BREAKING: Greensboro reaches deal to keep Police Chief Ken Miller

The city of Greensboro and Police Chief Ken Miller reached an agreement for Miller to remain in his post with a $27,200 pay increase beginning Nov. 1. Rumors circulated rapidly about Miller's potential departure from the department when he posted on LinkedIn that he is eligible for retirement in a few months and would be available for work. Many saw the move as a power play to force the city to negotiate a salary increase, though the specifics of how the deal unfolded are unclear. 

Miller will now be paid $175,500, up from his current $148,311 salary. The city said the rate "offsets a separation allowance Miller would have received if he retired." Miller would have received about $38,500 in the allowance from the city if he retired in March of 2014, a requirement of the state's retirement system that is only available to law-enforcement officers, the city said.

City Manager Denise Turner Roth said in a press release that, “Under Chief Miller, the relationships between the police department and community have improved, crime is down across the city, and the men and women of our police department have focused on keeping Greensboro safe and secure." 

“The alternative would have been to allow Chief Miller to retire, pay the separation allowance, and start the process of finding a replacement," Roth said. "In weighing the best decision for the city, I have elected to have Chief Miller remain in his capacity and continue his and the GPD’s effective work. In doing so, we have reached a mutually beneficial agreement and increased his salary by approximately $27,000 (to $175,500 per year) to help offset the loss of the allowance.” 

Miller said he is "excited" to remain in his position and is looking forward to "leading the department into the future."

Greensboro settles several police discrimination lawsuits

Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson and Mayor Robbie Perkins

The City of Greensboro and plaintiffs in three lawsuits alleging racial discrimination within the city's police department announced a $500,000 settlement today after city council voted in favor of the settlement in closed session last night. 

Though confident the city would have prevailed in court in two Alexander vs. City of Greensboro cases and the Fulmore vs. City of Greensboro case, Mayor Robbie Perkins and Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson said they voted in favor of a settlement to save the city money on legal fees, provide a sense of closure, protecting residents from enduring a lengthy trial that would focus on trauma and negativity and allow the city to focus on other important issues like jobs and economic development.

"It's a way to close it with dignity and honor," Johnson said at a press conference this afternoon. City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan, Police Chief Ken Miller and City Manager Denise Turner Roth also answered questions. 

Perkins said the cases have "burdened" the city for a long time, adding that "It's time to move on."

L to R: Shah-Khan, Turner Roth and Miller

Councilmembers Nancy Vaughan, Zack Matheny and Tony Wilkins voted against settling the suits, according to city spokesperson Donnie Turlington. 

The city has already spent $2.3 million in legal fees related to the lawsuits, Shah-Khan said, and Johnson said the city previously offered a larger settlement sum for the cases that was turned down by plaintiffs.

A press release today from Higgins Benjamin, one of the law offices representing the plaintiffs, said the officers feel "vindicated." Here's the full statement:

"After suffering years of hostility during the Wray administration due only to their race and then being vilified in certain local media outlets, 38 of the plaintiffs in the Alexander cases have finally gotten justice.  Those plaintiffs who have now settled their claims against the City and other defendants feel that they’ve finally been vindicated.  These current and former Greensboro Police Department officers have done a great service for this City and civil servants everywhere who have endured a racially hostile work environment.  Likewise, settlement – and the closure it brings – is in the City’s best interest as well."

Miller and Shah-Khan talking before the press conference

The city did not admit liability in the case but did point to numerous ways it has improved police practices and procedures in the wake of the discrimination suits. Former officers Charles Cherry and Joseph Pryor did not agree to the settlement and will continue with their cases with the city, and separate but related cases from current Capt. James Hinson, who is black, and former Chief David Wray, who is white, are not resolved. Hinson's case is scheduled to go to court on Oct. 8.

Perkins said the police department has improved significantly and that he's very proud of the department. In a press release, Perkins acknowledged that the lawsuits stem from a time "in the history of the city and police department where some unfortunate actions on the part of the city and plaintiffs occurred," but continued to say that "confidence in the Greensboro police has been restored."

Activists and community members continue to push for greater oversight for the police department around issues of disparate treatment and racial discrimination, focused primarily on interactions between officers and residents rather than within the department. 

