When Life Hands You Handcuffs: the Ian Murray Story

Jen Hardy [00:00:00]:
I am very happy today to bring you a veteran who I very much would like to support. As you know, we are a military family. And when I heard Ian’s story, I just had to get him on the show so that he could tell what has happened. So, Ian, if you wanna just briefly introduce yourself and let us know who you are.

Ian murray [00:00:21]:
Sure. My name is Ian Murray. I’m, been in the military now for about, 22 years

Jen Hardy [00:00:28]:
in

Ian murray [00:00:29]:
the guard and reserve components. I’ve done 2 deployments, 1 to Afghanistan, 1 to Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, and, done an overseas tour of duty in Germany. I’ve had 4 MOSs. I’m currently in the military intelligence field. I used to work corrections on my civilian job, and, yeah, that’s what the story is mostly about was the disastrous end to that career. And, yeah, it’s just one of those things I’d never in a 1000000 years ever thought would happen to anybody, especially me, but, unfortunately, it did. So here we are.

Jen Hardy [00:01:07]:
Yeah. So do you wanna do you wanna just jump right into that? Or, so what made you decide to go into law enforcement? Was that something you’d always wanted to do?

Ian murray [00:01:16]:
Well, when I was younger, yes. You know, I liked the idea of, being in law enforcement. I grew up in the nineties. Being a police officer back then was a pretty popular job. And, when I joined the military, I went into the military police field and the air force reserves. And, yeah, I just thought it would be great, that’d be a great start to getting some basic training and getting an understanding as to, you know, how it works and everything. And after I finished that, my first duty station was in, Charleston, South Carolina. I worked corrections there for about 3 years for Charleston County.

Ian murray [00:01:58]:
And, I learned a lot there too, but, unfortunately, it was as far as becoming a police officer there, it was very difficult. It was a very there were a lot of small towns and townships and things like that. And, the department I worked for to become a police officer, they kept moving the goal post back if you were a corrections officer, so to speak. They like first they said, oh, well, if you do 2 years, you know, you can go on as a police officer. Then it became 4 years and then, oh, now you have to have a college degree. And it just, got to the point where I kind of realized this is never gonna happen and I kinda got tired of the bureaucracy and the politics. So I left that department, and I, went out on the road, got my CDL, drove trucks for a while. And then when the recession hit in 2,008 to 9, I got offered a job in Jacksonville, which is where I grew up.

Ian murray [00:02:53]:
So I was a little reluctant, but, after going down there and meeting some of the officers and seeing the facility and I liked how it was run compared to the one I’d worked at before. I decided to give it another chance. And, I went through their entire academy process all over again. I moved from, you know, another state, bought another house, you know, did a you know, made a complete move. And the hiring process took a while. They knew I was in the military at the time I was in the army national guard. Right after I got hired, like the week before I was supposed to start my training, my father passed away from a heart attack. So, yeah, I made kind of starting the job kinda difficult.

Ian murray [00:03:38]:
You know, I was dealing with that. And, but, yeah, I honestly, at that point, I had no desire to really become a police officer anymore. I just, you know, I looked at their benefits package, and that was part of the reason I took the job. JSO at the time had a really good retirement plan. It was, similar to the military. She worked 20 years, and you retire. And from day 1 of your retirement, like, you started collecting your pension and it was pretty good. So that’s what really attracted me to that department.

Ian murray [00:04:10]:
And, you know, I I like I said, though, at that point, I really didn’t have any desire to go out on the road as a cop. I mean, you know, if I the opportunity presented itself to maybe go, like, to another agency, like a federal agency, I might have pursued that. But perfectly honestly, I was, just happy being a corrections officer there. You know, that’s I that’s all I really wanted to do for 20 years, retire, and, you know, move on with my life from there.

Jen Hardy [00:04:35]:
So when you say corrections, just so we people who are listening now, is that working in a prison or is that Yeah.

