecture at this point. The 42-second apology issued on Facebook (complete with sighs and shrugs), gave no indications whether he felt remorse – or nothing.
What is clear was that the person they believed they hired, was not the person he claimed himself to be. An ethical screening might have determined who Jason Collier was, and instead the city got an imitation of a man.
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