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by ANDY FANCHER
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The identities of nine officers tied to a sweeping test-cheating scandal at a Lowcountry South Carolina police department have been confirmed through state records obtained by FITSNews.
As this outlet exclusively reported, the Mount Pleasant Police Department (MPPD) separated approximately ten officers after determining they were sending and receiving test questions for certifications administered through the S.C. Criminal Justice Academy (SCCJA).
News of the scandal broke last Friday when Police Chief Mark Arnold issued a brief statement confirming the matter began as an internal affairs investigation involving two officers who were terminated. That inquiry later expanded, resulting in the separation of eight additional officers.
Although Arnold said the officers were “cooperative throughout the investigative process,” he did not disclose the specific nature of the separations or whether they involved findings of misconduct. A follow-up request seeking clarification went unanswered that day.
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“The Mount Pleasant Police Department will not be making any further statements at this time,” Arnold said.
Now, one week later, records from the SCCJA confirm that at least nine officers resigned under classifications involving misconduct, with the alleged misconduct in each case listed as occurring between Nov. 4, 2025, and Dec. 5, 2025.
Those same records show that seven of the nine officers identified had no prior law enforcement employment before joining MPPD.
Among them was St. Claire Clinkscales, who had served with MPPD for more than six years; Alec Cummings, who served for more than three years; Zachary Bonadies, who also served more than three years; Jamie Matthews, who served nearly three years; Caroline Drolet, who served more than two years; Kendall Jost, who served for less than two years; and Vincenzo Pagliaroli, who had served with the department for roughly three months.
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St. Claire Lee Clinkscales
Alec Richard Cummings
Zachary Perry Bonadies
Jamie Ellen Matthews
Caroline Mackay Drolet
Kendall Elizabeth Jost
Vincenzo Raymond Pagliaroli
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Only two of the nine officers identified by FITSNews had prior law enforcement experience before joining the department.
Harrison Hodgert joined MPPD in 2023 after previously serving eight months with the North Charleston Police Department. Adam Sher, meanwhile, joined MPPD in 2024 after previously serving more than two years with the Myrtle Beach Police Department.
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Harrison Taylor Hodgert
Adam Bradley Sher
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All of the aforementioned officers were separated from MPPD on Jan. 23, 2026, with one exception. Sher resigned from MPPD in December 2025 and joined the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) earlier this month.
SCCJA records show that Sher’s misconduct involved cheating on a Datamaster operator test, which is required for an officer to administer breath-alcohol tests that are admissible in DUI cases. His separation from MPPD was later updated and classified as a “resignation involving misconduct.”
Those same records indicate Sher was administratively separated from CCSO one day before the remaining officers were separated from MPPD.
None of the remaining officers’ separation files specify which certification exam was allegedly cheated on. Instead, in the separation paperwork submitted to the SCCJA, the department stated that none of the officers’ conduct “rose to a level of misconduct under our internal investigation standard.”
In that same paperwork, however, MPPD pointed to the SCCJA’s determination, stating the academy advised that sharing answers to a certification test did meet its criteria for misconduct.
The incident is not the first time the department has been linked to test-related misconduct. In 2021, MPPD was among more than a dozen Palmetto State law enforcement agencies implicated in a separate test-cheating scandal, according to reports by the The Post and Courier.
That earlier scandal involved officers skipping through or bypassing required training videos on domestic violence.
Write to Andrew Fancher at andy@fitsnews.com.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Andrew Fancher is a Lone Star Emmy award-winning journalist from Dallas, Texas. Cut from a bloodline of outlaws and lawmen alike, he was the first of his family to graduate college which was accomplished with honors. Got a story idea or news tip for Andy? Email him directly and connect with him socially across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
25 comments
You are scum between my toes. Touch some grass and have a heart. People are dying is this world and you are blasting peoples names for no reason. They didn’t hurt anyone and you are acting like they shot someone. Get off your ass and report something useful.
So you are a cop that cheated, too.
I suggest you get the full story before writing an article defaming multiple police officers.