Ian murray [00:04:43]:
Corrections usually refers to, jails or prison. Jacksonville has several facilities. They have a county jail, which is in downtown Jacksonville. That’s mostly pretrial. There is a, board of inmates that work that are county sentenced. They they, like, do the, you know, the work in the jail. They work in the kitchen, things like that. Then there’s 2 other facilities that I’ve, worked at.

Ian murray [00:05:07]:
One I worked at was called the Montgomery Corrections Center, also known as MCC. And it had a, it was kind of like a county prison you could call it. It was where inmates who got sentenced, I think, to us less than a year for nonviolent crimes mostly would do their time. They’d stay up there and then they’d go out. A lot of them worked on work crews. They would go out and, you know, do various work around the city, you know, maintenance and things like that. And then we had another facility called the community transition centers where, it was like another type of work facility. Inmates who were doing, like, weekend time or evening, you know, like, some of them were allowed to go out during the day and then had to spend the night in jail type thing.

Ian murray [00:05:46]:
It was like a hybrid type situation. But, yeah, corrections surrounds all that. You know, prisons, jails on you know, when you’re bigger corrections, at least when I think of it, that’s what it surrounds, any kind of incarceration type atmosphere.

Jen Hardy [00:05:59]:
Okay. And when you were hired, they knew you were military. That wasn’t not a surprise.

Ian murray [00:06:03]:
No. Yeah. In fact, when I was going through my board interview, and I, you know, told them I was, you know, I reminded them I was still in. They encouraged me to use the military benefits that they offered. You know? So, you know, they reminded me, yeah, we have paid military leave for you to use. You know, we like to take care of our people who earn the reserves and things like that. You know, that obviously, at least from, the overall standpoint wasn’t true. So

Jen Hardy [00:06:28]:
Right. And so that person obviously was not your supervisor after a certain amount of time. And then what led to this big problem?

Ian murray [00:06:38]:
Oh, man. I honestly don’t know, what really led to the problem. From almost immediately starting there, I had problems with my military leave. I don’t know why, but, I had one sergeant that was when I was on my FTO program, he was, demanding documentation that didn’t exist when it came to my military leave. I explained it to him and he was directing my FTOs to give me negative reviews based off that. We finally ended up in front of one of the watch commanders and, you know, after hearing, you know, my story, he’s like, I don’t know why this is happening because your military has been approved. And I said, well, then why is this sergeant trying to get me hemmed up for something? And he says, I’ll take care of that. So that situation kinda handled itself.

Ian murray [00:07:23]:
There was another instance where I had a sergeant that was, he was actually instrumental into this bigger incident that happened, but, he was trying to keep me on probation for taking military leave, which is against federal law. It was actually a clause in the soldiers and sailors relief that says you cannot your seniority date or any kind of promotion date cannot be held up because you take military leave. And, I brought this up to that, to another lieutenant the other lieutenant who was trying to implement this on his behalf and, he didn’t care. Like, he was basically going along with what his sergeant was telling him, and I had to get my, you know, I didn’t know who else to go to really, so I contacted my union president and even he’s like, yeah, that’s not supposed to happen. That’s against the law. So, yeah, that, they ended up moving me from the Montgomery correction center down to the main jail after that just because, you know, they, were trying to remove me from the situation. And then, there was a lieutenant there. She was a sergeant when I got hired.

Ian murray [00:08:24]:
She was actually, part of our, I guess, you could call it reception time when we were coming out of the academy and getting ready start. Like, she was there doing some training for us, and then she eventually got promoted to lieutenant. And, I don’t know what her problem was, but she had, it wasn’t just with me. I mean, I was the most severe case from what I understand, but she had a problem with a lot of just I hate to say it, but male officer. She I I think she was one of those people that just hated men. From my understanding, she’d been in some abusive relationships and, you know, things like that. And she’d gotten a couple other my coworkers hemmed up on some bogus allegations. And, yeah, I don’t know what happened.

