“We have a manager that basically made a decision to stand up and listen to some African-American police officers’ complaints about the police situation,” Perkins said. “And we’ve got a situation today where we’ve got a new president. And we’ve got a very aggressive attorney general of the United States of America. And that person is very interested in what happened in Greensboro, North Carolina over the last four years.”
Perkins said he wanted the city attorney, Terry Wood, to say whether firing City Manager Mitchell Johnson would put the city in a delicate situation with the Justice Department. The federal agency’s interest in the police department is said to stem from dozens of complaints filed by black police officers with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which led to a lawsuit against the city once they were given permission to do so by the Justice Department.
“What type of exposure do we have as a city, as a police department to a DOJ investigation?” Perkins asked. “And is that exposure enhanced or increased by us removing the person that voluntarily opened that investigation up? And my concern is that we have quite a bit of exposure. That that exposure is measured from a credibility standpoint of our community in terms of how we’ll be perceived statewide and nationally, as well as dollar-wise.”
Mayor Yvonne Johnson worried aloud that discussing the Justice Department probe might be illegal, as the topic hadn’t been publicly announced as a stated reason for the closed session. The city attorney carefully answered the question in a way that left the meaning of his advice open for debate.
“We’re trying now to fulfill the Justice Department request, and [Mitchell Johnson] been helpful in saying, ‘Well, you need this, you need that, you need to go here,’” Wood said. “So when you say he is a critical part of that and might somehow affect that, I can only say that it well could.”
None of the five members who voted to oust Mitchell Johnson engaged Perkins’ question of whether firing the manager might increase the city’s legal exposure in the Justice Department probe.
At-large Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw, a longtime foe of the ousted manager, dismissed the Justice Department probe as a “courtesy” and a “normal procedure” in recent interviews.
Mayor Pro Tem Sandra Anderson Groat, who tipped the balance by withdrawing her support of the manager along with District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny, said later: “The EEOC situation, none of that, as far as Mitch not being there, bothers me.” She added that she didn’t think the vote had risked increasing the city’s legal exposure.
District 4 Councilman Mike Barber said in an e-mail on Monday that “one is not significant to the other.” The two other council members who voted to fire the former manager — Matheny and District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade — did not return phone calls for this story.
During the closed session, council members Dianne Bellamy-Small and Goldie Wells, who respectively represent districts 1 and 2, repeatedly asked for justifications for Mitchell Johnson’s firing.
“This man has not broken any laws,” Bellamy-Small said. “He has not done anything that shows that he misused his powers, or anything. So I want an answer to that question.”
After about 20 minutes had elapsed, Wade said, “I just want to bring Mitch in here, and let’s hear from Mitch and his attorneys. I think the majority of us have already made a decision.”
Wade was elected to council in 2007 after campaigning on a platform of increasing the manager’s accountability to council. Voters that were upset about an investigation ordered by Mitchell Johnson to look into allegations of racial profiling within the police department that led to former Chief David Wray’s subsequent resignation correctly read Wade’s campaign promise as a pledge to remove the city manager. Rakestraw, who first ran for council in 2007, also made no secret of her sympathy for Wray. Endorsements by ***The Rhinoceros Times***, which orchestrated the campaign to oust Mitchell Johnson, helped close the deal. In their first year in office, Wade and Rakestraw sought twice to terminate the city manager in attempts that failed to gain a majority vote. Wade offered no explanation for her decision on March 3. “I don’t have anything else to say, and I think that anything I say, or Mary says, or Mike says is going to be a lightning rod, and we don’t feel that we can make any statements really,” she said. Barber also kept quiet during the closed session, despite Bellamy-Small’s and Wells’ repeated requests for justification.
In an interview prior to the vote to oust the manager, Barber had tied the decision to Mitchell Johnson’s handling of allegations of racially motivated surveillance of black officers by a white detective under Wray’s command that lead to the chief’s resignation. Following an outside investigation conducted by Raleigh-based
Risk Management
Associates that was coordinated by the city’s legal department under
former City Attorney Linda Miles and a police internal investigation,
the State Bureau of Investigation launched its own investigation, which
led to indictments against Detective Scott Sanders and Sgt. Tom Fox.