The city's press release cited a survey claiming that more than 80 percent of residents are pleased with the police department's work and said the department implemented 200 of 226 recommendations from a 2008 management and staffing study. Chief Miller said at the press conference that his department is still reviewing 15 of the additional recommendations but said some would have a budgetary impact. A recent presentation by the chief included similar numbers about positive community perceptions of the department but noted a disparity in perceptions based on race.

Fresh allegations of Greensboro police misconduct

The Beloved Community Center posted this pretty disturbing video interview with Marie Robinson earlier this week alleging unprovoked abuse and wrongful arrest by Greensboro police officers in April. Robinson's story is just the latest allegation of police misconduct that the Beloved Community Center has highlighted, most of which are made by residents of color.


 Watch this video where Robinson describes being slammed against her car in her fiancé's driveway after police accused her of being a prostitute. Robinson, who is diabetic, says her fiancé was helping her with her blood sugar when police appeared. Ultimately, she says, police arrested both of them.

YES! Weekly has not yet verified any of the claims in the video. Chief Ken Miller was not immediately available for comment.

Related:
Police treatment of Bennet, A&T students leaves sour taste
Speakers urge citizens to mobilize against police abuses

Greensboro to support "alternative ID" for immigrants

Police Chief Ken Miller signaled in a memo yesterday that the department is on board for a proposed "alternative ID" that would allow immigrants to obtain a form of identification that the police department would recognize, thereby reducing the need for an arrest in some cases.

The alternative ID is scheduled for launch in early July and will be formally announced at a community meeting on immigration hosted this Sunday at Saint Mary's Catholic Church. The impetus for the project — which mirrors a system used in Winston-Salem, Durham and numerous other cities around the country — grew out of immigrant community conversations with the police department facilitated by FaithAction International House. The nonprofit agency will be responsible for printing the IDs and working out a few small details, but the city is supportive and ready to move forward with the project. 

From the chief's memo: 

This initiative, while providing dignity and inclusiveness to immigrant residents in our community, will provide Greensboro Police officers with crucial information to better address and resolve legal and criminal concerns involving immigrants who may not otherwise have a valid form of ID. It can save tremendous time and resources by allowing officers to issue citations instead of having to make custodial arrests, keeping our officers in the field and available to respond to calls for service or doing proactive work.  

Read the full document here. 

YES! Weekly will have a full news story on the issue, including coverage of Sunday's meeting, in next week's issue. The alternative ID has been in the making since last year and would only be recognized by the Greensboro Police Department (and not, say, the Guilford County Sheriff's office or highway patrol) and is not a substitute for a drivers' license or other government-issued identification. The initiative is also supported by the city manager's office, Assistant City Manager Jim Westmoreland confirmed, adding that city council has been updated on the plan but will not have to vote to approve it.

Documents on police surveillance, Abuzuaiter now public

YES! Weekly is making numerous documents connected to today's article on Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter's correspondence with police available to the public, as well as a few key e-mails about police surveillance. We redacted phone numbers out of respect for privacy.

Read the files on Abuzuaiter here, including the e-mails Abuzuaiter claimed she did not send. The councilwoman denied all correspondence with Detective Rob Finch, and also said she never communicated with Capt. John Wolfe about the Beloved Community Center or Latin Kings. Another e-mail between Wolfe and Abuzuaiter was accidentally left off of the file. The two pages that are blank except for e-mail attachments contain images of planned protest maps in Charlotte, referenced in today's article. 

In a guest piece in Saturday's News & Record, the police chief, city attorney and city manager claimed a restraining order the city filed against YES! Weekly was aimed at preventing the release of intelligence that could expose an informant to serious danger. 

"The city acted appropriately when it learned that criminal intelligence information was inadvertently released to the media," they wrote. "It believed that publishing intelligence information, including informant information, created immediate risk of serious injury or death."

Here are the other files we received that identifies a confidential informant. Due to a technical error, this e-mail was omitted from the file:

Only one person was named (with a full name and e-mail address that we have redacted here) and this is the full extent of the documents involving that individual that we have. In another e-mail, Finch referred to this informant as a "snitch." Is the city's claim referring to this handful of files, or to the more extensive information included in the public-information request on Abuzuaiter? What credible information is the alleged "immediate risk" based on?