Not sure why you need to build yourself up over ruining the reputations of others. Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess. I doubt you would ever put your life on the line for anyone like these people do.
Next time you need help, don’t call 911. If you’re going to trash on people who have spent their professional careers saving others, don’t expect their help when you need it the most. The full story is never clear and all you’re doing is putting hate into a world that needs more compassion. Respectfully, get a life loser.
Noted that you condone dishonesty
Next time you need help, don’t call 911. If you’re going to trash on people who have spent their professional careers saving others, don’t expect their help when you need it the most. The full story is never clear and all you’re doing is putting hate into a world that needs more compassion. Respectfully, get a life loser
Given what is going on in the world, this is the least of our worries. Law enforcement officers are held to an incredibly high standard, while doing one of the most difficult and dangerous jobs. These officers have dedicated their careers to protecting the public. You make it sound like it’s the end of the world. Are you Mr. Perfect?
Check the facts. Ever look into the academy under a microscope. Or are you not willing to go there?
City of Charleston PD Will hire them. They like these kinds of people who lie, cheat, make sh*t up, etc
The angry comments are hilarious. When you are the worker with minimal years invested and paid by tax dollars, you will be exposed to protect the career workers with many years invested. Common sense, but so is test taking to stay certified.
Law men, generally, should be commended, however, as in any profession or trade, there are those who lack professionalism, pride in their work and integrity. When those are found, they should be called out because they give a bad reputation to those who do possess the proper character traits. It causes one to question if those are the few or does the problem run deeper and wider.
If you need a doctor or lawyer, I somehow doubt those above with all the ill-will expressed against the “messenger” in their posts would knowingly seek the services of one they knew had lied, cheated, and cajoled his/her way through med. school or law school.
I strongly suspect they’d be upset to find out that the outcomes of their health or legal case (to include perhaps the loss of liberty) was bungled by someone who had not shown the requisite competence in that field to adequately address their problem, whether medical or legal, because they had no integrity and cheated on a test to show their competency.
Of concern to me is not the outing of the cheating, but that none other than that Chief of Police indicated on documents to the academy that the conduct failed to meet the standards of misconduct under their internal investigation guidelines. The academy then has to inform a police chief that such conduct did in fact rise to the level of misconduct under the academy’s standards!! INCREDIBLE!
The next question should be what the Mayor and City Council will do, if anything, about their police chief who apparently sets a policy to indicate such conduct is not “misconduct” under departmental investigative standards and in so doing encourages the continuation of that conduct, albeit in perhaps a more secretive fashion next time. It must be either that, or the Chief himself couldn’t qualify as “certified” under academy standards and certainly has no business in his current position. Makes one wonder how many cases may have been manufactured against folks much as in the case of Goose Creek’s Chief and as reported in the Carolina Courier.
The number of thick blue liners commenting anonymously is funny. They might consider applying for an ICE bandit job where they can hide from the public.
Cheating and lying go hand in hand as does sticking up for your fellow thick blue liners when they do the same. It’s like lying on the stand and justifying it because you think the defendant is guilty of whatever you charged them with. I’ve seen this happen many times over the years. Thick blue liners know the public thinks there’s magic in the badge s that makes an 88 honest and trustworthy at all times which encourages them to lie.
There are no good thick blue 88’s when they let trash like these and worse continue to wear those “magic” badges and bat belts.
Justin Hembree killed his ex gf but he is still on the payroll. What about that? The whole department stinks to high heaven.
Always wondered why Molly Wrazen’s murder isn’t investigated by Fits News.
Justin Hembree killed his ex girlfriend. But he is still allowed to work at the department. The whole department stinks.
They should all be fired all they do is issue speeding tickets
Really?
The number of “anonymouses” in the comments is confusing; but everyone knows who I am and I keep le nom de plume (French for pen name) “SubZeroIQ” mainly to make it easier for those who secretly follow my comments to locate them.
So here are some very serious and “SuperIQ” comments that only excuse Andy Fancher’s youth in not reporting that CHEATING ON CERTIFICATION EXAMS IS NOT NEW.
