Remove ImagesThe News & Record Set Police Fiasco In Motion, Part 90
Cops in Black & White by Jerry Bledsoe, Part 90
December 10, 2009
"Restore confidence in police by providing full disclosure."
That headline on the editorial page of the News & Record on Nov. 24 surely has to be the epitome of irony and hypocrisy.
"The more that's known about the ongoing controversy dogging the Greensboro Police Department, the better the chances of closure," the editorial begins, although it offers no hint of what "closure" might entail.
The editorial says that new Mayor Bill Knight and Councilmember Mary Rakestraw are "on the right track" for supporting "shedding more light on police department discord" and urging the release of investigative files.
"The innuendo and misinformation surrounding racially charged allegations that linger among officers and permeate the community won't subside until the true facts are known," the editorial says.
What the editorial fails to note is that the News & Record is primarily responsible for the innuendo, misinformation and racial discord that permeates the Police Department and the community as a result of this controversy, and it has ignored disclosure after disclosure that contradicts its reporting.
By accepting without question false claims that black officers were targeted for investigation by "secret police" because of race, and repeating them sensationally and relentlessly, the News & Record set in motion a fiasco that has continued for more than four years, inflaming racial tensions, reducing the Police Department to shambles, destroying reputations and careers, costing taxpayers dearly and wrecking the newspaper's own credibility.
The big question in regard to this editorial is:
If the city pays heed and provides full disclosure, as it should, would the News & Record report it after all of this?
Evidence suggests that it wouldn't.
The News & Record editorial was prompted by a press conference held by former Special Intelligence Detective Scott Sanders and his attorney, Seth Cohen of Smith James Rowlett & Cohen, on Nov. 20. Cohen revealed that after the longest and most intensive internal investigations in the history of the Police Department, all claims of misconduct against Sanders and three other officers were determined to be unfounded, although Sanders was admonished for using profanity in an interview with a suspect.
The other three officers were Vice and Narcotics Detective Brian Bissett, former Special Intelligence Sgt. Tom Fox, and former Special Intelligence Detective Bobby Edwards. All are white. Sanders is half white and half Hawaiian. All were involved in legitimate investigations of Lt. James Hinson and other black officers.
It was Hinson who set off the controversy in the Police Department after finding a tracker on his police vehicle and claiming that he and other black officers had been targeted by secret police because of race. That claim was revealed in a News & Record column by Lorraine Ahearn on June 10, 2005.
An article about the press conference held by Sanders and Cohen appeared in the News & Record on Nov. 21. It was written by investigative reporter Taft Wireback, who failed to mention the significance of the findings of the internal investigations.
Sanders had been portrayed as the leading figure in the secret police. Bissett, Fox and Edwards had been identified as assisting in the supposedly nefarious activities of the secret police. The internal investigations not only show that claims of secret police and targeting black officers are without basis in fact, they also refute allegations that Sanders and others used a "black book" to attempt to frame black officers with fraudulent charges and that black community leaders were recorded for illicit purposes.
Since the News & Record's coverage led readers to believe that all of these allegations were valid, it would seem reasonable to think that an investigative reporter such as Wireback would consider it important to point out the actual meaning of the results of the internal investigations.
Obviously not. And this is not the first time that the News & Record chose to ignore facts.
More than a year ago, former City Manager Mitch Johnson wrote in a sworn court document that the so-called black book was a case file prepared for a legitimate investigation and the city had no documented evidence that it had been used for any other purpose.
Despite all of its sensational reporting about the black book, the News & Record hasn't bothered to report that either.
Yet the News & Record's executive editor, John Robinson, sees no problems with the newspaper's reporting about the police situation, no matter the damage it inflicted.
Twice in recent months he has commented about it on his blog.
"For the record, we weren't wrong with our Wray coverage, despite what you and others may say," he wrote in response to a reader's comment on Sept. 18.
On Nov. 8, Robinson responded to a comment by blogger Sam Spagnola, a lawyer who has been a critic of the News & Record's reporting on these matters. Spagnola filed the lawsuit that resulted in the admission about the black book by Mitch Johnson.
