Violation of citizen's rights raised in employee relations investigation

 

 

Racial tension in GPD highlighted in recorded interview

 

Police Capt. Charles Cherry, whose termination is on appeal to City Manager Rashad Young, is joined by the Rt. Rev. Chip Marble at a recent community meeting. (photo by Jordan Green)

A Greensboro human resources employee suggested to a police commander with responsibility for a patrol division that he consider taking a more flexible approach on a matter in which officers could be considered to have violated citizens’ constitutional rights by illegally entering a house through forced entry.

The comments are made on a recording of a private conversation between human resources manager Terri Wallace and police Capt. Charles Cherry dating back to September 2008. The remarks were made during a conversation spanning two and a half hours that was part of a hostile work environment investigation conducted by Wallace on Cherry based on a complaint by Lt. Karen Walters, who had previously reported to Cherry. Walters is white, while Cherry is black.

The recording, which was obtained by YES! Weekly, was made by Cherry without Wallace’s knowledge. Cherry submitted it to Assistant City Manager Michael Speedling, who subsequently implemented a rule forbidding city employees from recording another individual without their knowledge and consent.

The recording also reveals a level of heightened sensitivity by city administration about racial division within the police department under the leadership of former Chief Tim Bellamy at a time when the city manager was under scrutiny for investigating allegations of discrimination that prompted the abrupt resignation of a previous chief.

About an hour and 15 minutes into the conversation, Wallace is heard asking Cherry to give an example of why he felt Walters had been resistant to his efforts to provide supervision.

“We had a situation where an officer entered a house illegally,” Cherry said. “He did a forced entry that was illegal. I tried to explain to her why it was illegal. I called her and a supervisor and tried to explain to both of them. Eventually I ended up having to do an addendum on a document that I knew was wrong. And then, of course, the chief and internal affairs agreed with me, because it was wrong.”

About 20 minutes later, Wallace is heard telling Cherry that technically an officer might be wrong to force entry without a warrant but if there were a concern for safety or a sense that “something was getting ready to ensue” it might be viewed in a more favorable light. She then described a hypothetical situation from a previous position working in building-code enforcement in which she overruled a subordinate inspector who wanted to hold up a certificate of occupancy because one of the establishment’s aisles lacked sufficient width, reasoning that it would impose unbearable cost on the business. “I can remember doing those battles,” Wallace said. “Technically, they were right. But the scheme of the intent of what we were trying to accomplish I felt like it was better to be flexible in that case.”

Cherry expressed disagreement. “You can’t be flexible,” he said. “In that situation you could but when an investigation comes up where a citizen’s constitutional rights are violated, you still have to address that. Now, whatever you choose to do in regards to training the officers, which is in that case is one of the things I suggested, but the fact of the matter is, you can’t sign off on the document that it was reasonable and justified entry when you know that their constitutional rights were violated.”

Wallace said she is for the most part constrained from commenting on the conversation because it deals with a personnel investigation, but remarked, “I’m pretty relieved the recording took place.”

Discussing a separate segment of the recording in which she is heard broaching the topic of Cherry’s efforts to uphold the department’s directive prohibiting profane language and the resistance from within the ranks that greeted his initiative, Wallace told YES! Weekly: “I would never advocate encouraging people to violate a policy.”

Jeffrey B. Welty, an assistant professor at the UNC School of Government with expertise in criminal law and procedure, who commented on a generic scenario without being told the names of individuals or specific agencies, expressed the viewpoint that police officers should scrupulously observe citizens’ constitutional rights and take care not to cross Fourth Amendment lines.

“In general, it’s the responsibility of the police to abide by the constitutional protections that all citizens have,” he said. “And if they fail to do that, they not only jeopardize the investigation that they’re working on, but they risk liability for their department or their municipality. They can be sued for money damages it they knowingly violate a citizen’s constitutional rights. That’s why many officers are very conscientious of that.”

Welty acknowledged that there is ambiguity in the law governing when it’s appropriate for an officer to enter a private residence without its owner’s permission, but that underscores the importance of good leadership in a law enforcement organization.

“The law is complicated, and there are lots of gray areas,” he said. “There are also areas where the rules are very clear. The officers need to abide by them. Where the law is murky, the officers often seek advice from their superiors or a police attorney.”