Back in 2007, before Andy Fancher was even in his teens, the COLUMBIA Police Department had a HUGE cheating scandal involving at least eight officers; yet NONE lost his/her job.
In fact, one such cheating officer, Julie Ashmore, went on to FALSELY arrest me in July 2010 and later FALSELY testify that she arrested me for “disorderly conduct” because I have “a voice so loud it gets disruptive.”
First, being loud is NEVER the definition of “disorderly conduct” in any state or federal statute of local ordinance in America.
Next, the physical proof of Julie Ashmore’s lying UNDER OATH is that, since 1980, I have been talking and breathing through a half-paralyzed larynx as a result of a botched thyroid surgery in Chapel Hill, NC, performed by a professor of surgery who wrote the chapter on thyroid surgeries in a renowned surgery textbook.
In court, court reporters and judges REPEATEDLY ask me to speak louder; and over the phone, the other end often does and I have to caution them to not think I am yelling at them when I try to project my voice and that, in so doing, I run out of breath and may have to stop mid-sentence.
BTW, I was acquitted of that false charge which Julie Ashmore had fabricated against me as she had earlier fabricated excuses to cheat on her certification test.
But this does NOT ONLY show that those so-called law enforcement officers who cheat, or try to, on their certification test go on to cold-bloodedly fabricate criminal charges against law-abiding people, it shows the CALLOUSNESS TOWARDS THE PHYSICALLY-DISABLED by tax-paid employees who PRETEND they are in it to “serve and protect.”
Another lying so-called law-enforcement-officer is former Columbia Police Department “investigator” Amanda Star Blanton, who (last I knew) was employed by whom.
Andy Fancher, baby, guess.
Answer: none other than Chuck Wright’s Spartanburg’s Sheriff’s Office.
Perhaps that is the conflict-of-interest Alan Wilson had in investigating Chuck Wright: Amanda Star Blanton was Hatcher-for-Hire Heather’s (“Weiss”) leg-worker and dirty-worker in framing the great Dr. Marie Faltas.
Indeed, Amanda Star Blanton was, on 27 March 2011, arrested for disorderly conduct at or near the home of one of lesbian exes in Ridgeway, SC. I had subpoenaed Blanton to testify in a hearing about the fabricated case against me. What happened? To protect Blanton, the literal (in the legal sense of having been conceived and born out of wedlock) Marion Oneida Hanna, then sitting as a so-called Columbia Municipal Judge, held ME in contempt of court for being unable to stand on an MRI-proven fractured knee when her glory entered the courtroom and for being unwilling to falsely incriminate myself.
The audio of that 28 March 2011 hearing has been submitted to SC’s Supreme Court but they, too, are playing dumb about making it audible to the public on their pretend-“transparent” C-track.
Bottom line: no lenience should be allowed to tax-paid-and-fire-armed people who are less than 100% honest under a false pretext that they “risk their lives” to protect the public. What they really risk is the public’s lives to protect angry, ignorant, and dishonest police officers and judges.
Andy Fancher, baby, take that as a tip and look into the history of police officers cheating on their certification exams in South Carolina and into the hidden connections between Alan Wilson and Chuck Wright via Amanda Star Blanton and Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (“Weiss”) or join me in asking your boss to go coercive-control himself.
I cannot imagine FITS’ reason for not running this comment of mine, but here it is again:
Not too far from the subject of safety and not to be a kill-joy but to be myself, an MD, MPH committed to prevention: If you have the slightest diagnosis, history, family history, and/or risk factor, of coronary heart disease, DO NOT play in the snow, DO NOT shovel snow, DO NOT EVEN go out in the snow, and most definitely DO NOT CHASE A PET in the snow. A less prevalent type of angina pectoris is known as Prinzmetal angina or variant angina is triggered by cold specially with physical exertion. And even the more prevalent “obstructive” angina due to coronary artery plaque is more symptomatic in the cold, to say nothing of the risk of falling in the snow and all the possible sequalae of that. Stay inside and, if you must have some memories, watch through clean and insulating glass, as properly-dressed children chaperoned by young and healthy adult(s) play.