Ian murray [00:09:08]:
I don’t know what turned her attention to me at all. I mean, I came to work. I did my job. I always try to be professional and, but, yeah, when I worked at the jail, the main jail, like, she would always put me in, like, the worst position, like, you know, the most uncomfortable position to work in the jail. She would even direct other supervisors to, you know, just make my life more miserable, you know, make me do things that other officers wouldn’t normally have to do. And so, yeah, I don’t know what her issue was with with me was, but I really don’t know why she took these actions against me. I honestly don’t think she even expected him to go this far. I think she figured, oh, I’ll just file this complaint, make his life a little miserable, and we’ll all move on.

Ian murray [00:09:53]:
I don’t think even she expected it to get blown out of, you know, blown out of proportion like it did. And, you know, so but,

Jen Hardy [00:10:04]:
from what I heard, you were you were you needed to go for military leave. And she wouldn’t let you file out the paperwork the right way. Is that how it started?

Ian murray [00:10:14]:
No. No. No. That’s not what happened was, I had, you know, my normal drill schedule. And in 2014, there was one of those government shutdowns that, this was like one of the first ones when they started kinda happening on a semi regular basis. And, I had orders to be on military duty Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for drill. So Thursday night, I contacted my supervisor in the military, said, hey. Just checking in.

Ian murray [00:10:43]:
What you know, are we reporting in? And his the way he put it to me, I don’t remember his exact words, but he said, we’re not reporting in because of the shutdown, but we still have orders, so you need to be available in case we get called up, which that to me was perfectly normal because I’ve had that happen several times, especially being in the National Guard. We constantly got put on alert for hurricane duty and stuff like that. So I never, I didn’t give it a second thought. So, the next day I, you know, hung out at the house, waited on a phone call, no one called, but the next day he said, yeah, we’re coming in. So we went in the Saturday and Sunday. Well, several months later, I got an updated drill calendar for the remainder of the fiscal year. And, they had, basically reprinted the whole year, and they had taken that Friday off the calendar because we didn’t report in. So, you know, I took it to my lieutenant to make the amended changes in my leave for the remainder of the year.

Ian murray [00:11:46]:
She calls me in and says, what’s going on with this date here? And I explained the situation to her and she says, well, I need you to change that day from, a per a military day to a personal leave day. And I’m like, I had orders, you know, and and that was another thing. Well, she’s like, well, I need updated orders. I said, well, you had orders. That’s the original orders I gave you. And she said, well, if you didn’t report in that day, then you you need to change your day from a first a military leave to a personal day. So, I was a little bit confused because I’m thinking this was from several months prior. I mean, I had orders.

Ian murray [00:12:26]:
So I went to my military unit and explained the situation. They said, yeah. You’re not the first person that’s asked us this. Yeah. You had orders. You’re perfectly were within your rights to, you know, take that day as a military lead day. However, if it’s your civilian employer’s policy, you need to, change the day in accordance with, you know, whatever your civilian employer tells you to do. So I went back to the sheriff’s office, spoke with someone who’d been in the sheriff’s office for, like, 30 years.

Ian murray [00:12:56]:
He was one of the union stewards. So I figured, you know, this person would know whether and they even said the same thing. They’re like, yeah. You had orders, but, yeah, if your lieutenant’s ordering you to change it, you need to change it because if you don’t, she’ll probably write you up for insubordination because, this is at this point, they’d known her reputation and know what kind of person she was. So I don’t even think they expected her to do what she did following this. So I went back to work, followed her instructions, changed the leave. The same day she denied the the leave request she told me to make. And then, like, the next day, I got a phone call from my military unit claiming that, she filed, some kind of a complaint against me with our integrity division, which handles criminal matters.

Ian murray [00:13:39]:
So and I was like, oh, jeez. So I called one of my attorneys within my union and spoke to them about it. I called the union president. You know, I really didn’t know who to talk to. I just started you know, and I went to one of my chiefs and told him what happened. He’s like, I can’t discuss it. It’s an ongoing investigation. And I said, sir, this was done with malice intent.

