DAYTONA BEACH -- The accident that killed Dale Earnhardt did not justify a more thorough investigation, Police Chief Kenneth Small says, acknowledging the controversy surrounding the death of the NASCAR racing legend.

Small said his Daytona Beach department was far too busy dealing with serious crimes to devote more resources to an accident investigation.

"We've got unsolved homicides, unsolved robberies, unsolved rapes and, like every police department in this country, we don't have sufficient resources to do our job," he said in an interview last week with the Orlando Sentinel. "We have to prioritize. And an accidental-death investigation just doesn't rank high enough in my view -- even when it involves Dale Earnhardt -- for us to put the kind of time into it that you guys are suggesting."

Asked whether his department's investigation of the Feb. 18 accident on the last turn of the Daytona 500 should have been more thorough, Small's answer was an emphatic, "No."

Small is not upset that his investigators did not examine the seat belts in the damaged car. Nor is he bothered that the first disclosure of a possible broken seat belt came from NASCAR officials five days after the wreck.

And he's not troubled that neither NASCAR nor Daytona International Speedway officials ever mentioned the broken belt to his lead homicide investigator.

"Should they have notified him [the investigator]? Maybe I should have notified him when they notified me," Small said, acknowledging publicly for the first time that race officials told him about the seat belt. "But I had just presumed there would be an ongoing dialogue between the detective and the speedway officials. And so I assumed that that was something he would find out as a matter of routine."

Seat belt wasn't taken

Small, a retired Los Angeles Police Department captain hired as chief in 1996, could not remember when he was told of the belt or by whom. But he said it was before the Feb. 23 news conference at which the first disclosure about the seat belt was made.

Whenever it was, Small didn't think the discovery of a broken seat belt warranted keeping it for examination. "Honestly, I don't feel the need to have seized it if I had been notified. I was notified, and I didn't feel the need to seize it," he said.

Robert Walker, the lead homicide detective assigned to the accident investigation, thought differently. Had he known about the broken seat belt, Walker told the Sentinel in a March 14 interview, he would have seized it for analysis.

Walker also wanted to attend Earnhardt's autopsy, as he and other detectives had done when they investigated the deaths of drivers Rodney Orr and Neil Bonnett. Those two died during practice for the 1994 Daytona 500. But the 17-year police veteran said he was told by an unidentified superior not to attend Earnhardt's autopsy.

Small acknowledged that he conferred the night of the crash with Walker's boss, Cmdr. Russell Cormican, and decided that a detective did not need to attend the autopsy. Walker said the same superior also told him not to look inside or photograph the car.

After Walker's comments were published, Small pulled him off the Earnhardt investigation -- because of intense media interest, the police chief said, and his concerns that Walker could no longer conduct an objective investigation.

'We'd have seized it'

Other agencies would have handled it differently.

The Florida Highway Patrol, for instance, would consider a broken seat belt to be significant evidence in any death investigation, FHP spokesman Lt. Chuck Williams said.

"Our guys aren't bashful about seizing something for evidence," said Williams, a 34-year veteran. "We'd have taken the whole car. We'd have seized it until we could have gone over it with a fine-toothed comb."

New Jersey State Police's Motor Vehicle Racing Control Unit is the only full-time unit in the country assigned to auto racing. Sgt. Eric Mutter, its supervisor, said that a broken seat belt would be a critical piece of evidence.

"Any time there is a death, you search for the cause of death. So anything that led to a conclusion about the cause is something we would want to look at," Mutter said. "Nobody would be allowed to move the vehicle until we processed it completely."

Small, though, is unmoved by such implied criticism of the way his department handled the crash investigation."I've been doing this for almost 30 years, and here's what I know for certain," the chief said. "You can always get some talking head out there who claims to be an expert who will say something that you want them to say or that they feel inclined to say."

Department was inundated

In an hourlong interview, Small insisted that neither NASCAR nor the speedway influenced his investigation. Instead, he said, he was concerned that his 258-officer department was stretched thin coping with the annual inundation of tourists coming to Speedweeks, Bike Week and spring break.