Miller also told the News & Record that there wasn't an undercover officer posing as part of Occupy Greensboro. We had technical difficulties with this document too but have included a screen shot below. Click to enlarge and read where Finch wrote (at the bottom) that he was in an Occupy meeting. Miller forwarded the message (at the top) to the Secret Service because President Obama would be in town, and he commented about Finch's role. 

We've also included a few other files of interest from the police surveillance article. 

Chief Miller's letter on the noise ordinance

Greensboro Police Chief Ken Miller sent the following letter to the interim City Manager regarding the department's recommendations for the noise ordinance. There is more to the letter but here is the summary and the first page, included in this week's IFYI report.

There is some new material in the letter, including a recommendation around the decibel level that would actually raise what is currently permitted downtown.

Read it by clicking here.

Emails show source of noise complaint

Through a public information request, YES! Weekly obtained 1727 pages of emails to and from city staff — including Chief Ken Miller, Greensboro City Council members and various city employees — related to noise complaints or the ordinance since the current council took office at the end of 2011. Here are some of the more telling emails, to accompany our print article in this week's issue about Roy Carroll's influence on the noise ordinance. I apologize for the small print size and formatting issues — we'll try to upload the documents using Scribd so it's more reasonable, but it may take a few days.

Chief Miller weighs in on Sadeq incident, provides evidence

Greensboro police Chief Ken Miller contacted YES! Weekly after reading a blog post about Occupy Greensboro participant Zack Sadeq's interaction with Officer Muldowney.

Upon being asked, Muldowney told Sadeq he was stopped because he fit the description for someone suspected of a number of recent auto larcenies in the downtown area. Indeed, there had been a number of downtown auto larcenies, but a police spokesperson said their was no profile of a suspect.

Miller explained that the police department circulates internal "Be On the Look Out" notices, and that Muldowney had seen a BOLO for Joshua Blackburn, a repeat auto larceny offender. According to Miller, Muldowney was operating from memory and thought Sadeq could have been Blackburn, so stopped him for questioning.

The photograph on the left shows Sadeq soon after his interaction with Muldowney. At right is Blackburn, photo courtesy of Miller. Both have similar hair and complexion, as well as relative age, and it seems reasonable that Muldowney could mistake one for the other especially without a photo in front of him.

Miller explained that Blackburn is a person of interest when auto larcenies are committed, and that Muldowney was doing good police work by questioning Sadeq. 

Blackburn was arrested Sept. 24, approximately a month before Sadeq was stopped, and is currently in Guilford County Jail on a number of charges, including felony breaking and entering of a motor vehicle. He goes to court Nov. 14 and 16, and again Jan. 3.

It is unlikely that Muldowney knew Blackburn was in jail, and he was acting off the BOLO he was probably shown months ago before Blackburn's arrest, Miller said. A search of the P2C police database does not provide a document to verify which officer arrested Blackburn, though a different officer responded to the initial incident on South Chapman Street.

Sadeq said Muldowney talked with him about his connection to Occupy Greensboro and about his Che Guevara shirt. Such questions don't violate Sadeq's constitutional rights, Miller said, adding that Sadeq consented to the entire encounter. 

Miller said after reading the blog post he was concerned Sadeq's rights could have been violated, but said that after looking into the incident he is confident Muldowney acted appropriately. 

------------

photo of Sadeq by Alexandria Stewart

Report from GPD central division community meeting

Greensboro police Chief Ken Miller led his fourth community meeting on Monday, this time for the central patrol division at the Greensboro Historical Museum.

Many of the points in the chief's presentation had been made in previous meetings. A couple statements stuck out, to my ear.

“Ole Asheboro is a neighborhood that cries out for help," the chief said, making the argument that shoring up public safety in struggling neighborhoods benefits the city as a whole.

“With police in minority neighborhoods, it’s never a matter of if, but a matter of when there’s conflict,” he said, adding that being able to articulate the department’s core values will be beneficial in bridging perceived differences with minority communities when tensions arise.

“We want to stand up community watches," he said. "They are very effective.”

Miller discussed his effort to reorganize the department to have a balance of proactive “strike teams” and reactive personnel on hand to respond to calls for service.

He said he wants to prioritize the patrol function within the department.