"In fact," wrote Robinson, "I encourage everyone to go back and read what we reported. Look to see where the information came from – you will see few, if any, anonymous sources or statements without sourcing."
A reader need not go far to determine that what Robinson says is false.
Consider Lorraine Ahearn's most recent piece about the Wray matter. It appeared on Feb. 22, just after Scott Sanders was acquitted of illegally accessing a federal computer that was on loan to the Police Department.
Ahearn wrote about a woman named Peggy Barker who had serious mental problems. After David Wray was appointed police chief, Barker had been allowed to stay as a temporary guest in a townhouse that adjoined his rented apartment. Although Wray had never met Barker, she went to the FBI with wild charges about him. The FBI notified Wray but didn't take the charges seriously. Wray informed City Manager Ed Kitchen. This was not the first time Barker had taken such actions. She had done so with others.
"… The last we heard," Ahearn wrote of Barker, "she had been put out of the condo, which she sublet, soon after Sanders paid a visit to the neighbors."
Contrary to Robinson's contentions, Ahearn provided no source for this information. And it is false. According to the apartment complex manager and a family member of the townhouse owner, Barker was allowed to stay in the apartment temporarily. She never sublet it, and was asked to leave by the owner. Sanders never spoke to the owner and never visited any of Wray's neighbors.
Ahearn went on to write that, "convenience store owners and panhandlers up and down Lawndale and Battleground avenues described Barker as homeless and carrying her belongings in shopping bags."
She implied that Barker was made immediately homeless and suggested that this was the plan of Sanders, Wray and Deputy Chief Randall Brady.
"Did anyone see her wandering Lawndale Avenue? Or wonder where she would go after losing her home?" Ahearn asked.
Wray said he never knew that Barker had become homeless and that while she was staying in the townhouse next door, which was not her home, she was well dressed and driving a silver Volvo. Ahearn offers no evidence that Barker was homeless other than the word of unnamed "convenience store owners and panhandlers."
Robinson tells us that we will find "few, if any, anonymous sources or statements without sourcing" in all of the many stories about the Police Department controversy. Yet here are two clear examples to the contrary within a few paragraphs of a single article.
Robinson states for the record that, "we weren't wrong in our Wray coverage." But after a call from Cohen the paper published a correction stating that Sanders hadn't interviewed any of Wray's neighbors and that "there is no indication that Barker left the condominium close to Wray because of the actions of Sanders."
A person knowledgeable about the police controversy would have no trouble finding similar examples throughout the newspaper's coverage, starting with Ahearn's original column. No source is provided for the claim in the headline of the column, "'Secret police' use black ops on black cop."
The column makes no mention of black ops, which is short for black bag operations such as the Watergate break-in during the Nixon administration. Such operations are illegal. But there was nothing illegal or inappropriate about the Police Department placing a tracker on one of its own vehicles, no matter the skin color of the driver. The headline writer apparently pulled the term out of the air to give a sinister twist to the story.
In the column Ahearn wrote this about the Special Intelligence unit: "Though once under Internal Affairs and Criminal Investigations and primarily assigned to keep tabs on criminal gangs and groups such as the Klan and Communists – thus earning it the nickname the 'Red Squad' – Special Intelligence under Wray is an independent unit with a new moniker among officers leery of its function: 'the secret police.'"
No source is provided for any of this information and some of it is false. Special Intelligence was never under Internal Affairs. The unit was created as a direct result of the deadly clash between Klansmen, Nazis and Communist Workers Party (CWP) members on Nov. 3, 1979, and from the beginning the unit had many duties other than watching over these groups. According to David Wray and other former commanders, only CWP members and their supporters called the unit the Red Squad. Ahearn became friends with CWP members involved in the clash and has written favorably and sympathetically about them on numerous occasions.
Ahearn doesn't name the leery officers who supposedly gave Special Intelligence the new moniker secret police. In subsequent articles, she changed this to say that it was the department's ranks who dubbed the unit the secret police, not just the unnamed leery officers. The ranks number some 500 officers but Ahearn doesn't provide numbers or names of those with whom she spoke to make this determination. Was it 300? 100? 50? 1? Readers aren't told.