Small said video of Earnhardt's crash showed clearly that it was an accident -- and did not involve foul play or criminal activity. Small said he was most concerned about keeping the car from curiosity seekers.

"We decided that night that the only thing we needed to do was secure the car," Small said. "And the next morning, actually, my crime-scene technician did go to the vehicle and had the opportunity to look at it and photograph it."

By the time the police photographer arrived at 9:57 a.m. Feb. 19, the car had been taken off the flatbed truck that had carried it from the track and shoved into a trailer for shipping to a NASCAR garage in North Carolina. It fit so snugly in the trailer that a track worker described it as "a size-12 foot in a size-12 shoe."

Police didn't shoot interior

With less than two feet of room along an inside wall, the police technician did not photograph the car's interior. He snapped 10 pictures, all of them of the car's front and roof. Less than a half-hour later, Bob Burch, a county medical examiner's investigator, photographed the inside of the vehicle and released it to NASCAR.

The brief examination ran contrary to Daytona Beach's own policy for death investigations. Approved in November 1999 by Small, it requires all criminal, accidental or sudden deaths to be investigated as homicides. "Process the crime scene to obtain all trace evidence," it states.

For the past six weeks, Dave Byron, Volusia County's community information director, has refused to say whether or when the Medical Examiner's Office was told by NASCAR or track officials about Earnhardt's broken seat belt. He would not allow any medical-examiner employees to be interviewed by the Sentinel.

But there are no records indicating that either the police photographer or Burch saw or was told about a broken seat belt. Nor have police released any reports detailing Small's account of being told about the broken belt.

Instead, the first word came from NASCAR President Mike Helton, who announced at a Feb. 23 news conference that NASCAR officials hadfound a broken seat belt in Earnhardt's car on the night of the race.

Then the Sentinel reported April 29 that a track rescue worker who actually unfastened Earnhardt's seat belt said that it wasn't broken. That night, NASCAR officials changed their account and said the broken belt was discovered the day after the crash while a medical examiner's photographer inspected the car.

A police security log shows that NASCAR racing chief Gary Nelson reached the trailer at 10:22 a.m., two minutes before Burch arrived. Burch took 13 photographs, including several of the interior, before releasing the vehicle at 10:43 a.m.

None of the photos clearly shows a broken seat belt. And had he seen a broken belt, or been told about it, Burch should have photographed it, said Dr. Steve Nelson, chief of the Florida Medical Examiners Commission.

"The bottom line is that he shouldn't need direction. He should be looking at the safety equipment," the doctor said. " I would certainly expect to see photographs of the belt if it was broken."

Nelson also questioned why the car was moved into a trailer, which could have made it more difficult to examine and photograph the interior.

Crash 'not a homicide scene'

Again, Small brushed aside such criticism.

"I would point out to you this was not a homicide scene, nor was it ever treated as a homicide scene," Small said. "And, by the time that the crime-scene technicians decided, 'Now, I am going to photograph the car,' they had substantial information that the medical examiner had said this is an accidental death. And that really limits the scope of our investigation when that determination is made."

The seat belt has been ruled out as a contributing cause of death by crash expert Dr. Barry Myers of Duke University. Myers looked at Earnhardt's autopsy photos under a court-ordered agreement between the Sentinel and Earnhardt's widow, Teresa.

His report said Earnhardt died because his head was whipped violently forward by the force of the crash. Head whips have killed at least three other NASCAR drivers in the past year.

Small said he sees no need for any written protocol with speedway officials on how death investigations should be conducted. He said his agency won't complete its probe before NASCAR releases its findings in August.

He also said that he and his department will critique its investigation and make any necessary changes before July's Pepsi 400.

But he's not convinced any changes are necessary.

"I'm not willing to spend a lot of time investigating something I believe even up to today there's nothing to indicate that this is anything other than an accidental death," he said. "And I'm not willing to spend a lot of resources on it just to appease the interests of the public.

"I think the bottom line is, Dale Earnhardt died an accidental death, and I think our investigation was appropriate."