By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
“We chose to put body cams on our officers in October of 2025,” Mayor Troy Combs of Grayson said. “I don’t think they all came in at the same time, but we began rolling them out as soon as we received them. We got them (the body cams) up and running, and gave the officers the policies on them.”
Combs said that the city takes resident complaints very seriously, and that Grayson believes in accountability and transparency. The body cams, he said, were just another way to ensure those standards. The cameras help to protect both the officers and the citizens, he said.
“That’s why we chose to put the body cams on our officers,” Combs said.
“It wasn’t very long ago that we had a very unfortunate situation where a young man was DUI,” Combs said. “And he ended up wrecking and (losing his) life.”
Combs said that incident was still fresh in the minds of the city and its residents at the time they voted on the body cameras.
“Driving under the influence, whether it is alcohol or anything else, is something we take very seriously. And the court system also takes it very seriously.”
In the interest of transparency and to give the residents of Grayson a clear idea of what happened, he addressed the events involving an arrest made in the city that has now gone viral on social media. Around the same time in 2025 that the police body cams were implemented, he explained, a police officer who no longer works for the City of Grayson responded to what was called into police dispatch as a hit and run.
“Our officers are accountable for their own actions, and when incidents like this come up, we look into them,” Combs said. “And we invested in accountability and transparency through the body cams. That way there is an objective record and we can review it, then decide what action needs to be taken going forward.”
In the particular case involving former Grayson Police Officer Michael Bell, Combs described it as a “perfect storm” of things that served to confuse the case.
“It was called in as a hit and run,” Combs explained. “Field sobriety tests are subjective, which is a problem,” he added. “The public sees the footage – which is real – and they come to their conclusions about it. But they (the public) aren’t trained on the field sobriety tests, and they are relying on the footage of this YouTuber.”
A YouTuber, he noted, who wants more clicks. There is a motivation, Combs explained, for folks like that to court controversy to draw viewers. The city, meanwhile, is bound by the restrictions of the legal system. Especially when there is still pending litigation related to a case.
“The online outrage business runs on views,” Combs said. “And lawsuits run on settlements.”
Motivations aside, Combs said it is quite possible that other officers would have handled the situation differently. So, the incident is being treated as an opportunity to improve, he said.
“We always want to do better,” Combs said of every situation where police interact with the public. “We have counseled our sergeant (officer Bell’s supervisor, Justin Hall) on his approach to that situation. And Officer Bell is no longer with the Grayson Police Department.”
Combs said Bell resigned and left the Grayson Police Department in February of 2026, while the city was still dealing with the incidents he was involved in.
“He resigned and left the department while these matters were being resolved,“ Combs said.
Beyond that, he said there were certain things neither he nor anyone on the police department could legally comment on.
“We follow Kentucky law,” he said. “And on personnel records, we take those obligations very seriously.”
Many things such as city meetings and passed resolutions or ordinances are a matter of public record, and any citizen has the right to request a copy of those records. Certain things, however, such as the sensitive personal information contained in personnel files and business discussed in a city meeting’s Executive Session are not open to public scrutiny.
Combs said in the spirit of always trying to do better, Sergeant Hall took advantage of training shortly after the incident in question.
“He was in 40 hours of additional training on Officer Response Strategies,” he said. “That training was through the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet.”
Hall also took part in Department of Criminal Justice training, and is scheduled for another eight hours of training on leadership and supervision, Combs said.
“We hold our supervisors to that high standard, and by doing this (the training) we are putting the resources behind them to help them reach those standards.”
One other thing Combs said he would like to answer directly to the residents of Grayson was the fact that Hall was not wearing a body cam.
“We dock those cameras when an officer goes off duty,” Combs said. “Sergeant Hall had already clocked out when that call came in, and because 911 called it in as a hit and run, he turned around and came back to see what was going on.”
“When an officer hears hit and run from dispatch, they expect that something bad has happened,” Combs said. “And every officer tries to respond to that emergency.”
Hall’s lack of a camera, he explained, was due to emergency response rather than lack of oversight.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