“Patrol doesn’t work for the detective corps," he said. "The detective corps essentially works in support of patrol.”

The chief caught himself misspeaking about the number of officers employed by the Greensboro Police Department, citing 1,600 — a number closer to the staffing for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, where Miller was previously employed. The Greensboro Police Department employs about 640 officers. Given the number of times he referred to GPD staff as "you" and used the pronoun "I," I wondered if he was missing his old job already.

Charles Cherry and Joseph Pryor, two former officers who were fired from the department over the summer, did not attend this meeting and their names did not come up, although District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny seemed to be anxiously scanning the crowd for people who might disrupt the program.

I’m quoting the chief at length because while his remarks largely covered old ground, the substance is in the nuance.

“I will tell you that the disciplinary process changes that we’re making are not because of what you read in the paper over the summer and through the fall. They’re being made because — this process in this department is a process I am very familiar with and it is a process I have never liked. I have worked under this process and I’ve served time — it sounds like a sentence; it kind of was — in internal affairs. And I evaluated other processes out there.

“What happens in this process that the department currently uses is that the chief makes a disciplinary recommendation when someone violates a conduct rule — meaning a sustained complaint, a sustained allegation of misconduct. And I apply discipline. And then I basically put that out to the employee and say, ‘Here’s my discipline. I am sustaining it.’ Now, there’s an investigation that goes on that gives you all the documented information I need to make that decision, but I haven’t really heard from the employee beyond the employee's statement. I make a decision and then I tell the employee: ‘If you’re okay with it, sign here. And if not, you can request a hearing. And, by the way, that hearing is chaired by me.’

“If I already told the employee that I think they’re guilty of misconduct and now I’m telling them, ‘But if you want us to hear your side of it, just go ahead and ask for a hearing,’ that’s pretty intimidating.

"It meets all the tests of due process. It’s fair under the law. Other departments utilize the same process. I think departments primarily engage in those because it’s efficient and they can go through the burdensome task of managing discipline in their organization more efficiently. I’m less concerned about efficiency on that side because I want to balance the employee-management relationships that we have. And I want employees to have an opportunity to be heard before we make a decision so we can understand the facts that unfold for that employee in a context that he or she acted the way they did.”

Given the recent controversy over city council’s decision to impose a curfew on teenagers downtown, one might have expected residents in the central patrol division to have a lot of questions and comments about it. They didn’t. (A handful of business owners and restaurant workers on the Elm Street corridor did raise the issue with council during a briefing on Tuesday, and they were overwhelmingly opposed.)

Questions to the chief hit on more prosaic topics; enforcement of the city’s noise ordinance, identification of stolen jewelry and the relative merits of various approaches to home security were some.

Two additional community meetings have been scheduled. The first takes place at Pearce Elementary, located at 2006 Pleasant Ridge Road, on Dec. 9 at 6:30 p.m. The second takes place at the Warnersville Recreation Center, located at 601 Doak St., on Dec. 16 at 6:30 p.m.

NOTE: The date of the community meeting at Warnersville Community Center was inaccurately reported. The information has subsequently been corrected.

East Greensboro residents support chief's leadership

Community organizer Joseph Frierson poses a line of questions to Chief Ken Miller.

Ken Miller won applause and compliments from a group of east Greensboro residents and business owners who indicated in their comments that they are largely positive about his leadership since the new police chief was appointed in September.

“I’ve seen a difference in East Market Street since you’ve come here, and I commend you for that,” said Isa Abuzuaiter, who owns a gas station near NC A&T University.

About 60 people, roughly split between white and African-American and skewing elderly, attended the community meeting for the Eastern Patrol Division at Smith Senior Center. They also applauded Mayor Bill Knight, at-large Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw, District 2 Councilman Jim Kee and Assistant City Manager Michael Speedling when they were introduced.

The chief fielded questions about drug interdiction, and discussed the various ways drugs fuel crime. He addressed a plea from a woman who lives in an annexed area of Greensboro near McLeansville for more police patrols in her neighborhood. (“Greensboro is starting to get shaped like an octopus,” the chief said.) A description of the shape of the Eastern Patrol Division might be a monotone Jackson Pollock design with sprays arcing out into the Reedy Fork, McLeansville and Bass Chapel Road areas.