Sanders was acquitted by a Guilford County jury last month of a charge
of accessing a government computer, and Special Prosecutor James Coman
dropped all additional charges against Sanders and Fox. Barber tied the
Attorney General’s office’s prosecution to the city manager’s inquiry
even though the two were made separately.
“It’s been one
trumped-up charge after another,” Barber said. “I think the Attorney
General’s office was heavily influenced by Linda Miles’ drama, and I
think they were given a lot of exaggerated information.
I
think the city administration decided what result they wanted and
presented the information to get that result, instead of pursuing the
facts to get justice.”
Rakestraw declined to give any reasons
for firing Mitchell Johnson during the closed session, but has often
said she believes the manager lied to her. “He mislead me and outright
told me that [a] memo that appeared on the cover of ***The Rhinoceros
Times*** did not exist,” she elaborated in a recent interview. “He
assured me months before the memo appeared that it did not exist. This
was the memo that gave one of the police officers a free pass, that
said whatever that police officer did in the past, any of his actions
had been excused or waivered.”
The memo was submitted by the
city in a court filing last August in response to a lawsuit filed by
African-American officer Lt. James Hinson, alleging that former Chief
Wray created problems for him in the department because of his race.
Some in Greensboro raised objections to one particular proviso in the
memo, which was signed by Hinson and Mitchell Johnson, and approved by
Linda Miles in January 2006, before the lieutenant was reinstated
following a six-month suspension.
“The city of Greensboro
further agrees to purge from the personnel records of Lt. Hinson any
and all records included therein that the investigation of these events
has determined to be fraudulent or otherwise inappropriate,” it reads.
Asked
about Rakestraw’s assertion that he mislead her, Mitchell Johnson said
simply: “I disagree with her statement.” Groat and Matheny have said
their decision to oust Johnson had nothing to do with his handling of
the police controversy when allegations of racial profiling surfaced in
the summer of 2005 and Wray resigned the following January.
“It really was not about David Wray,” Groat told YES! Weekly. “I worry that people were hurt during David Wray’s administration.
[Johnson]
didn’t deserve to judged up or down on that decision. People want to
say I’ve seen the light, but that’s not the way it is.” Taking a stab
at Bellamy-Small’s question, Matheny said during closed session: “So I
take the David Wray situation, the trials, in my case, what I came to
[was] this decision — moving Greensboro forward, looking at the
situation — what do we have, where are we, and what do we have to [do
to] move forward? And if I am the chairman of the board or part of the
board that is running the company that has 2,800 employees with a
budget of $450 million, what do I need to do? And that’s where we’re
at. We’ve got a CEO that, quite frankly, unfortunately, inherited some
bad stuff probably four years ago.” Mayor Johnson — who, like
Bellamy-Small and Wells, is one of the council’s three African-American
members — kept quiet for most of the meeting, but near the end quietly
voiced her support for the manager.
“I see things
differently,” she said. “I listened to every tape. I read every
transcript. And I think he was in a hell of a position. He was left in
a hell of a position.
And I think based on what I’ve read and
listened to, he tried to make the decisions he believed were right.” At
the end of the closed session, Mitchell Johnson appeared and promised
his employers he would conduct himself professionally after they voted
to terminate him, and that he would tell reporters: ‘I’ll be glad to
continue as the city manager, but this is not the desire of the board,
and I certainly respect their collective decision.’”
Bellamy-Small
and Wells were the only council members who chose to speak at length to
Johnson during the session. “I just need for you to know that I think
this stinks, and I want them to know that I think it stinks,”
Bellamy-Small said. “Because I think you have jumped through entirely
too many hoops to try to please this council and the previous council.