Speedling said he listened to the recording and determined there was no merit to any concerns raised by Cherry about Wallace’s remarks. The assistant city manager declined to comment further on the recording, citing personnel privacy protections under state law. Cherry and a coalition of police officers, pastors, members of the North Carolina Latin Kings and other concerned citizens traveled to Washington in September to meet with representatives of the US Justice Department. The federal agency received a list of city employees, including Speedling and Wallace, alleged to have committed policy violations that have not been internally investigated.

Following their discussion about forced entry, Wallace is heard in the recording discussing a previous work experience in which she observed during an emergency response incident: “People were like, ‘I know what it says, but this is what we do on the scene.’ You see it all the time. And I’m not saying it’s right, but you’ve got to realize that in the culture of any department, there’s probably more people that don’t do things as you do them than do do things as you do them — by the book.”

Wallace continued by saying that about 4 percent of employees at either end of the spectrum are either exceedingly scrupulous or are unethical and corrupt. “And then you’ve got the majority of people that these people are going to look at the situation and they’re gonna go 90 percent by the book, and they’re gonna look at when they can really be fl exible and where it doesn’t involve — in other words, everything would stand up in court, okay?” Wallace said. “You’ve got about 46 percent that are kind of treading that line. If it gets questioned a lot the whole case may be thrown out and everything else because they’ve really morphed into an area of being a little bit shady.” Wallace suggested Cherry consider that his differences with Walters might be less a function of her being disrespectful to him than that his subordinate was closer to the middle in the continuum than he was.

“In essence you’re saying that I am in that 4 percent that follows the rules,” Cherry responded, “and you’re doing an investigation on me because I am in the 4 percent that follows the rules and I’ve put her in an environment because she doesn’t follow the rules.” The grievance submitted to the Justice Department states that after the conversation, Wallace sustained the hostile workplace complaint. Wallace declined to comment on an allegation included in the federal grievance that she had been untruthful during her conversation with Cherry. “The complaint is basically that she felt that when you were supervising her she was in a situation that wasn’t emotionally healthy because of the way you handled events overall,” Wallace told Cherry during the conversation.

Cherry pressed Wallace to provide a specifi c example of how he had placed Walters in a hostile work environment. The primary example provided by Wallace was an incident in which Cherry handled an employee evaluation appeal fi led by an African-American subordinate reporting to Walters named Sgt. Jonathan Heard. Cherry called both Walters and the sergeant into a meeting and explained why he was concurring with the sergeant who felt his rating should be higher. “For that to happen in front of a subordinate offi cer,” Wallace told Cherry, “it felt like it demeaned her and her authority to do that in front of him.” Later in the conversation, Wallace is heard saying, “I have to say that one of my concerns, whether it’s realistic or it’s just visual, it starts looking like it’s on racial lines.”

Elaborating, she said, “When I start seeing Karen, who is Caucasian, and some of the people that report to her that are concerned about how they feel like she supports them and they feel like she’s not able to operate in ways that they saw as very functional for them, then they’re going to continue to take that side. When I say ‘they,’ it seems, ironically, like ‘they’ is mostly Caucasian. And then I see you, Charles, as a newly promoted captain, and one of the ones who’s appealed is Heard — another African-American male.” Cherry and Heard are both plaintiffs, along with 37 other black offi cers, in a federal discrimination lawsuit against the city of Greensboro. Walters could not be reached for comment for this story.

“To me, I look at it like an African- American commander supervising his Caucasian subordinate,” Cherry told Wallace. “She may have felt like me being an African- American offi cer, she didn’t have to listen to what I said.”

Cherry was fi red in August by then interim Chief Dwight Crotts before Chief Ken Miller took office because he sent out an e-mail to his subordinates explaining why Crotts had placed him on administrative duty pending a fi t-for-duty evaluation. Two psychologists ultimately determined that Cherry was, indeed, fi t for duty. A second reason given for the fi ring is that Cherry violated a confi dentiality agreement by disclosing that a white captain allegedly remarked during a command-level staff workshop that he didn’t trust any of the plaintiffs in the federal discrimination lawsuit. Cherry has appealed the fi ring and awaits a decision from City Manager Rashad Young. The Rev. Cardes Brown, president of the Greensboro NAACP, said Speedling’s lack of concern about Wallace’s remarks is indicative of a cover-up involving the city’s top leadership.

“You disregard the fact that you talk about improper entry, and that’s not important?” Brown said. “And you disregard the fact that only 4 percent follow the policy, and that’s not important? That’s just another indication of the fact that they’ll go in and cover up the wrongs in the department.”