Ian murray [00:13:58]:
You’re telling me and he’s like, I can’t do anything. I’m sorry. He said, but everyone told me that I talked to said, if you had orders, then they’ll do their investigation, find the orders because they’re on file already. You turn them in to get the time off, and this will all get swept out of the, you know, swept out of the way and you’ll be fine. So I was never worried. You know? I I had faith in the system that they were gonna do their jobs, but, unfortunately, they didn’t. They called me at one point, wanted me to come in for questioning. I called my lawyer, asked him to come with me.

Ian murray [00:14:29]:
He said, well, there’s really no reason for us to go in for questioning. Just call them back, tell them you’re declining to make a statement, and you they have all your orders on file if you need an end. So I did that and I even went a step further and said if you can’t find them, call me and I’ll email and fax them or even bring them hand delivered to you. That was the last I heard from those detectives until my false arrest about a month later. And when they brought me in for questioning, they started asking me all these questions. Where were you on this data? You know? And I said, well, what did my order say? And it was blatantly clear at that point. They never they either, like, didn’t go get my orders or they just decided to omit them from their, report when they went to go get the, arrest warrant signed. And so, like, then they started saying things, oh, well, if you just been more cooperative with us, I said, I was cooperative as I needed to be.

Ian murray [00:15:23]:
I told you point blank where my orders were. I mean, I even offered to bring them to you. And, you know, they started making these excuses that, you know, it seemed like they were trying to make some kind of an example out of me, like, you know, if I, like, you know, come kiss our you know, come lick our boots or we’re gonna ruin your life, which is essentially what they tried to do. So they immediately when I was arrested, they came to my house in Nassau County 3 days before I was supposed to leave on a 4 month TDY. And, you know, it was blatantly clear in my opinion that they they basically heard I was about to leave for 3 months or 4 months and they decided we need to take action because if we wait till he comes back, we’re not gonna have any authority to do anything because they only had 6 months to from the time they started the investigation, they either had to act or drop it. So, yeah, they, ended up taking me in. And as soon as they got me in, apparently, they notified the media, which I think was like the point of no return because I could tell towards the end of the questioning when they were making these lame excuses, they knew they’d made a mistake. And, they took me down to the jail where I’d worked at.

Ian murray [00:16:32]:
I was booked in fingerprinted, photographed, all this stuff, and, it was by one of my friends too that I worked with. And, one of my friends came to me and said, hey, man. I’m I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it’s all over the news. So 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock news drive time, I had people calling me wanting to know if this was some kind of a joke or this was real. And I said, no. Unfortunately, it’s real, and they somebody messed up really bad. So, yeah, my wife was fortunately, we, were able to, I had a $1500 bond. Fortunately, we were able to cash bond me out of jail so I didn’t have to, like, sit in jail overnight.

Ian murray [00:17:12]:
My wife came down, picked me up. That same lawyer who I’d been speaking to from the union, made contact and, you know, I said, so what happens now? And he basically was shifting his whole thing from saying you didn’t do anything wrong to like, well, I can get you a plea deal. And I said, what happened to not doing anything wrong? And he said, well, if they got a judge to sign a warrant, you must be guilty of something. I’m like, are you kidding me? Right? You know, I’m like, you really think I’m that stupid? And, you know, he says, well, you know, if I if you hire you know, if you retain me to represent you, I can pretty much do it for free. And I’m like I’m like, I don’t think that’s an issue here right now. So, I hung up with him, and I went and spoke to, another attorney, a private attorney that, my stepfather knew really well. And, of course, he even said, yeah. This this was false arrest.

Ian murray [00:18:02]:
They clearly didn’t have their ducks in a row. Not only that, do you have pretty decent grounds for a civil case. So I hired him. And, within a week of hiring this other attorney, those detectives who arrested me probably did more investigating the week after that than they did the whole 4 months prior. They actually went to my army unit. My army unit told them to pretty much kick rocks. You know, you never came and spoke to us prior to this. We’re not gonna help you now.