Miller responded to another citizen’s plea to get guns out of his neighborhood.

“I can’t stem the flow of weapons into any city,” the chief said. “The government can’t. They’ve even enacted bans on weapons of mass destruction, such as Chinese assault rifles. It didn’t work. All we can do is continue to police.”

Another resident asked the chief about street vendors, noting that she doesn’t like people to try to sell her food when she’s trying to go to an auto parts store. Miller noted that the issue does not really fall under the police department’s responsibilities. The Greensboro Legal Department is researching options for increasing regulation of street vendors. Kee said the matter is expected to come before council in coming months.

Tonight’s meeting largely followed the format of the previous engagement with residents in the Southern Patrol Division. Miller discussed plans to revamp the department’s disciplinary process, though in less detail than before.

The chief said, as an example, that when an officer is caught conducting an illegal search and seizure, discipline would depend on whether the officer knowingly violated the law or made a judgment error in good faith. He said it would be understandable though not technically legal if an officer were to break down a door under the hot pursuit doctrine if he saw someone running down the street with a TV but didn't specifically see the person enter the house. In contrast, the chief said he would not look kindly on an officer breaking down a known drug dealer's door without probable cause in the hope of finding drugs or weapons.

"You can never hijack the Constitution," the chief said. "And I won't allow my staff to do that. They're trained not to do that."

Miller and Lt. Mike Richey, acting commander for the Eastern Patrol Division, also discussed the department’s priority offender strategy. Miller said he and Assistant Chief Dwight Crotts plan to meet Guilford County Chief District Court Judge Joe Turner, District Attorney Doug Henderson and Wheaton Casey of pre-trial services to try to gain their support for keeping repeat offenders in jail until their trials come up.

Richey said the department has found that offenders charged with burglaries were bonding out and committing more crimes before their court dates. Richey said police recently arrested three individuals who were responsible for numerous burglaries. After the police went before a judge and obtained an order to deny bond, the number of burglaries in the area dramatically dropped, he said.

The lieutenant said that about three areas in the Eastern Patrol Division have experienced the highest number of residential burglaries: Phillips Avenue behind Claremont Courts public housing and the King’s Forest neighborhood; the area around Dudley High School; and the Lees Chapel Road area near Northwinds Apartments.

“I imagine in King’s Forest you’ve seen a lot of police cars,” he said.

In the past 40 days, the department has made 32 arrests for in-progress burglaries in the Eastern Patrol Division. Some of the arrests have resulted from proactive policing while others have come about because of residents making calls after observing suspicious activity.

“A neighbor will say, ‘This doesn’t look right: I sees a 15-year-old kid walking down the street, and it’s during school hours. It’s 90 degrees and he’s wearing a hoody,’” Richey said. “Someone sees feet hanging out of a window. It looks like someone is trying to get in a house. They hear a loud bang and suddenly the door is open. We get a call from someone saying, ‘I think my neighbor is getting robbed. Please send an officer over here.’”

Charles Cherry and Joseph Pryor, two former officers who were fired over the summer, attended the meeting. Having gone through a strained exchange with Cherry at a community meeting for the Southern Patrol Division a week earlier, Miller warned tonight that he would not discuss any past personnel decisions. Cherry and Pryor did not attempt to ask any questions tonight. Afterwards, Pryor said word had filtered out that they might be arrested if they tried to speak. Cherry, a former captain, was in charge of the Eastern Patrol Division until he was placed on administrative duty in June.

Some of the officers’ supporters did speak, but in general terms rather than about specifics of personnel decisions.

Lewis Brandon, a retired public school teacher and veteran of civil rights struggles in Greensboro dating back to 1960 said three reports – Trouble in Greensboro: A Report of an Open Meeting Concerning Disturbances at Dudley High School and North Carolina A&T State University, published in 1970; Black Perspective White Perspective, published in 1979; and the 2006 Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Report – had recommended that Greensboro have a police review board with subpoena power.

Miller said he does not favor giving subpoena power to a police review board.

“You hold me accountable,” he said. “When you create an outside panel to decide matters of discipline, what you have done is effectively stripped me of my authority to match the responsibility you’ve given me.”

Miller went on to express the opinion that the complaint review committee currently in force is adequately equipped to provide an independent review.