What possible reason does FITS have for not running this comment of mine? Here it is again:
Not too far from the subject of safety and not to be a kill-joy but to be myself, an MD, MPH committed to prevention: If you have the slightest diagnosis, history, family history, and/or risk factor, of coronary heart disease, DO NOT play in the snow, DO NOT shovel snow, DO NOT EVEN go out in the snow, and most definitely DO NOT CHASE A PET in the snow. A less prevalent type of angina pectoris is known as Prinzmetal angina or variant angina is triggered by cold specially with physical exertion. And even the more prevalent “obstructive” angina due to coronary artery plaque is more symptomatic in the cold, to say nothing of the risk of falling in the snow and all the possible sequalae of that. Stay inside and, if you must have some memories, watch through clean and insulating glass, as properly-dressed children chaperoned by young and healthy adult(s) play.
I just re-posted this on the excellent Lawyer Lee’s (out of Georgia, not South Carolina) channel these comments which I had made on Annie Emmerson’s Criminally Obsessed interview with South Carolina Attorney and autobiography author Eric Bland.
For time constraints, I need to paste them everywhere else possible:
“Ever Bluffing Eric Bland (“EBEB”) is the incarnation of hypocrisy. Let me count SOME of the ways:
1. EBEB now says Buster should sue because he was defamed as gay and as a batterer of Stephen Smith to hide the affair. But it was none other than EBEB who picked up the representation of Stephen Smith’s mother, Sanctimonious Sandy Smith (“SSS”), after her previous attorney had dropped SSS because she would not accept the CLEAR evidence that Buster was NOT involved in any way in Stephen Smith’s end-of-life story,
2 – 100. Shall, God willing and Annie Emerson permitting, be posted if this initial comment goes through.
“@CriminallyObsessed, you are UNABASHEDLY helping Ever Bluffing Eric Bland (“EBEB”) violate the rules of professional ethics for lawyers: “RULE 4.5: THREATENING CRIMINAL PROSECUTION A lawyer shall not present, participate in presenting, or threaten to present criminal or professional disciplinary charges solely to obtain an advantage in a civil matter. Comment This Rule is not included in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The language of this Rule is based upon DR 7 105 of the Code of Professional Responsibility.”
I believe what I see; and what I see is some people still claiming THEY KNOW that Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) bribed Becky “Boo” Hill (“BBH”) to mess up and influence the jurors so RAM can get a new trial.
That stupidity got repeated on Annie Emmerson’s stupid podcast.
Here is the exchange:
@pamelamarie1974
1 day ago
I don’t usually comment multiple times, but Becky Hill just angers me to this day.
Why, Becky? Why on Earth jeopardize a double-murder trial by injecting yourself at every opportunity?
Was the filthy lucre of a book deal worth it? Was ruining your doofus son’s career worth it?
A guilty man could be walking free today thanks to Becky’s selfish, greedy actions.
8 Likes
Reply
@marieassaad-faltas1299
4 hours ago
Alex is NOT guilty. Becky “Boo” Hill HAD to tamper with the jury to get Alex convicted.
1 like
Reply????Highlighted reply
@beatrixbrennan1545
27 minutes ago
Alex very well.may have paid her to eff things up on purpose.
Reply
@marieassaad-faltas1299
2 minutes ago
?@beatrixbrennan1545 , that is EXACTLY the senselessness of the supposed “motive” and of how Ever-Bluffing Eric Bland (“EBEB”) forces stupid arguments on SOME of us.
Here is my response:
“If Becky Hill had been bribed by Alex Murdaugh to influence the jury, why would she not have influenced the jury to return a NOT GUILTY verdict and been done with it?”
No one can reopen or question a NOT GUILTY verdict because of the Fifth Amendment.
Why this convoluted way? Pay Becky Hill to influence the jury to get a guilty verdict, then get discovered, then get a new trial where Alex may or may not be acquitted?
