A high-ranking Bloomington Police officer had to be reminded of the law during a June 14 traffic stop he conducted while off duty, despite telling a suspect he’s the chief of police.
The June incident, which sparked a lawsuit followed by the abrupt retirement of Assistant Police Chief Paul Williams, was among the last things he did after four decades in the department.
Williams’ track record shows the incident wasn’t the first time he leveraged his position and power in ways that sometimes concerned his subordinates and superiors, a WGLT investigation found. Williams was disciplined just last year for improper use of force for pepper-spraying someone – one of at least 21 times he did so over a three-year period, records show. A former police-union leader, Williams racked up over $500,000 in overtime in less than a decade – an amount that’s alarmed Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady.
Brady said he’s seen the body cam videos from the latest incident in June, and he said the police department has work to do to restore trust with the public.
“The situation is certainly something that, on the surface, appears to be something that no one, in any way, shape or form, would not be feeling that that was a very big mistake — and a very terrible situation,” he told WGLT.
'I am the chief'
Williams pulled over 21-year-olds Lenelle Higgins and Garrett Chubb on Bloomington’s east side while driving his personal vehicle – with Williams’ wife in the passenger seat – according to body camera footage obtained by WGLT through a records request.
When officers arrived on the call for backup, body cam footage shows Williams requested Higgins and Chubb be charged with disorderly conduct and taken to jail. Williams ordered responding officers to take their phones.
The footage shows both men handcuffed and detained in separate squad cars.
“May I ask why this is happening at all?” Chubb said after being placed in the squad car in handcuffs.
“Well, this is the assistant chief of the Bloomington Police Department,” the officer said, referencing Williams.
“Was there any crime committed?” Chubb said.
“If he’s informed me that there is, then yes,” the officer said.
According to a police report filed by Williams four days after the incident, Chubb and Higgins were illegally parked in an accessible parking space at a Culver’s in Bloomington but did not have a visible placard or license plate permitting them to park there.
Chubb said he was picking up a DoorDash delivery order.
Williams’ account said he followed the vehicle in an attempt to write down Chubb and Higgins’ license plate to issue a citation later. In body cam footage of police interviews with the suspects, Higgins admits to “flipping off” Williams when their car was boxed in at Culver’s. Williams then followed them in his pickup truck and conducted a traffic stop in the parking lot of a Moe’s on Empire Street, a half mile away.
“Both men pulled out their cell phones and began videotaping me,” Williams writes in his report, “shouting at me and acting erratically. I then returned to my truck and entered the truck. My windows were up and I locked the doors.”
While on the phone with dispatch, according to Williams’ account, the two men approached his vehicle.
“They were using their cell phones and were recording my truck from different angles, recording my license plates, my wife and I. The men were talking very loudly and behaving in a manner that was alarming and disturbing.”
Officers responding to Williams’ call for backup questioned the suspects, whose accounts vary from Williams’. Higgins said Chubb, the driver, rolled down his window when Williams clinked his badge on the glass. They told officers that Williams said, “Do you know who I am? I’m the chief of police and I’m going to have you arrested.”
Both told police they did not harass or threaten Williams, according to police reports and body cam footage. Cell phone video of Williams approaching Chubb and Higgins’ vehicle provided to WGLT by their attorney show Williams looking in the drivers’ side window displaying his badge, repeating “Sir” several times as Chubb, the driver, asks for his name and badge number.
Williams does not provide that, instead saying, “you just stay, and I’ll have some guys come out,” then leaving the frame.
Officers did not ask whether they got out of their vehicle or approached the truck and it is not captured on video. Williams, who was off duty, was not wearing a body worn camera and is dressed in shorts and flip-flops.
“So, flipping someone off is a crime?” Chubb asked an officer while being questioned in handcuffs. “May I speak with a chief to correct this?”
“I am the chief,” said Williams, who was pacing near Chubb at the time.
The incident sparked a federal lawsuit, in which Higgins and Chubb claim Williams abused his power. Williams was placed on administrative leave and filed for retirement shortly after the allegations were made public. The lawsuit is still pending.