I know the difficult role that you had when you took this job. And
granted, probably if it were not for your concern in trying to set
things right — and that’s what you said to me, and I think that’s what
you said, at least, to the previous council, that you wanted to set
things right because there were things that were happening that should
not have happened as far as the police department was concerned.”
Wells
said, “And the thing that has bothered me from the beginning of our
term this term is the new members have never tried to catch up. They
came in with ideas, never changed them, never would bring in new
information to even know what we heard before. Came on with a mindset,
kept the mindset and still got the mindset. Remember, the Bible’s right:
‘Whatsoever
shall a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’” Wells had earlier
alleged that Rakestraw and others opposed to Mitchell Johnson refused
to review materials relevant to the police controversy.
“The
point that the mayor made was, she heard all the tapes; she figured he
did the right thing,” she said. “You all have refused to listen to any
of those tapes.”
Rakestraw responded, “That’s why I went to the trial.” Later, in a phone message to YES! Weekly, she disputed Wells’ version of events.
“Mitch
during orientation offered the new city council the opportunity to
listen to the tapes, and I said I wanted to listen with [newly elected
members] Robbie, Zack, Trudy and me rather than the whole city
council,” Rakestraw said. “Mitch never set the meeting up, so I have
not heard the tapes. I have not ever refused to listen to any tape.
When Goldie Wells accused me of that, Mike Barber told her she was
confused.”
Mitchell Johnson’s memory tracked with that of
Wells. “I was able to get one briefing set up that went into some
depth,” he said. “I felt comfortable that we were able to get some of
the questions answered. I did spend some time trying to prepare a more thorough briefing. I’d hoped to do a more thorough briefing. I was just
unable to get it scheduled. People kept turning me down.” Groat has
said that she agonized over the decision of whether to fire Mitchell
Johnson, but ultimately concluded that his leadership was a polarizing
element for the council.
“Mitch has become a lightning rod
with us,” she said during the closed session, choking up. “And almost
any subject that comes up he is going to be in the middle of it. That’s
not fair. Why should he have to worry every day if he’s going to have
five votes to keep him? I would never want to do that, if I were him. I
just really believe that it’s the right thing. And I think doing what
you believe in your heart is right is a longer standing thing than
losing an election or having people mad at you. And I feel really sad
about it, I really do…. I really think it’s right. I’m sorry. I’m
finished. I can’t do it right now.” The city attorney indicated that
regardless of the council’s decision to fire Johnson, the ousted city
manager would still need to be involved in the multiple lawsuits for
which the city is a defendant, including by giving testimony and
depositions.
“Above and beyond that he’s a defendant in one of
these lawsuits,” Terry Wood said. “And he is working with the city’s
lawyers. He is going to have to meet with them, counsel with them, tell
’em who the witnesses are, tell ’em what he believes the facts to be,
whether you agree with them or not.” Council members alluded to
paralysis and dysfunction during the closed session, and the topic of
upcoming elections in November briefly surfaced.
“Unfortunately,
in the case of trying to get us going and move this city forward — and
everybody wants to move this city forward, whether we’re talking about
1979, or we’re talking about racial issues with the police department,
or whether we’re talking about the city manager, basically where we are
today — we can’t move forward,” Matheny said. Groat added that she
thought Mitchell Johnson has gotten “a raw deal. I think he inherited
some stuff. We have nine people and a manager. We have the most
dysfunctional situation going on I believe I have ever seen. In my
reasoning we’re really not accomplishing anything because we can’t even
talk to each other.”
Wells said a vote to remove Johnson would
make the council look bad, alluding to the 1979 killing of anti-racist
labor activists by Klansmen and Nazis in the Morningside Homes housing
project, as police failed to intervene, and state and federal juries
subsequently acquitted the killers. In 2005, the city council voted to
oppose a grassroots truth and reconciliation process that examined the
incident.
“We’ll look worse,” Wells said. “Because the people
are still talking about 1979. They know we messed up on that. And it
will come up again. And we’re trying to get out of that image.”
