There’s an interesting discrepancy in the way certain people in the Greensboro Police Department are questioned during an investigation.
Compare the investigation of two Greensboro police officers allegedly involved in a sexual assault, as described by the N&R:
“If a criminal investigation is ongoing, the officer has the same rights as anybody else,” said William L. Hill, the lawyer who represents LeGrand and Stevens in the assault case.
In that case, police investigators caused the delay in interviewing the officers about the incident, said to have happened late Dec. 14 or early Dec. 15, Hill said.
His clients and a sergeant were suspended with pay when a fourth officer claimed that one or more assaulted her after offering her a ride near Four Seasons Town Centre.
Hill said his clients deny any wrongdoing and were willing to talk with investigators within days of the incident. But one of the detectives insisted that the interviews be done at the police department because that was standard procedure, he said.
His clients did not want to be interviewed in their place of employment and simply asked for a more neutral setting, Hill said. The dispute could have been settled quickly but dragged on, he said.
Bellamy puts the blame on Hill, saying an investigator was ready to accommodate the officers in mid-January but was stymied by the lawyer’s travel out of town and other factors outside the department’s control.
Investigators arranged for an interview at a State Bureau of Investigation building at one point, but neither Hill nor his clients showed up, the chief said.
… with RMA’s “ambush” of then-Police Chief David Wray, as described by Jerry Bledsoe in this week’s Rhino (Guarino summary here). Wray knew he was going to a meeting with City Attorney Linda Miles where some tough questions would be asked, but:
This turned out to be a setup, Wray recalled — am ambush had been staged by Miles and City Manager Mitchell Johnson. Waiting in the conference room with (Assistant City Attorney Blair) Carr was Michael Longmire, a retired Raleigh police captain, now a private detective and president for Risk Management Associates (RMA). Johnson had hired RMA to reinforce the investigation conducted by city attorneys. Wray had not been told the group had been hired to investigate his administration and he had never met Longmire.
…….For more than four hours, Wray recalled, he was interrogated without a break. “It was not, ‘OK, look, there are some tough issues here we’ve got to talk about,’ Wray remembered. I got brought in like I was a suspect from the get-go. It was confrontational and adversarial from beginning to end.
John Hammer wonders why Wray wasn’t “allowed to negotiate the time and place of his interview for two months? Why isn’t every person who has been accused of a crime?” Good question.
Considering the officers of interest in the sexual assault case lawyered up, I wonder why Wray, an experienced law enforcement officer, allowed these tactics to be used on him by a consultant and three city administrators without legal representation. I guess he had nothing to hide.