Ex-South Bend chief says phone recordings routine

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The former police chief in South Bend says the high-ranking officers who claim he wrongly recorded their phone calls knew that the department’s phone lines had been routinely recorded for years.

The controversy over those recordings led in March to the city’s mayor demoting Darryl Boykins from the chief’s position.

The South Bend Tribune reports Boykins says in federal court documents that all city officers signed an acknowledgment that they had no privacy rights while using department phones.

The lawsuit filed last month claims Boykins ordered the recordings to determine whether division chiefs were personally loyal to him. A former department official says the recorded conversations captured racist slurs about Boykins, who is black.