Ian murray [00:18:28]:
And then they came back and threatened my some of my military members, saying, you don’t cooperate, we’ll take you to jail for obstruction. And then they retaliate. They said, well, you just falsely arrested a guy for serving in the military. So if you wanna take that road, we’re more than happy to, you know, go up that mountain with you. And the state attorney even got ahold of the case. He never even did paperwork on it. And after about 2 months of giving them more time to find more dirt on me, which there was none, he ended up not even charging me with a crime. Like, I was never even officially charged with any kind of crime, and they were trying to charge me with felony charges.

Ian murray [00:19:06]:
So then they turned it over to an administrative investigation to try and say I broke some kind of rule. First thing we did was got a letter from the city administrator or the city manager. I forget which one stating that I’d done nothing wrong. And then, the detective they used was also in the military, and I thought, okay. Maybe this will be in my favor this time. No. And, this detective, I don’t know. I’ve never even met this guy, but, like, he immediately started, he he was in the air force or the air air force national guard and was an OSI agents, office of special investigation.

Ian murray [00:19:45]:
And the reason I know that is because members of my military command were calling me saying, yeah. This guy is going around to people knocking on their door saying not saying hello. I’m detective I think his name was Malyer. I’m Malyer with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. He was flashing his OSI credentials saying I’m special agent, Malir with air force OSI. I need to talk to you about one of your soldiers. So he was basically lying to my members of my chain of command to try and elicit information from them. And then, they were even telling them, like, you do realize, you know, we’re a military intelligence command.

Ian murray [00:20:17]:
We’re not a bunch of, you know, you know, I know, like, one of them even told me, he said, yeah. I told the guy, like, I know you think you’re air force and that you’re smarter than us, but we’re an intel unit. We’re not we’re not a bunch of dumb people here. And, from my understanding, yeah, like, during the course of the investigation, at some point, he ended up losing his air his, air force credentials. I finally got to go to that training I’d been postponed from. He even called the schoolhouse, that I was at to try and get me thrown out of the school. Had nothing to do with this investigation. I never even met this guy.

Ian murray [00:20:49]:
I don’t know why he had such a chip on his shoulder for me, but, yeah, it got real nasty. Even after all that, they still tried to sustain allegations against me. We ended up having a meeting with the under sheriff. His name’s Pat Ivy. And, we thought this might, you know, like, like, this was right before we were gonna have a civil service hearing to basically put this to bed once and for all. And the, undersheriff basically tried to intimidate me into taking a deal. He ended up throwing me out of his office when I wouldn’t agree with him. And then after that, a harassment campaign and suited his direction.

Ian murray [00:21:23]:
He was sending people to my house. My wife claimed she was being followed my ex wife claimed she was being followed a couple times. Guy came to our house, was trying to was kicking on my front door. He was wearing a JSO polo and driving an unmarked police car. And when my neighbor came over to the fence line to start taking pictures of his car and him, he immediately left. But, yeah, at the very in 11th hour before the civil service hearing, they basically agreed to drop everything and give me my back pay if they if I just agreed not to show up to the hearing, which is what I wanted anyway. And then, unfortunately, after all this was done, we did file a civil lawsuit. It went on for a long time.

Ian murray [00:22:03]:
They spent, golly, 100 of 1,000 of dollars in man hours between the city attorney and all this other stuff to try and cover it up. And in the, the end defense they had was the detectives basically played dumb to try and make it look like there was no ill intent. So, it was pretty pathetic because these detectives who arrested me, they’re all college educated. They’re all experienced police officers. They basically had to go on record stating they thought they’d done their jobs properly and made a mistake. So that was their big defense. We ended up settling out of court on the lawsuit. So, yeah, that’s it in a nutshell.

Ian murray [00:22:39]:
Kind of a big nutshell, I know. But,

Jen Hardy [00:22:43]:
yeah.