“When they believe something’s wrong on a disposition, they challenge us on it,” he said. “I just handled my first one. They told me they didn’t think the disposition was right, and I agreed with them and reversed it. A complaint that was unfounded should have been exonerated.”

After the meeting, Miller said the appeal made by the complaint review committee did not make it clear whether the disposition should have been lighter or more severe; he just knew that they thought it was wrong.

Miller also responded to a question from Beloved Community Center community organizer Joseph Frierson about whether police administration is willing to learn from the past where it concerns social justice. The chief answered by discussing the 1979 Klan-Nazi shootings.

“The allegation was that the police department was conspicuously and deliberately absent from a conflict situation,” Miller said. “So, if there is anything for me to learn from past mistakes, my commitment to you and my commitment to everyone is that we will not be conspicuously or deliberately absent from conflict.”

Supporters of the ousted officers received some pushback from community leader Sharon Hightower, who asked after the chief received a rousing round of applause following his rebuff of Frierson: “Chief, what is your goal for this community and for this police department? Is it your goal to make sure we are safe, that I can go home and not have to worry about a gang following me? I can go home and not have to worry about my home, my taxpayer dollars being destroyed?”

Chief answers questions and outlines initiatives at community meeting

>>> A community forum led by Greensboro police Chief Ken Miller tonight at Trotter Community Center ranged over several topics, with a television reporter and a fired captain, along with his supporters, broadening the discussion in what was billed as a meeting geared towards the southern patrol division.

In response to one resident’s question, Miller said he would want to move cautiously on a police substation for High Point Road and outlined some reservations.

“Facilities cost a lot of money and I want to be careful before the city makes that investment because the city really doesn’t have money to pitch out the window in regard to that investment, and although there are people who might even be willing to donate space, there becomes an expectation that we’re there," Miller said. "And if we’re there, it means a person is in a building instead of in a neighborhood. I’m a little concerned about how we manage that. We have to manage a substation. I would rather have people in your neighborhood then sitting at a substation, and not have a substation, because when you put ‘Greensboro Police Department’ on the side of a building, there’s an expectation that you be able to go up and pull the door open and go in and see someone.”

A Lamrocton resident said his car had recently been broken into, and he wanted to know when he would see additional patrols in area neighborhoods.

Miller noted that the 26.2-square-mile division has a lot of road to cover and explained that his priority is to have a patrol force with adequate flexibility to move with crime rather than being tied down in a particular location.

“Where I want my people concentrated is where crimes are concentrated,” he said. “And that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to put people in your neighborhood. Crimes will move around. They’ll pop up over here. They may pop up in your neighborhood. And if they pop up with any volume – again, we’re looking at it week to week – we’re going to put cars in your neighborhood. I know that doesn’t help you because you were broken into. These people move around; they tend to move around in clusters. We’re trying to stay on those clusters.”

Another question centered on a license checkpoint on Phillips Avenue, which lies in the eastern patrol division, that the department operated on Election Day. The checkpoint raised concerns about voter suppression in a predominantly African-American neighborhood, and prompted numerous complaints to the department. Miller said the checkpoint was cut short as soon as the department was made aware of the conflict with voting.

Assistant Chief Ron Rogers, who oversees patrols for the department, took responsibility for the mistake.

“I absolutely missed the connection that it was Election Day,” he said. “I take full responsibility for that. Chief Miller had no control over it. Nobody in city government had control. It was a request through my chain of command. Every two weeks, that squad gets together to do a special assignment. They chose that location. I approved it. Looking back I wish I had put the two together because I would have canceled it. But as soon as I got word that it sent a negative message to the community, we broke it down."

A recent shooting in Greensboro’s downtown entertainment district prompted a news reporter to ask the chief whether had formulated a plan to address violent crime. Miller responded that he had met with nightclub owner Rocco Scarfone, Downtown Greensboro Inc. and members of city council, but reiterated that violent crime is down overall in Greensboro.

“You’ve got some very sensational crimes that have occurred in the past week or two that concern us, yes,” the chief said. “Are they the norm? No, I wouldn’t call that a trend yet. But they concern us. As far as a plan around the nightclubs… we’re working through a process quite frankly to address clubs. It’s not just the N Club. There are a number of clubs downtown that we’re going to have to pay attention to. And I think they’ll probably get some attention at the council meeting Tuesday night. So we’re not ignoring it.”