Wray and other commanders said the first time they heard this term applied to the Police Department was when Hinson brought it up.
Nine days after Ahearn's column appeared, police reporter Eric J.S. Townsend wrote an article about the secret police. In it he lists a chain of events that led to disclosures about the unit. He began with this:
"Lt. James Hinson was on his way to meet an off-duty corporal June 3 when he observed a van trailing his police cruiser.
"Recognizing the driver as the retired detective [Randy Gerringer] the lieutenant pulled over in a nearby parking lot. A search of his cruiser turned up a tracking device known in the profession as a 'bird dog.'"
No source is offered, and the information is false.
The bird dog tracker Hinson found on his vehicle that night had not been in use for more than six weeks, and nobody was trailing Hinson. Two weeks after the bird dog tracker was put on Hinson's cruiser, a GPS unit was installed. No longer was there a need to follow him. Investigators knew where he was at every moment.
Police records show that on this night Hinson's vehicle had been immobile for a lengthy period near The Grande theaters at Friendly Center. Hinson was on duty. This was far outside his district and he had informed nobody in command about where he was or why he was there.
Special Intelligence Sgt. Tom Fox, who was busy with other matters, called Gerringer and asked if he could find out what Hinson was up to. Gerringer was off duty and in his private vehicle. He found Hinson's empty vehicle parked between the theaters and Harris Teeter. Weeks earlier, he had found Hinson working off duty at another Harris Teeter store while, according to the schedule, he was on duty.
Gerringer checked the Harris Teeter but saw no sign of Hinson. He went to the theater, only to find the front door locked. Inside he saw two black officers working off duty as security. He recognized them as friends of Hinson. They spotted him. Gerringer returned to his van and soon saw Hinson exiting the theater from a side door. It was apparent to Gerringer that the reason Hinson had been immobile for so long was because he had been watching a movie while on duty.
Hinson got into his cruiser and began prowling the parking lot looking for Gerringer. When Gerringer pulled out of the lot, Hinson fell in behind him and followed him for several blocks before making a U-turn and returning to the theater.
Months later, Ahearn wrote that Hinson pulled away from the Grande "after stopping to chat with a friend and once again noticed the tan Dodge van behind him." After pulling over until the van passed, she wrote, Hinson called in the tag number: WVW 7205.
"The tag was 'not on file,' – indicating it was part of an undercover operation," Ahearn wrote. "But Hinson had already guessed that. He'd recognized the van's driver."
Gerringer's van was never behind Hinson's vehicle that night. And the reason the tag number wasn't on file was because that wasn't Gerringer's tag number. Hinson got it wrong, just as the News & Record's reporters got this incident wrong.
An entire new series could be written about the numerous instances in the News & Record's coverage that contradict John Robinson's claims that the newspaper got nothing wrong and that readers could find "few, if any, anonymous sources or statements without sourcing."
Investigations by the FBI, the SBI and the US Department of Justice brought forth nothing to support allegations of secret police, racial targeting, the black book or supposed surveillance of black leaders. The Internal Affairs investigations, which dealt directly with all of these matters, determined these allegations to be unfounded.
However, the News & Record's coverage over the last four years led readers to believe they were true. Ahearn and other reporters apparently accepted false accusations without question and sensationally presented them to readers at great cost to the community.
Yet John Robinson says the newspaper got nothing wrong. In his strangely skewed concept of journalism, it's acceptable to pass along falsehoods so long as they are sourced and accurately quoted.
Until the News & Record gets an editor who realizes that the purpose of journalism is the search for truth and is willing to admit that the newspaper got one of the biggest stories in the city's history wrong, it's unlikely that its ever dwindling number of subscribers (circulation has dropped 26 percent since Ahearn broke the secret police story) will be told much – even if the city provides the full disclosure about the police situation that the newspaper is now curiously supporting.
That, after all, would allow readers to see how reprehensible the News & Record's actions have been.