Later,
Wells, who has announced that she will not seek reelection this year,
challenged Groat. “You said that he had been a lightning rod,” she
said. “I want to know: If he leaves or if he stays, do you think it’s
going to make any difference?” Groat responded, “I’ll tell you what: If
it doesn’t, shame on the council. We all ought to be thrown out.” Wells
retorted, “We ought to get thrown out right now. You don’t need to wait
for that. We haven’t done a thing but fuss.” Days after Mitchell
Johnson’s firing, a backlash has already materialized to challenge the
former city manager’s opponents.
A new political action
committee called Stand Up Greensboro has unveiled an ad on the internet
that features a photograph of Rakestraw, a registered Republican, with
former Republican US senator Elizabeth Dole that says, “Dole was wrong
for Greensboro… she is too. Say ‘no’ to Mary Rakestraw.”
The
ad charges, “Mary Rakestraw has spent the last two years on the city
council pushing an obstructionist agenda. She has attempted to expand
the city council’s power and micromanage the city, bringing council
business to a halt and undermining Greensboro’s career public
servants.”
Founded by a second-year law student at NC Central
University in Durham named Andrew Murphy, who grew up in Greensboro,
the committee’s website lists of slate of positions, including reining
in sprawl, investing in public transportation, providing tax and
financial incentives to attract economic development, celebrating
racial and lifestyle diversity, and doing more to retain students and
young professionals.
Murphy said he plans to convene district and college liaisons to hold forums that would decide which candidates to endorse.
Murphy
said he discussed the possibility of supporting Marikay Abuzuaiter, who
plans to run for an at-large seat on council this year, with the
candidate, but ultimately sent her a letter “saying I could no longer
be directly involved in her campaign” once the committee’s website was
launched.
Abuzuaiter came within 623 votes of winning the seat
now held by Rakestraw in the last election. The committee’s founder
volunteered on the campaign of Democratic Rep. Pricey Harrison, the
Guilford County delegation’s most progressive member, in 2006. He
dismissed criticism bubbling up from the conservative blogosphere that
his effort was a thinly veiled effort to elect Democratic candidates to
the nonpartisan city council.
“I really want to highlight
issues that can be nonpartisan,” he said. “I think smart growth,
investment in public transportation, creating a vibrant and robust
economy and wanting professionalism in our elected leaders can be
nonpartisan issues. There are Democrats on the city council that might
find the PAC’s position on smart growth and other things a little
discomforting because of the support of the real-estate industry for
them in the past.” Rakestraw dismissed the notion that the city has
been hobbled by the controversy over Mitchell Johnson.
“Did
the trash get picked up today?” she asked. “Did people get their water
bill? Did the police make any arrests today? I don’t think anything has
been paralyzed. You can’t paralyze the city over one employee.
Anyone
who says that obviously doesn’t understand the function of the city.”
The councilwoman’s statement made the same points as an editorial
published in The Rhinoceros Times on March 12. “I said I would
not support increasing taxes,” she added, “ and I haven’t done anything
to do that. We should get good value for our tax money. I wanted to
restore trust in the public’s mind involving the city council and the
police department, and I’ve been doing that. I think I’ve been fair in
everything I’ve done.” Murphy suggested that Groat and Matheny’s vote
to oust Mitchell Johnson amounted to appeasement.
“I find it a
little disheartening that the city council spent the last two years
embroiled with this controversy, when Mary Rakestraw and Trudy Wade
knew they wanted to get rid of the city manager. Part of the problem I
see with this Mitchell Johnson and David Wray deal is that some people
who supported this decision to fire Mitchell Johnson think that doing
that would make the council more cohesive, and make them more able to
work together. It’s only going to embolden those who pushed for
Johnson’s dismissal to obstruct crucial city business and push for
other things they want, when all council members should come to the
table with an open mindset.”
A DIVIDED COUNCIL: At-large Councilman Robbie Perkins (left)and District 2 Councilwoman Goldie Wells (second from left) voted against a motion to dismiss City Manager Mitchell Johnson, while District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny and at-large Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw supported the move. (photos by Jordan Green)