PLEASE think of the logic of that and STOP repeating it.
I believe what I see; and what I see is some people still claiming THEY KNOW that Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) bribed Becky “Boo” Hill (“BBH”) to mess up and influence the jurors so RAM can get a new trial.
That stupidity got repeated on Annie Emmerson’s stupid podcast.
Here is the exchange:
@pamelamarie1974
1 day ago
I don’t usually comment multiple times, but Becky Hill just angers me to this day.
Why, Becky? Why on Earth jeopardize a double-murder trial by injecting yourself at every opportunity?
Was the filthy lucre of a book deal worth it? Was ruining your doofus son’s career worth it?
A guilty man could be walking free today thanks to Becky’s selfish, greedy actions.
8 Likes
Reply
@marieassaad-faltas1299
4 hours ago
Alex is NOT guilty. Becky “Boo” Hill HAD to tamper with the jury to get Alex convicted.
1 like
Reply????Highlighted reply
@beatrixbrennan1545
27 minutes ago
Alex very well.may have paid her to eff things up on purpose.
Reply
@marieassaad-faltas1299
2 minutes ago
?@beatrixbrennan1545 , that is EXACTLY the senselessness of the supposed “motive” and of how Ever-Bluffing Eric Bland (“EBEB”) forces stupid arguments on SOME of us.
Here is my response:
“If Becky Hill had been bribed by Alex Murdaugh to influence the jury, why would she not have influenced the jury to return a NOT GUILTY verdict and been done with it?”
No one can reopen or question a NOT GUILTY verdict because of the Fifth Amendment.
Why this convoluted way? Pay Becky Hill to influence the jury to get a guilty verdict, then get discovered, then get a new trial where Alex may or may not be acquitted?
PLEASE think of the logic of that and STOP repeating it.
This is the second time today I had to respond to this crazy idea and I am tired of seeing that crazy idea keep popping up over and over.
Think about it:
If Alex were able to bribe Becky Hill to influence the jury, wouldn’t she have influenced the jury to return a NOT GUILTY verdict and been done with it?
A NOT GUILTY verdict cannot be appealed because of the Fifth Amendment,
Instead, you want people to agree with you that a criminal defendant will bribe a clerk of court to influence the jury to convict that defendant, then get discovered so he can have an appeal, which may or may not be successful; and even if the appeal were successful and Alex were granted a new trial, he may or may not be acquitted.
Think about it:
Behind door A (influencing the jury to acquit), a quick and sure thing. Behind door A (influencing the jury to convict), a 1 in four chance of acquittal after agonizing years and great expenses.
If anybody with a brain had money to bribe a clerk of court to do their bidding, which “door of justice” would the defendant pay the clerk to open?
I am also tired of hearing about the supposedly-poor “Satterfield boys.”
First, at least one of them is a grown fully-employed man.
Second, Gloria Satterfield died IN HOSPITAL of A HEART ATTACK 24 days after having fallen at Moselle because of her CHRONIC DIABETES and TERMINAL RENAL FAILURE.
Third, they got TEN MILLION DOLLARS and wanted more.
What lawyer in South Carolina goes around giving money to fully-employed grown men whose mother died of diabetes?
The Satterfields are as much thieves as Alex Murdaugh, They were in on the insurance fraud scheme because they knew there were no dogs which caused Gloria’s fall at Moselle.
The Satterfields’ only issue is that Alex Murdaugh kept all the loot to himself.
I would also not be surprised if they turned out to be the real killers of Paul and Maggie in revenge for Alex keeping the loot to himself.
Look what happened after Alex was convicted! The Satterfields got TEN MILLION dollars from Alex’s law firm and his bank of which they would NOT HAVE GOTTEN A PENNY if Paul and Maggie were alive and able to testify that there were no dogs causing Gloria’s fall.
If you so easily believe that a man would kill his wife and son to distract from having “stolen” $3M from an insurance company, why can’t you believe that two men would kill two strangers to get TEN MILLION DOLLARS?