Higgins and Chubb say their phones were seized without probable cause; body cam footage shows Williams repeatedly instructed officers to take their phones “as evidence.” The incident report and body cam footage confirm officers took the phones to pursue a search warrant through the state’s attorney, but the police report notes the phones were later returned to the men at the scene.
Williams also gives instructions to take Chubb and Higgins to jail and have their car towed. Officers gently remind him that a disorderly conduct charge “without continuing criminal behavior” involves issuing a citation with a court date — not jail.
“Well, you’ll check it out, and if not, you’ll just write him one for a ‘catch and release’ kind of thing,” Williams said. “Alright, so, will you guys give me the names and all that so I can write the report?”
By the end of the incident, Williams was gone from the scene and Chubb and Higgins thank the officers who’d issued them citations. Both men were ultimately never charged.
The overtime
This was not the first time Williams has been accused of overstepping.
After 39 years with BPD, Williams had risen to become one of its highest ranked officers — and highest paid.
According to public compensation reports, Williams raked in more than half a million dollars in overtime pay between 2013 and 2022 while he was a lieutenant, earning more than the police chief most of those years. In 2020 and 2021, Williams was Bloomington’s priciest employee, records show.
In 2020, he earned nearly $224,000, including $92,000 in overtime. Six lieutenants were on the city’s payroll in 2020. The other five earned between $129,000 and $188,000 with base pay and overtime combined. The next highest paid lieutenant took home about $57,000 in overtime that year. The highest overtime collected by a patrol officer in 2020 was close to $36,000.
City Manager Tim Gleason, the city’s second highest earner that year, had a salary near $187,000.
In 2021, Williams made $199,000 between salary and overtime [approximately $70,000], about $1,000 more than Gleason. He took a significant pay cut in becoming an assistant chief in 2022 after a promotion by current Police Chief Jamal Simington. As management, chiefs and assistant chiefs do not earn overtime.
When asked how that scale of overtime could be allowed in a municipality, Brady said “it shouldn’t be.”
Brady said he “can’t say much” about personnel issues but admitted it was a breakdown of administrative oversight by the police department and city staff.
“What people want is, they want good public safety. They want trust. And they want their government to watch the bottom line when it comes to dollars. That's not too much to ask.”
Making life hell
Several former Bloomington Police officers who reported directly to Williams told WGLT he was a powerful person in the department, with considerable sway and strong police-union ties. While a member of the Police and Benevolent & Protective Association union, Williams served a six-year term on the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board which ended in 2020. During that time, he was chair of the Curriculum and School Standards Advisory Committee.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity due to a fear of retaliation, the officers described Williams as a leader who required officers to “go along to get along.” You were either a Paul Williams person, or you weren’t. Fail to get in line, they said, and he’ll “make your life hell.”
That’s an allegation also laid out in a pending lawsuit filed by former BPD Sergeant Timmothy “Ty” Carlton, who was fired in 2024 after an internal investigation determined Carlton had improperly shared information about an investigation with the suspects.
Carlton suggests the firing was retaliatory after he raised concerns about alleged internal communications requiring officers to “pull over more white people,” including an August 2023 email sent to BPD lieutenants. [WGLT has requested a copy of the email through a public records request.]
“Following BPD’s receipt of a FOIA for the August 2023 email that was traced back to Carlton,” the lawsuit says, “Assistant Chief Williams told a group of lieutenants and one sergeant that he was going to make life hell for the person behind the FOIA request.”
And in Illinois Labor Relations Board filings, Williams is said to have made remarks that then-Police Chief Roger Aikin “would be ‘gutted’ at a union meeting,” amid a complaint alleging Williams was unfairly passed up for a promotion.
According to a 2010 federal lawsuit, a man claimed he was sexually assaulted when he was eight years old by Williams’ relative, who was 16 at the time. The lawsuit says the incident was investigated by the McLean County Sheriff’s Department in 1993 but never led to charges. The lawsuit, a handwritten document filed without a lawyer, was dismissed.