Ian murray [00:22:43]:
Yeah. That’s, that’s that’s my story. Sorry if we got off track a little bit.

Jen Hardy [00:22:48]:
No. You no. I that’s the whole point is for you to tell your story. So don’t don’t be able to apologize. That is incredible. And I heard that there was more than one person that came to arrest you. Was that a thing?

Ian murray [00:22:59]:
Oh, yes. Yeah. The Friday afternoon that they came to arrest me, I was sitting in my living room folding laundry or something. They came into my garage. They didn’t come to the front door. My garage door was open. They came to my into my garage where my car was parked, knocked on that door. I walked through the kitchen, opened the door.

Ian murray [00:23:18]:
There were 4 officers standing there wearing, like, semi riot gear. And, when I opened the door, I was like, can I help you guys? At first, I thought it was the wrong house. Then they said, are you corrections officer Murray? I said, yeah. One of them grabbed me aggressively and cuffed me. I thought it was a joke. I almost started laughing because I thought maybe some of my friends from work were just playing a prank on me. But, yeah, when they actually took put me in the car, you know, first they came in my house, one of them even, like, went back and used my bathroom. You know, it’s like just they had to establish that dominance, I guess.

Ian murray [00:23:55]:
And, yeah, it was, you know, really bizarre. They were trying to, like, be all nice and polite and cordial, you know, and, you know, so yeah. I I don’t know what they were expecting, but, you know

Jen Hardy [00:24:11]:
Right. But the end and they end up they dropped everything because, obviously, you didn’t do anything wrong.

Ian murray [00:24:16]:
No. I didn’t.

Jen Hardy [00:24:18]:
So that is absolutely incredible. And and I think the thing the thing is, you know, you were saying it’s all over the news and everything. Right? So the court of public opinion is at this point, the issue. Right? That Yep. People still And that’s

Ian murray [00:24:31]:
the yeah. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.

Jen Hardy [00:24:33]:
No. No. That’s all I was gonna say.

Ian murray [00:24:35]:
Yeah. The the the issue was, like, after the lawsuit was settled, you know, we went to the media outlets who ran this false narrative and tried to, you know, to reach out and see if they’d be willing to do a retraction or an updated story, and they won’t even respond. And it’s partially because JSO has them all in their back pocket. JSO gives them so much of their coverage, you know, so they basically can’t go against the grain of anything JSO where they lose a significant amount of their, news coverage. So, yeah, I reached out to some directly. My, the guy who, who’s been helping me get these kind of interviews, said, yeah. Like, I I’ve never had it where I email people and they just don’t even respond. It’s pretty, you know, sad.

Ian murray [00:25:14]:
So, like, even they I think they know they, they stepped in due to a little bit and they don’t wanna have to go on record admitting they ran such an another interesting fact too is, when I worked for JSO, there we did see, you know, officers get arrested. You know, a couple of my fellow corrections officers got arrested for actually doing thing. 1 of them got arrested for smuggling drugs in the jail. You know, we had there were police officers who got arrested for various things. Usually after that happened, there was always a press conference at the, 1st floor of the, police memorial building where the one of the chiefs or the directors goes out and gives a statement to the police. They didn’t do that with me. So I honestly think that they they knew they were taking a gamble with this from the get go, and, like, nobody wanted to stamp their name on this to, you know, go on record and put their face out there. So

Jen Hardy [00:26:05]:
Wow. Alright. Well, thank you so much for telling me it’s incredible. We’re gonna share it everywhere we can. We are going to rally the troops in a literal and figurative sense. And, you know, and we’re gonna work on reversing the court of opinion because

Ian murray [00:26:22]:
That’d be awesome. Thank you.

Jen Hardy [00:26:24]:
That is what we need to do. So, I so I’m gonna say goodbye for here. And thank you Ian murray, for sharing your incredible story of false arrest with us. A collective salute to you for all you’ve done for our country.