Much of Miller's presentation was taken up with changes to the department's discipline process that are now underway. The chief has appointed an 18-member committee led by Capt. Joe Smith and Capt. Wayne Scott. Miller said he hopes to implement the new discipline structure by January.

The chief outlined four basic areas of focus, starting with rules of conduct.

“Some of it was compressed together where you had insubordination, discourtesy, harassment and what I would equate to profiling all in one sentence," he said. "I wanted to have greater specificity because that doesn’t help me or this organization learn, one, where problems are happening, if they are lumped together like that.”

Next, he talked about the investigative process.

“Polygraph has come up around our investigative process," Miller said. "I think there’s a time and place for polygraphs. I just don’t think it’s all the time. And I think there are certain boundaries around polygraphs. And we’ve talked about that, and we’re doing it. We’ve laid out what those are. A polygraph is not something any supervisor in the organization ought to be able to order up. It should be me, because I’m accountable for it…. There are some things that I believe are out of bounds. I think deception in our investigative process internally is out of bounds.”

Miller said he sees it as a conflict of interest for him to both recommend discipline and hear appeals.

“When I say the police chief is a balance point, I don’t believe that I ought to be sitting in every hearing and deciding the cases because when I do that I’m not on the appeal track," he said. "I can’t balance the interest of the organization. And the only person who can balance the interest of the organization is either the city manager or the assistant city manager. They ought to be operating on different issues than discipline. That has consumed an awful lot of their time this past year.”

He said he wants discipline to be consistent, but cautioned against a "cookie-cutter" approach.

“I want people to be heard before we apply discipline," Miller said. "And I want discipline applied consistently, recognizing that most every situation that occurs in policing unfolds in a rather unique way. It’s not cookie-cutter, so a matrix just doesn’t work. Just like in the courts, is there an aggravating or mitigating circumstance – in this case, it’s an officer’s behavior – that affects the level of discipline…. To apply discipline fairly, you have to look at the aggravating and mitigating circumstances under which the employee acted. We’re they acting in the public interest or were they acting in their own self interests? Did they hijack the Constitution in the name of public [safety]? Did they make an unlawful search or arrest because they can’t get the goods on a bad offender any other way? Every now and again that happens around the country. But if you have a person who makes a mistake on an arrest that’s truly trying to do everything right, you don’t want to treat them the same way. Somebody’s trying to do everything right, and somebody’s trying to hijack the Constitution. They’re just very different situations."

The chief concluded, "There are still some management-employee relations issues. Some of those are race related. We're going to have some race-relations discussions in the department. We can't deal with it if it's not on the table. We can't stick our heads in the sand. Not saying anybody has in the past. But we can't."

Charles Cherry, a former captain who was recently fired, sat in the center of the room. After Miller’s presentation, Cherry made an allegation that Assistant Chief Dwight Crotts is documented violating state personnel policy in a YouTube video. Miller refused to engage Cherry, and similarly rebuffed questions posed by the Revs. Cardes Brown and Randall Keeney.

Miller also said the department is in the process of implementing CompStat management program, and to create a priority offender strategy in concert with the district attorney’s office.

One topic that did not come up is a recent Title VI civil rights complaint filed with the US Justice Department against the department on behalf of the North Carolina Latin Kings by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. The complaint alleges that the department's gang unit has discriminated against the Latin Kings on the basis of race by bringing baseless charges against them, subjecting them to unlawful stops, non-consensual searches and false arrests often using excessive force.

"My position is they've reached out to Justice like they've done before, to say, 'We're a street gang and we're being picked on,'" Miller said. "We'll see what happens. We have complaints on file. We've tried to investigate, and they won't talk to us."

At the end of the meeting, supporters of black and Latino police officers who have been subjected to adverse action handed out fliers for a different kind of community meeting on Nov. 11. Among the items on the agenda is a discussion about filing additional complaints documenting discriminatory treatment of citizens to send to the Justice Department.

The flier state that officials from two different areas of the Justice Department are expected at the meeting, and that Mayor Bill Knight, City Manager Rashad Young and Chief Ken Miller have also been invited.