In the court’s decision declining to reconsider the dismissal, a federal judge said the plaintiff, who WGLT is not naming because he was a minor at the time of the alleged crime, claimed he waited eight years after the criminal investigation to file a lawsuit “because he and his family were subjected to threats and intimidation.”
“He alleges that, in 1993, a police detective warned that pursuing the case could result in problems for Plaintiff and his family from Paul Williams, a police officer and a relative of Defendant Williams.”
The plaintiff later made threats of his own to Williams and his relative and was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison. The Peoria Journal Star reported he was suffering from a mental illness stemming from the alleged abuse.
Williams’ career even intersects with one of McLean County’s most high-profile cases. He was one of two officers to initially respond in 1991 when an armed robber shot and killed William Little at a Bloomington gas station. The other was Jeff Pelo, a former BPD sergeant serving a 375-year prison sentence for using police records to stalk and abuse women.
Jamie Snow, the man convicted of the killing who has maintained his innocence, says Williams made conflicting statements in the 10 years between Little’s killing and his trial.
Indeed, incident reports filed by Williams and the paramedics report on the night of the murder don’t entirely match his testimony in court regarding whether Little’s body was turned 180 degrees, according to documents obtained by WGLT from a former police chief who has reviewed the case on behalf of Snow’s family. Pelo's recollection of the scene remained consistent.
“I’m not surprised Paul Williams is caught up in the mess he’s caught up in right now,” Snow said in a Sept. 2 recording sent from Illinois River Correctional Center. “I always felt that Paul Williams and Jeff Pelo were the key to my freedom in 2001… it’s sad that it’s taken 27 years, or 30 years, however long Williams has been working for the department, for this sort of stuff to come out.”
The pepper spray
Williams has just one official disciplinary action on his department record, related to an incident on Oct. 17, 2021. WGLT obtained it through a records request.
An internal investigation found Williams failed to de-escalate a verbal exchange and engaged in improper use of force by pepper spraying a suspect in response to a verbal threat. He was a lieutenant at the time. Official disciplinary action was not implemented until May 8, 2025. The reason for the delay is not clear.
“Assistant Chief Williams used unprofessional language and provoked the interaction which set a poor example for the other officers on scene,” the disciplinary report said. “After deploying OC [pepper spray] to the individual, which also contacted a female standing near the individual, AC Williams did not offer decontamination to either party, nor did he document in his report that the female was contaminated as well.”
This is one of a slew of times then-Lt. Williams deployed pepper spray — 21 times, in fact, between 2019 and 2021, according to a use of force report requested by WGLT.
Use-of-force data previously reported by WGLT in 2020 showed at that time BPD used OC [pepper] spray more than Normal Police officers. Data showed BPD officers used OC 67 times between June 2017 and June 2020. Williams used OC nine times in 2020 alone, records show.
Another pepper-spray incident occurred in 2019. According to an appellate court decision filed in 2022, Williams arrested a man for resisting a peace officer “by shouting at him and refusing to walk away from him after Williams directed defendant to walk away.”
Williams testified the defendant made derogatory remarks and “called him a bunch of filthy names,” court records show.
“He asked them multiple times to leave the area, but they refused and continued making derogatory remarks,” according to the state appellate judges’ opinion. “Williams then pepper sprayed them. Defendant and the other individual got down on the ground and Williams called for backup.”
The man was found not guilty. A second charge involving another officer in that incident was dismissed on appeal.
Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady was the McLean County coroner when Williams was a fledgling officer. When asked if he was a good cop, Brady said he is “a good person.”
“From the standpoint of my interaction with him as former county government and as the mayor of Bloomington, my interaction has been good,” he said, “but certainly it's a situation that's unfolded that's not good. And, you know, bad things happen to good people.”
WGLT has attempted to contact Williams on his cell phone, through his city-issued email address, a message to the police department, and through the attorney that initially represented him and the city in the 2026 Carlton lawsuit. He has not responded. It's unclear if he has an attorney or other representative. A city spokesperson said it does not comment on matters of pending litigation and does not “discuss personnel information related to current of former employees.”
Police Chief Jamal Simington did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.
WGLT's Charlie Schlenker contributed reporting.
